The Irish Land League's 1886-91 Plan of…

The Irish Land League's 1886-91 Plan of Campaign, preceded by economic difficulties due to droughts in 1884 and 1887 as well as industrial depression in England causing shrinking markets, is a more focused version of agitation and rent strikes.

Organized by Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) members such as Tim Healy, it copies Davitt's methods while disassociating the party from his more radical views.

Lord Clanricarde, who had evicted many tenants, had become the main target.

Given the extended franchise allowed in 1884, the IPP had to gain credibility with the larger number of new voters, choosing the group that was most likely to support it; the low-to-middle-income rural electorate.

Most IPP members are Catholic, and appeal to Rome for moral support.

So does the government, and the Vatican will issue "Saepe Nos" in 1888, a Papal Rescript forbidding the activities of the Land League, particularly boycotting.

In 1887 the "Perpetual Crimes Act" is passed to deal with the offenses surrounding the Campaign; it is described emotively in the nationalist press as a Coercion Act.

After the 1881 and 1885 Land Reform Acts, many Tory press commentators describe the Plan of Campaign as an opportunistic and cynical method of revenge following the division of the Liberal Party and the rejection of the first Irish Home Rule Bill in June 1886.

It is also described as cruel, as new rent strikes will inevitably result in more evictions and boycotting as before, with all the associated intimidation and violence.

Other reporters see it as a matter of justice and of continuing concern to genuine liberals.

The Campaign leads to events such as the Mitchelstown massacre in 1887 and the imprisonment of IPP MPs such as William O'Brien for their involvement.

The land question in Ireland will ultimately be defused by a series of Irish Land Acts, beginning in 1870 with rent reform, establishing the Land Commission in 1881, and providing for judicial reviews to certify fair rents.

The Ashbourne Act of 1885 had started a limited process of allowing tenant farmers buy their freeholds.