Kilmainham and the Three Fs
The year began under the pressure of the Land War, the broad campaign through which tenant farmers and their allies challenged high rents, insecure occupation and landlord power. Its methods ranged from public meetings and legal defence to collective social pressure against those who took farms from which others had been evicted. Such action could protect tenants and make evictions costly, but it also generated intimidation and sometimes violence. The Liberal government of William Ewart Gladstone resolved to combine a new land measure with exceptional powers of repression.