Irish National Land League

Irish National Land League 

an organization of Irish peasants and impoverished urban workers, supported by the progressive circles of the Irish bourgeoisie. The league was founded in 1879 at the initiative of M. Davitt and other petit bourgeois democrats. The organization had about 200,000 members, with branches in the United States. Politically, the Irish National Land League supported a moderate program of home rule. At the same time, the organization ignited a mass struggle among the Irish peasants against the land-lords and English colonial powers, employing to some extent the boycott. The most radical elements of the Irish National Land League proposed the nationalization of the land. Frightened by the dimensions of the agrarian movement, the leader of the Irish National Land League, C. S. Parnell, reorganized it in October 1882 as the Irish National League, in which the agitation against the landlords was subordinated to the struggle for home rule.