Unlike many parts of continental Europe there was no major insurrection in Scotland in the 1840s and early moves toward nationalism tended to be aimed at improvement of the union, rather than its abolition. The first political organisation with such a nationalist agenda was the National Association for the Vindication of Scottish Rights, formed in 1853. It highlighted grievances, drew comparisons with the more generous treatment of Ireland and argued that there should be more Scottish MPs at Westminster. Having attracted few figures of significance the association was wound up in 1856, but it provided an agenda drawn upon by subsequent national movements. Resentment over the preferential deal discussed for Ireland during the Irish Home Rule debates in the later nineteenth century revived interest in constitutional reform and helped create a politically significant Scottish Home Rule movement. However, this was not a movement that aimed at independence. It argued for the devolution of Scottish business to Edinburgh to make Westminster more efficient and it was taken for granted that the union was vital to the progress and improvement of Scotland. Meanwhile, Scottish Highland crofters took inspiration from the Irish Land League set up to campaign for land reform in Ireland and defend the interests of Irish tenant farmers. Highlanders in turn founded the Highland Land League. The efforts for land reform in the Highlands expanded into a parliamentary arm of the movement, the Crofters Party. In the event, unlike the highly successful Irish Parliamentary Party, the new political party proved short-lived and was soon co-opted by the Liberal Party, but not before helping secure key concessions from the Liberals, which resulted in the rights of crofters becoming enshrined in law. Not all Scots saw common cause with Irish nationalism - the widely popular Scottish Unionist Association that emerged in 1912 from a merger of the Scottish Conservatives and Liberal Unionists referred to the Irish Union of 1801, while the union between Scotland and England was taken for granted and largely unthreatened.