trade union action. Objectives The name of the association was somewhat anomalous, as it strived to represent and pursue the twofold interests of small tenant farmers and rural agrarian labourers. Both were a deprived and down trodden class supporting each other in their common plight, tenant farmers paying excessive rents or suffering eviction, labourers "compelled to live in hovels not fit to house the brute beast of the field" (Sheehan's later House of Commons speech). The objectives of the ILLA were therefore to achieve tenant land purchase, new and improved housing, welfare working conditions and access to land holdings for rural labourers. ILLA concern for other labour issues developed after the Local Government Act transferred responsibility for cottage building, land reclamation, drainage, road building, their repair and maintenance, to the County and District Councils. This called for considerable ILLA involvement when it came to tenders for contract work and the fair employment of local contractors and labour, settling disputes and complaints, often arising out of local political patronage. The situation of previously evicted tenants, now reduced to landless labourers, was also on their agenda. Propertied classes' hostility However where initial success such as the election of five of the Association's Central Council to County Councils, it was nullified by the continued domination of farmers and landowners in the local authorities. Where the Land and Labour Association clashed with the propertied classes' interests, it was excluded from all effective political action, which even led to the exclusion of the labourers from United Irish League meetings. The belief of J.F.X. O'Brien and others was that there should be no separate labour organisation alongside the UIL, which attempted to tactfully bring the Association and its followers under its wing. John Redmond's sedulous refusal to consider direct Parliamentary representation for the Land and Labour Association was but an instance of the propertied classes' obsession with maintaining their hold over national politics. The desire to keep the labouring classes in tow prompted the United Irish League to eventually give the Land and Labour Association entry to national councils in 1900. The failure of the UIL and the Irish Party to either refer to the labourers in their deliberations or to do anything for them at Westminster indicated the Associations intended subservient position. It took the Mid-Cork by-election of 1901 to show that the understanding between the UIL and the ILLA was paper-thin. When it became