The application of the AFIL's principles of
"Conference, Conciliation and Consent" (the Three C s), were to win All-Ireland Home Rule – or constitutional nationalism rather than an ultimately doomed path of
militant physical force. Many of the leading Protestant gentry of Munster, and representatives of the wealthy Protestant business and professional community joined the League.
Lord Dunraven,
Lord Barrymore,
Lord Mayo and
Lord Castletown,
Sir John Keane of Cappoquin,
Villiers Stuart of Dromana,
Moreton Frewen and future, and last Irish Free State Senate Chairman
Thomas Westropp Bennett (a first generation Roman Catholic, Gaelic speaking, from an old County Limerick Protestant family) were a few of the more notable adherents who supplied political and financial support. Even amongst the Orangemen the spirit of patriotism was stirring – hands were stretched out from
Ulster to the Catholics of the South.
Lord Rossmore, once Grandmaster of the
Orange Institution, joined the League, Sharman Crawford and others. Unionism was declared by them to be a "discredited creed". Nationalist and Unionists were called upon to recognise
the unwisdom of perpetuating a suicidal strife which sacrificed them to religious bigotry and the political exigencies of English partie. League Chairperson was
James Gilhooly (MP), Honorary Secretary D. D. Sheehan (MP). A Central London branch was founded by
Dr J. G. Fitzgerald (MP) as chairman, suggesting some disenchantment with his former Parnellite colleagues including John Redmond.
Canon Sheehan of Doneraile, a founder member, spoke and wrote enthusiastically in favour of the Leagues doctrines. The
Cork Free Press, published by O'Brien, appeared for the first time on 11 June 1910 as the League's official organ and organiser. It was a newspaper in the fullest sense, superseding the
Cork Accent and was one of the three great radical newspapers published in Ireland – the other two being
The Nation, published in Dublin in the 1840s, and
The Northern Star, published in Belfast in the 1790s.
League's manifesto Canon Sheehan wrote the manifesto of the movement for the first number of the
Cork Free Press, and asked in a very long editorial: We are a generous people; and yet we are told we must keep up a sectarian bitterness to the end; and the
Protestant Ascendancy has been broken down, only to build Catholic Ascendancy on its ruins. Are we in earnest about our country at all or are we seeking to perpetuate our wretchedness by refusing the honest aid of Irishmen? Why should we throw unto the arms of England those children of Ireland who would be our most faithful allies, if we did not seek to disinherit them? A weaker brother disinherited by a stranger will naturally be his enemy ... England owes her world-wide power ... to her supreme talent of attracting and assimilating the most hostile elements of her subject races ... Ireland, alas, has had the talent of estranging and expelling her own children, and turning them ... into her deadliest enemies. It is time that all this should cease, if we still retain the ambition of creating a nation. and drum band parading through
Castletownbere County Cork in 1910. Towns often had rival AFIL and AOH bands, occasionally clashing on Sunday parades. ==Decisive election==