The Irish Anti-Partition League (APL) was a political organisation based in Northern Ireland which campaigned for a united Ireland from 1945 to 1958. Foundation Prior to the establishment of the League, there had been no rank-and-file organisation of Irish nationalists since the Irish Union Association and Northern Council for Unity had become inactive in the late 1930s. This became a major complaint among supporters of the Nationalist Party, and at the 1945 Northern Ireland general election, some Nationalists candidates - including Eddie McAteer and Malachy Conlon pledged that if they were elected, they would organise a convention with the intention of uniting all Irish nationalists in one membership organisation. McAteer and Conlon were both elected, and on 14 November 1945 they presided over a convention in Dungannon. The convention was attended by about 480 people, including all Nationalist Party Members of Parliament (MPs) and Senators. Other anti-partitionist MPs were invited, but Socialist Republican Party MP Harry Diamond refused to attend. The convention elected a standing committee. Conlon became its first Secretary and James McSparran its first chairman. It also collected more than £1,000 to begin campaigning activities. Establishment Divisions appeared in the new organisation almost immediately. The Derry Journal, generally sympathetic to the nationalist cause, attacked two prominent members: T. J. Campbell for resigning as an MP in order to take up a position as a judge, and Cahir Healy for pledging to support the Ulster Unionist Party leadership of the parliament in their campaign to withhold some contributions to the HM Treasury in order to improve housing. A few months later, Thomas Maguire accused McSparran of rejecting a position as a judge solely because it was insufficiently well paid. Support came from a group of British Labour Party MPs, led by Hugh Delargy, who established the Friends of Ireland group to work with the APL. However, differences between the two remained. In 1946, APL supporter Denis Ireland warned readers of the Belfast nationalist daily, Irish News, that their "friends" in the British Labour Party are "friends of Ireland only in order that the Irish can be turned into good little Socialists like themselves." There was dismay when in the July 1945 election the Friends threw support behind a candidate of the Northern Ireland Labour Party for whom Irish unity was not an issue. In 1947, the APL and FOI did draw up a joint amendment to a Northern Ireland