21 October 1879
Irish Land War

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In Ireland, the agricultural depression is at its height. The wheat harvest has failed for the fourth year in a row and landlords are looking to rescue their profits. Many evict tenants and reorganise their land into large units so that it can be rented out to more profitable livestock farmers. The situation is worsened for peasants by the return of the potato blight and the fact that, because of the agricultural depression on the mainland, they can no longer get migrant work on British farms.

Michael Davitt, former member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, forms the Land League in October 1879 to defend tenants' rights. Politically radical, he calls for land to be nationalised. Agitators who share Davitt's aims start attacking landlords' property. The Land War, as it is known, lasts from 1879 to 1882. Thousands of tenants join in by using a strategy of 'boycotting' – refusing to cooperate with landlords or their incoming new tenants, and so causing their harvests to fail. (The word 'boycott' is invented at this time, taken from the name of Captain C C Boycott, a particularly bad landlord.)

Charles Stewart Parnell, prominent MP in the Home Rule Party, is active in coordinating some of these actions. He forms an alliance with Davitt, the Brotherhood and the prominent Irish-American group Clan na Gael, which helps raise money for the Land War. This multi-lateral approach is dubbed the 'New Departure'.

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