John Dillon and the Plan of Campaign, 1886–90

There is a sense in which the home rule debates of 1886 were less the climax of than a deviation from the logical and predictable development of Irish politics in the Parnellite period. Had home rule been achieved, no doubt all would have been changed, and an autonomous Irish parliament would have addressed itself enthusiastically to solving the country's social and economic problems. But in the absence of home rule these problems immediately resumed the centre of the stage and the chief of them, the settlement of the land question, became again the crucial issue in Anglo-Irish relations. For some people, indeed, it had remained the crucial issue even during the ‘home rule’ winter of 1885–6, when the position on the Clanricarde estates in Galway, already notoriously bad, perceptibly worsened and when pressure was brought to bear both upon the Irish National League and upon the parliamentary party itself to adopt a more warlike posture towards rack-renting and evicting landlords.