Consolidation of Irish Nationalist Identity, 1881

Abstract

Upheaval and contradiction prevailed on every front during the last full year of the Land War. The government held out the olive branch of a new Land Act, and at the same time carried out oppressive measures against the Land League and the movement. Faced with government coercion, autonomous actions by local branches, and internal organizational strife, the Irish National Land League (INLL) executive struggled to maintain control of the movement. Also, the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) threatened to usurp Land League power as it actively opposed the government’s coercion measures, but worked with the government in hammering out a land reform bill. Tenant farmers were at once increasingly militant against the government yet hopeful about land reform, supportive of the movement yet resentful of league policies. Many in the western counties became irreversibly alienated from the movement, as the focus of the movement shifted to the south and the east and to the interests of the larger farmers in those areas. Landlords began in earnest to fight back against the movement. And the Irish Catholic Church (ICC) hierarchy found itself defending the land movement to outsiders such as the Vatican and the English Catholic Church, while at the same time decrying the increasing violence that the land campaign seemed to be generating.