The Land Conference was a successful conciliatory negotiation held in the Mansion House in Dublin, Ireland between 20 December 1902 and 4 January 1903. In a short period it produced a unanimously agreed report recommending an amiable solution to the long waged land war between tenant farmers and their landlords. Advocating a massive scheme of voluntary land purchase, it provided the basis for the most important land reform ever introduced by any Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland during the period of the Act of Union (1801–1922), the Land Purchase (Ireland) Act 1903.
Through it, the whole Irish land question underwent a revolutionary transformation whereby the entire tenantry were encouraged to purchase their holdings with advances from the imperial exchequer, provided for the express purpose of facilitating the transfer of the land from owner to occupier.
Land War as prelude
There were three periods of particularly acute tension and conflict between landlord and tenant in the period 1877–1903. The first period 1877–82, a period of poor harvest, decreased demand for agricultural products and falling prices, saw the establishment of the Irish National Land League in 1879 followed by demonstrations, boycotting, no-rent campaigns, arrests, suppression and prosecutions during 1880–82. The Land Acts introduced in 1881 and 1885 alleviated certain needs, but by and large the grievances of the mass of tenant farmers went unheeded.
A second period of agitation began with rent strikes in 1885 accompanied by the Plan of Campaign during 1886 to 1892. Land Acts in 1885 and 1891 provided for limited tenant land purchase, but as the acts were cumbersome and unwieldy they were little availed of by tenants. The third period of unrest was around the turn of the century, from 1898 to 1902, when, backed by intensified campaigns for compulsory land purchase of both William O'Brien MP's United Irish League (UIL) and T. W. Russell MP's Ulster farmer's organisation in 1901-2, tenants again agitated for concessions from their landlords. There was also a growing resentment at the landlord class as enunciated by Russell, who castigated their control of land as 'systemised and legal robbery'.
The Government was involved in the Land War only to the extent of enforcing its understanding of law and order chiefly in the interest of land owners. All the acts passed advanced the rights of tenants to some extent, but by the end of the century it was clear that the existing system of landlord and tenant ought to be replaced by a system of 'tenant proprietorship'.
Landlords take the initiative
When the Chief Secretary for Ireland George Wyndham introduced a Land Purchase Bill early in 1902 which fell deplorably short of the necessities of the situation, the UIL wanted no paltry compromises and entered upon a virile campaign against the rack-renters. All the elements of social convulsion were gathering strength, when on 2 September 1902 a letter appeared in the newspapers from an unknown country gentleman. Captain John Shaw-Taylor (the younger son of a Galway landlord and a nephew of Lady Gregory's) set out a proposal for a landlord-tenant conference in the following terms: "For the last two hundred years the land war has rages fiercely and continuously, bearing in its train stagnation of trade, paralysis of commercial business and enterprise and producing hatred and bitterness between various sections and classes of the community " He went on to invite a number of fellow landlords and Irish Nationalist MPs to a Conference in Dublin at which " An honest, simple suggestion will be submitted and I am confident that a settlement will be arrived at".
What marked out Shawe-Taylor's appeal was that Wyndham promptly endorsed it, and a group of moderate landlords came forward, balloted fellow-landlords, and received a mandate for negotiations. They were important because they articulated the desire of a small but highly influential group of centrist landlords who, in turn, were encouraged by the Dublin Castle administration.
They set up a Land Committee which produced four delegates to meet the tenant representatives. These were the Earl of Dunraven, the Earl of Mayo, Col. Sir Hutcheson Poë and Col. Sir Nugent Everard. It was entirely fitting that a scion of the original invader should be among those called to reverse the consequences of the Conquest. Among them, Dunraven soon emerged as a capable leader with a genuine sympathy for a settlement and an interest in Irish affairs transcending mere land questions. Dunraven and Everand were among the few landlords to win election to county councils in 1899; Everard survived on Meath County Council until 1920.