The Irish National Land League was established on 21 October 1879 in Castlebar, County Mayo. The Irish Parliamentary Party leader Charles Stewart Parnell was elected president, with veteran Fenian Michael Davitt, Andrew Kettle and Thomas Brennan appointed as honorary secretaries. Their objectives were the reduction of rack-rents and to “facilitate the obtaining of the ownership of the soil by the occupiers.” Virtually the entire Executive would be arrested and held in Kilmainham Jail in late 1881 where they issued the “No-Rent Manifesto”, which launched a campaign of generally passive resistance in an effort to bring down the 1881 Land Act. This resulted in a certain degree of success in the form of the Kilmainham Treaty between Parnell and William Gladstone, the British Prime Minister in which the Land Act would be expanded to cover tenant farmers in arrears in exchange for the No Rent campaign to end.
Writings
Charter of the Irish National Land League (1879)
No-Rent Manifesto (1881)