 The failure of the Conservative Government to provide for compulsory purchase under Balfour's 1891 Land Act, convinced O'Brien that something more than Parliamentary oratory was needed to encourage official circles to attend to the needs of the people.The decline in population since the Great Famine had been accompanied by the conversion of previously cultivated land into large grazing ranches, so that in many areas most of the local population was still crowded on tiny, uneconomical holdings within sight of open, untilled fields.At the very place in Westport where in 1879 Parnell once launched the Irish Land League, and in response to the near-famine of 1897–98, O’Brien established a new organisation, the "United Irish League" (UIL) in January 1898 under the banner of ‘’The Land for the People’.