clear that the ILLA candidate, D. D. Sheehan, was going to make an impact, he was accused of being an "anti-Healyite" and that his first allegiance was to the labourers rather than to the party, expressed the class bias of the Irish Party against the workers. Land proprietors By the turn of the century the working class segment of the electorate were a new labour power to be reckoned with, a very worthy class to be courted and flattered at election time. They displayed their depth of support for the labour movement in Cork at the UIL selection convention for the Mid-Cork by-election of May 1901. Amidst turbulent and occasionally violent scenes in Macroom on 10 May, their President D. D. Sheehan, standing on a strictly labour platform, defeated the local UIL candidate of the Irish Party on a second ballot. This after an initial attempt by Joseph Devlin (representing the UIL National Directory), to exclude a number of ILLA branches from the convention. In this respect Sheehans’ return on a labour-nationalist ticket as Mid-Cork Member of Parliament (1901–1918) to the House of Commons exposed the divide between rural labourers and the elitist nationalism of the UIL/IPP classes, which was to deepen by the end of the decade. Rural workers were quick to grasp the potential of local democracy for plots, cottages and direct labour on council road-works. Their ILLA organisation had grown to 98 branches by 1899, expanding to 144 branches in 1904 mainly in counties Cork, Limerick and Tipperary. UIL agitation by tenant farmers continued to press for compulsory land purchase and resulted in the calling of the December 1902 Land Conference, an initiative by moderate landlords led by Lord Dunraven on the one hand and William O'Brien, John Redmond MP, Timothy Harrington MP and Ulster's T. W. Russell MP representing tenant farmers on the other hand. It strove for a settlement by conciliatory agreement between landlord and tenant. After six sittings all eight tenant's demands were conceded, O'Brien having guided the official nationalist movement into endorsement of a new policy of conciliation. He followed this by campaigning vigorously for the greatest piece of social legislation Ireland had yet seen, orchestrating the Wyndham Land Purchase Act (1903) through Parliament. The Act provided very generous bonus subsidy terms to landowners on sale. Purchases between tenants and landlords were negotiated by Sheehan and the ILLA branches after O'Brien and Sheehan