Irish Parliamentary Party - Land-war Mainspring

Land-war Mainspring

Parnell first worked successfully to have Fenians who missed out on Gladstone’s earlier amnesty freed, including Michael Davitt, who was very impressed by Parnell. After his release in 1877, Davitt travelled to America to meet John Devoy, the leading Irish-American Fenian and raise funds. During 1878 Parnell also met with leading members of the Irish American Fenians. In October Devoy agreed to a New Departure of separating militancy from the constitutional movement in order to further its path to Home Rule. Throughout 1879 Parnell continued to campaign for land reform and when Davitt founded the Irish National Land League in October 1879 Parnell was elected president, but did not take control of it, favouring to continue to hold mass meetings. Isaac Butt died of strain later that year and Parnell held back in grabbing control of the party. Instead he too travelled to America with John Dillon on a fund raising mission for political purposes and to relieve distress in Ireland after a world economic depression slumped the sale of agricultural produce.

At the general election of April 1880, sixty-four Home Rulers were elected, twenty-seven Parnell supporters, facilitating in May his nomination as leader of a divided Home Rule Party and of a country on the brink of a land war. He immediately understood that supporting land agitation was a means to achieving his objective of self-government. The Conservatives under Disraeli had been defeated in the election and Gladstone was again Prime Minister. He attempted to defuse the land question with Balfour’s dual ownership Second Land Act of 1881 which failed to eliminate tenant evictions. Parnell and his party lieutenants, William O'Brien, John Dillon, Michael Davitt, Willie Redmond, went into a bitter verbal offensive and were imprisoned in October 1881 under the Irish Coercion Act in Kilmainham Jail for "sabotaging the Land Act", from where the No-Rent Manifesto was issued calling for a national tenant farmer rent strike which was partially followed. Although the League discouraged violence, agrarian crimes increased widely.