Campaign plan

The campaign plan is a system of struggle for lowering rents, proposed to Irish farmers by nationalist politician John Dillon on October 17, 1886 at a rally in Woodford (Ireland at that time was under British rule). Subsequently, the idea was developed by him in the newspaper "United Ireland" and supported by O'Brien , and later adopted by the whole Irish party.

Campaign Plan, a cartoon of Dillon from Vanity Fair

The idea was that farmers dissatisfied with the rent had to turn to the national league; The league acted as a mediator in the negotiations between the landlord and the farmers, and in case of failure of the negotiations, she herself determined the amount of “fair rent”, collected him from the farmer and offered the landlord. If the latter refused to accept this money, demanding an agreed annuity, the league paid money in favor of capital, to which it supported farmers who were evicted for non-payment of annuity, and if the farmer was evicted, he announced a boycott and directed it against anyone who would like to take this farm. In November 1886, many farmers in Ireland, following the instructions of Dillon and O'Brien, refused to pay the agreed rent and demanded “fair” rent; mass evictions followed.

The struggle in this form continued into the next three years, but weakened in 1889-1890. The British authorities persecuted Dillon, the Pope endorsed the encyclical condemning the Campaign Plan. In Parliament, Gladstone, during a debate on the address in 1886, recognized the Campaign Plan as an inevitable consequence of government policy towards Ireland.