In 1875 Charles Stewart Parnell entered Parliament as M.P. for Co.Meath. Many of the Irish in Parliament had begun to believe that peaceful negotiations in their attempt to obtain Home Rule (or self-government) for Ireland were not working. Parnell quickly became the champion and leader of the Home Rule lobbyists despite the fact that he was a protestant who had little in common with the native Irish Catholics. He became President of the Nationalist Party in 1877 and favored disruptive and 'strong-arm' tactics. He arrived in Parliament at the same time as the new tactics of obstruction were first put into place.
Ronayne said " let us show them that if we are not strong enough to get our own work done, we are strong enough to prevent them from getting theirs". And this is exactly what Parnell did, anyway which he and his colleagues could distrupt parliament, to get themselves noticed, they did. On 31st July 1877 they forced the house, through obstruction, into its longest ever continuous session of twenty-six hours.
Back in Ireland an agricultural slump was looming and the tenant farmers faced their gravest crisis since the great famine. In the west of Ireland the crops were failing and it looked as though the famine was returning. To take political charge in such a crisis Parnell was ideally suited. On 21 October 1879, Davitt founded the Irish National Land League in Dublin with Parnell as President, it was started mainly as a response to illegal evictions and intimidation of tenants. The main objectives of the League were to provide tenants with a fair rent, fixed tenure and free sale. The long term aim was that farmers would own the land (peasant proprietorship). The Land League became a hugely popular movement overnight. The Land League taught the Irish farmers to stand on their own feet and assert their rights. Gladstone became Prime Minister for the second time in April 1880 and hoped to pass an emergency Land Bill through parliament that summer.
