 This threat to the divided factions of the IPP began a reunification among MPs, led from above, to counter the UIL threat growing up from below.The League immediately took up the issue of land redistribution, which the Irish Land League had campaigned on two decades earlier, but had been sidelined after the IPP split into the declining Irish National League and the Irish National Federation.The League's first electoral target was the county council elections under the new revolutionary Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898.