Little was engaged in the independence struggle from an early stage. Following the Easter Rising in 1916, he formed, together with Stephen O'Mara, the Irish Nation League, who while being opposed to the Irish Parliamentary Party and supportive of abstentionism, were wary of the militarism of the Irish Volunteers. In 1918 the Volunteers, the Irish Nation League, and Count Plunkett's followers, the Liberty Clubs agreed to merge under the Sinn Féin banner with Éamon de Valera as President to fight the 1918 general election on an abstentionist platform.