Tenant Rights and the OED

I am not keeping up with my Oxford English Dictionary word-a-day list, but this morning I read some back email and caught up on the past week's words. Wednesday's word this week was "plan," and--holy shit, I never learned about the Irish National League's Plan of Campaign! Yay tenant rights! (A subject dear to my heart always, and especially right now, as my landlord is gouging me!) Anyway, details about the Irish Plan of Campaign are available at Wikipedia, of course.

The OED definition follows, with the usage quotations (which are the best part):

2. c. plan of campaign n. (b) Irish Hist. a manifesto (published in 1886) for a campaign against landlords who refused to reduce rents, proposing that tenants should offer to pay what they considered to be a fair rent, and that this money, if refused, should be paid into a central fund for the support of evicted tenants; the campaign conducted (from 1886 to 1890) on the basis of this manifesto. 1886 United Ireland 20 Nov. 272/2 The ‘Plan of Campaign’ as laid down in United Ireland of October 23rd. 1886 Pall Mall Gaz. 24 Nov. 2/1 The plan of campaign is..the proposal that whenever a landlord refuses to settle at the abatement proposed by his tenants..the reduced rent of all the tenantry is to be banked with an unknown individual, who is to act as paymaster and dole out weekly allowances to such of the tenants as are evicted by the landlord for non-payment of rent.