1906 began with the 1883 Land Purchase (Ireland) Act, which was cumbersome, as was the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act 1885 or Ashbourne Act. Both had to be amended in 1886 but nevertheless were a tentative start to land purchase under which initially 25,867 tenants were turned into owners of their farms. The Acts empowered to initiate schemes for building labourers' cottages with half acre allotments, the expenses of these to be met from local rates. They were therefore unpopular and few were built, as both the empowered Guardians and local farmers were themselves the ratepayers. The Acts were further overshadowed by two events: first, due to falling prices for agricultural produce and bad weather tenants could not pay their rent and united in the Plan of Campaign to withhold excessive rents. At the same time, Charles Stewart Parnell and the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) held the balance of power in the House of Commons. Their key concern in 1886 turned to Gladstone's First Irish Home Rule Bill, which was subsequently defeated. Although Parnell had become converted to the labourers' cause whilst in Kilmainham Gaol, after he became leader of the IPP their cause fell victim to his distancing himself from the Plan of Campaign in the interest of pursuing Home Rule. Then further by his fall from power in 1891 and the ensuing Party split, aggravated by the rejection of the Second Irish Home Rule Bill by the House of Lords in 1893. Not least, from the middle of the 1890s less than 1,000 cottages a year were being built for small tenant farmers or privileged labourers. Origins Acting in response to specific local needs, be it housing, land or employment, steadfast local spirits sustained Trade and Labour Leagues in parts of Cos Wicklow, Kilkenny, Laois, Kildare, Roscommon, Tyrone and Tipperary. However it was not until the formation of the Knights of the Plough a farm labourers' body founded by Benjamin Pellin, a small land-owner in the William Thompson tradition, at Narraghmore, Co. Kildare in June 1892, and of the National Labour League in Kanturk in January 1893, that the required organisation of the labourers began to take shape. The rural area of North Cork around Kanturk and Duhallow had been since the 1860s a centre of labourer agitation and strikes, forming a number of early trade unions. In 1869 P. F. Johnson founded the Kanturk Labourers' Club (the