I read Shane Faherty’s excellent article, ‘Ghosts of Imagination: A Journey through Landscape, the Land League and the Search for Memory’ in the online journal, The Dustbin of History.
There is an evocative account of the Famine and the landscape of deserted homesteads in its aftermath, leading the reader to Irishtown, to ‘the starting point of one of the greatest and most effective social movements ever to manifest on Irish soil.’
Significantly, there was no police presence. O’Connor Power believed the meeting could police itself.
The illustrations include the Irishtown plaque and the field behind it, where thousands gathered in disciplined formation for the first meeting of the Land League movement. The plaque reads:
Cradle of the Land League
Site of the Tenant Right Meeting
20 April 1879
Which led to the foundation of the National Land League.
