Land League

Irish peasant-rights organization, formed in 1879 by Michael Davitt and Charles Stewart Parnell to fight against tenant evictions. Through its skilful use of the boycott against anyone who took a farm from which another had been evicted, it forced Gladstone's government to introduce a law in 1881 restricting rents and granting tenants security of tenure.

The Land League was supported by the use of intimidation from the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) an offshoot of the Irish-American Fenian movement. The IRB ensured that landlords were unable to collect rents and that no other Irish farmers took the unoccupied farms. Support also came from Irish parliamentary nationalists, led by Charles Stewart Parnell, in the House of Commons at Westminster. The combination of intimidation and parliamentary action gave the Land League success. By attacking the economic wealth generated by Ireland for Britain and the large Protestant landowners of Ireland, the Land League achieved victory where previous campaigns for rights in Ireland had failed.