independent, could count on the support of Davitt, of Joe Devlin MP's Belfast machine and of the Irish organisation in Britain led by T. P. O'Connor MP. The wider impact and fallout Defeat for doctrine of conciliation William O'Brien, distressed and marginalised by Dillon's assault, told Redmond on 4 November 1903 he was retiring from Parliament and the UIL Directory, withdrawing from public life and closing the Irish People''. O'Brien refused to reconsider, despite appeals from friends and allies His resignation was a very serious blow for the party at home and abroad. Membership lapsed, many UIL branches became extinct. O'Brien embarked on a lengthy career of independent opposition to the Parliamentary party and although he briefly returned, together with Healy, in January 1908 in the interest of unity and to test the strategy of conciliation again, disappointment remained his lot. Events had drawn the once estranged Healy and O'Brien closer together, both now sharing a common foe, the party. Purged from it again by the Devlin instigated Baton Convention O'Brien formed a new political organisation in 1909, the All-for-Ireland League, to defy the party and further the cause of national conciliation. When in 1917 Lloyd George and Redmond called the Irish Convention in an attempt to win over Ulster for a Home Rule settlement, O'Brien declined an invitation to attend on the grounds that it could not succeed with a hundred and one delegates. His proposal to reduce the numbers to a dozen genuinely representative Irishmen from North and South, on the lines of the Land Conference, was not accepted, the Convention consequently ending as he predicted in disagreement. Devolution Crisis of 1904–5 The original centrist supporters of the Land Conference turned themselves into the Irish Reform Association, led by Dunraven. They contemplated the further development of O'Brien's policy of conciliation by providing a platform to explore the possibility of limited devolved government for Ireland, heralding hopes for O'Brien, that Ireland had somehow entered a new era in which 'conference plus business' could replace agitation and parliamentary tactics as a primary strategy for achieving national goals. With the involvement of Wyndham, the reformists produced two reports in August–September 1904 on a scheme of 'devolution'—that is, for granting to Ireland limited powers of local self-government. It became known that the Under-Secretary for Ireland, Sir Anthony MacDonnell, a Mayo Catholic originally appointed by Wyndham, had also been involved in the plan.