Land League

Land League, the, founded in Dublin on 21 October 1879 by Charles Stewart Parnell, Michael Davitt, and Andrew Kettle (father of Thomas Kettle), in response to agricultural depression and landlordism. It attracted widespread support from townspeople and the Catholic clergy, as well as farmers. Its historic slogan, ‘The Land for the People’, was interpreted as The Three Fs: ‘fair rent, free sale, and fixity of tenure’, already promulgated by the Tenant League of 1850 [see Charles Gavan Duffy]. A centrepiece of the New Departure policy of Fenian-Parnellite co-operation for self-government and land reform, the League was a constitutional movement, though it triggered a sporadically violent Land War. Its celebrated tactic was the boycott, so called from its use against Capt. Charles Boycott, a land agent who refused to concede rent reductions.