The Irish Revolution, 1916-1923 (5 page)

Gladstone introduced a Land Act in 1881 that granted the basic demands of tenants, known as the three ‘f’s – fair rent, free sale and fixity of tenure. Parnell’s response to it was ambiguous and when he attacked it at public meetings in Ireland he was arrested and held in Kilmainham Jail. After reaching a compromise with Gladstone in 1882, whereby the Prime Minister agreed to amend the Act to make better provision for leaseholders and tenants in arrears with rent in return for Parnell using his influence to quell agrarian agitation, Parnell was finally in a position to bring home rule back to the centre of the Irish and British political stages.

When Parnell established the Irish National League in 1882, to replace the outlawed Land League, home rule became its primary aim. He also formed a much more cohesive and disciplined parliamentary party, insisting that prior to standing in an election all candidates were required to take an oath pledging themselves to ‘sit, act and vote with the Irish Parliamentary Party’ and to resign their seats if found to be in breach of this promise. As a result, the 86 home rule MPs elected in the 1885 general election were loyal home rulers (O’Day, 1998: 70–80).

The overall result of the election – 335 seats for the out-going Liberal government and 249 for the Conservatives – meant that the Irish Party, whose 86 seats represented the exact difference between the two main parties, was in a position to make or break the government. The Irish Party eventually pledged its support to the Liberals early in 1886 when Gladstone announced that he had come around to supporting home rule for Ireland, a decision that appears to have stemmed from a belief that there was a strong moral argument for it as well as a feeling that such a measure of reform was needed to head-off serious social disorder in Ireland (Loughlin, 1986: 284–7).

The first home rule bill, which was introduced in parliament in April 1886, provided for a unicameral legislature with jurisdiction over domestic affairs, the Irish bureaucracy and the judiciary. There would no longer be any Irish representation in the House of Commons at Westminster, a controversial provision in light of the significant powers to govern Ireland that were retained by the imperial parliament, including trade, defence and taxation. Opposition to the measure from Liberal-Unionists within Gladstone’s own
Party, who wished to protect the union and the interests of the Protestant minority in Ulster, resulted in the bill’s defeat in the House of Commons by 341 votes to 311 (O’Day, 1998: 106–16).

Gladstone’s second home rule bill in 1893 proceeded one step further, making it through the Commons, only to be rejected by the House of Lords, an institution whose implacable opposition would need to be overcome for Irish home rule to have a chance of success. By that time the IPP was in disarray, riven by the O’Shea divorce case that ousted Parnell as leader, and left rudderless by his death in 1891. Gladstone’s government was forced out of office soon afterwards and replaced by a Conservative government and Gladstone was replaced as leader of the Liberal Party by Lord Rosebery, who did not commit the party to home rule (O’Day, 1998: 165–70).

Although the Irish Party re-emerged united in 1900, the obstacle of British opposition to home rule remained. The Conservatives tried to quell demands through a policy of constructive unionism, also known as ‘killing home rule with kindness’, that included new Land Purchase Acts, local government reform and renewed efforts to solve the university question. The post-Gladstone Liberals were wary of home rule for having split the party in 1886, supported constructive unionism, were alienated by elements of the Irish Party’s support for the Boers during the South African Wars and did not want to be dependent on a small party as they had been after the 1885 election. Therefore, when the Liberals were returned to power with a large majority in 1906 under Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who was replaced as party leader and prime minister by Herbert Asquith in 1908, it was the first Liberal government since 1886 not to introduce an Irish home rule bill. Given the size of their majority (245 more seats than the Conservatives), the government could probably have successfully introduced a home rule bill. The House of Lords would have had difficulty opposing the will of a government with such a huge mandate, and if it had done so it would have triggered a latent confrontation with the Commons over the veto powers of the unelected peers.

This confrontation finally happened in 1909 when the Lords rejected aspects of David Lloyd George’s ‘people’s budget’ that introduced higher taxes to fund national insurance, resulting in the introduction of the Parliament Act in 1911 that severely curtailed the ability of the Lords to reject legislation indefinitely. One major obstacle to home rule, which had prevented its implementation in 1892, had now been removed. The remaining barrier of Liberal indifference had also been overcome in the meantime, as the general elections of 1910 reduced the Liberals’ working majority, replicating the situation of 1886 where they required the support of the Irish Party, the
quid pro quo
for which was a third home rule bill. The introduction of the
third home rule bill
on 11 April 1912 triggered a political crisis in the United Kingdom.

Third home rule bill
: Irish home rule bill introduced in April 1912 and passed in September 1914 but suspended for the duration of the war and subsequently abandoned and replaced by the Government of Ireland Act in 1920.

THE ULSTER CRISIS, 1912–14

The third home rule bill envisioned a devolved bi-cameral parliament in Ireland with limited jurisdiction that excluded land purchase, old age pensions, national insurance, policing, taxation and postal services as well as imperial concerns such as defence and foreign policy
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. Limitations were also to be imposed on the Home Rule Parliament’s right to legislate over matters relating to religion and education. These clauses were inserted to assuage unionist fears, which were heightened at the time by the
Ne Temere
papal decree of 1908 requiring the children of mixed marriages to be raised as Catholics. Unionists were not convinced by such safeguards and were more fearful than ever of home rule becoming a reality as their traditional protectors in the House of Lords could no longer veto the bill indefinitely. Under the terms of the Parliament Act the Lords could reject the bill twice. If it passed the Commons a third time it would become law. Unionists, especially in the commercialised regions of the north-east and the major urban centres, were also concerned that a Home Rule Parliament, which would inevitably be dominated by the agrarian interests of the IPP, could be detrimental to their business interests. The union had already been tampered with when Gladstone disestablished the Church of Ireland in 1869 and they feared any further dilution of it would distance them further from their co-religionists in Britain, with whom they felt a closer ethnic affiliation.

The prospect of home rule by 1914 led unionists to resort to an intensive campaign of political, extra-parliamentary and military tactics to defeat it. While there was opposition within southern unionism, this was a declining force, and much of the focus of the campaign against the bill was centred on Ulster, in the process further distancing the Ulster Unionists from their southern brethren. Under its new leader, the Dublin-born lawyer, Sir Edward Carson, the Unionist Party forged a close alliance with the Conservative Party to attack the bill during its parliamentary passage. The Conservative leader, Andrew Bonar-Law, whose family had Ulster-Scots heritage, was personally opposed to home rule but also saw a good opportunity to unite his party, which was recovering from a debilitating split over free trade, around a major political issue (Smith, 2000: 5–8).

The unionists also brought their campaign to a wider public audience with a series of large demonstrations held throughout Ulster and Britain, including gatherings at Craigavon, County Down, the family seat of the influential unionist Sir James Craig, and Blenheim Palace, the ancestral home of the Churchills. The initial hope of unionists was to defeat home rule entirely. However, with its enactment a strong possibility since the removal of the Lords’ veto, contingency plans were drawn up to exclude Ulster from it. In September 1913 plans were put in place for the formation of an
Ulster Provisional Government
that would breakaway from the Irish Home Rule Parliament.

Ulster Provisional Government
: Plans for a breakaway government drawn up by the Ulster Unionists in the event of home rule being imposed against their will in 1914.

Solemn League and Covenant
: Commitment to resist home rule signed by over 200,000 men in Ulster in September 1912. A corresponding declaration was signed by over 200,000 women.

The most telling demonstration of Ulster’s intention to resist home rule was the signing of the Ulster
Solemn League and Covenant
in September 1912. Drawing its inspiration from the covenant signed by the opponents of Charles I in 1643, more than 200,000 men signed the Ulster Covenant and reaffirmed their loyalty to the king, promised to defend their rights as citizens of the United Kingdom and declared their intention to ‘defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland’ and refuse to recognise it should it be established. Over 200,000 women signed a declaration expressing similar sentiments
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. The covenant was signed throughout Ulster on 28 September 1912, which was declared as Ulster Day (Buckland, 1973: 45–67).

The unionist strategy was successful in highlighting the cause of Ulster and eventually ensuring that home rule would need to be modified to accommodate unionist opposition. The first suggestion of making some form of separate provision for Ulster arose in June 1912 when a Liberal backbencher, T. G. Agar-Robartes, proposed an amendment that would have excluded the four counties with Protestant majorities – Antrim, Armagh, Derry and Down. While unionists opposed the idea of partition initially, they were prepared to use the threat of it as a tactic to destroy home rule, in the belief that the IPP would accept nothing less than home rule for all of Ireland. However, by 1914, the home rule bill was entering the final stages of its passage having survived two defeats in the Lords, and both unionists and the government came to realise that the only solution to the Ulster crisis was excluding a part of Ulster from home rule.

In March 1914 Asquith announced that those Ulster counties which chose to do so could remain outside the workings of home rule, a solution which satisfied neither side in Ireland, with Edward Carson describing it as a death sentence with a six-year stay of execution. There was an unsuccessful attempt to negotiate the area of Ulster that would be excluded at the Buckingham Palace Conference in June 1914. The counties of Fermanagh and Tyrone, which had Catholic majorities, proved to be insurmountable obstacles. The government’s ability to impose any solution without a compromise was made increasingly difficult when sections of the British Army based at the Curragh in County Kildare indicated that they would not be prepared to quell any uprising in Ulster against the imposition of home rule. Although often referred to as the
Curragh Mutiny
, no direct orders were disobeyed, but the incident was a further boost to unionist resistance and made a compromise on Ulster more likely (Laffan, 1983: 19–48).

Curragh Mutiny: Threat
by Irish officers in the British Army stationed at the Curragh in County Kildare to resign their commissions rather that use force against Ulster during the home rule crisis in March 1914.

Should parliamentary and propagandist tactics fail to defeat home rule, unionists were prepared to resort to violence to protect their interests, as
evidenced by the formation of the paramilitary group, the
Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF)
, in January 1913. This force, which had an estimated membership of 110,000 by mid-1914, enjoyed the support of unionist political leaders, as well as prominent business magnates and senior British Army officers. The seriousness of its intentions was made clear in April 1914 when a large consignment of arms and ammunition was imported into Larne, Bangor and Donaghadee in the Larne gun-running (Bowman, 2007: 1, 142).

Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF)
: A paramilitary force formed in Ulster in January 1913 to resist home rule by force, many of whose members were killed in the First World War.

The formation and arming of the Ulster unionists served as an example to nationalists in the south, who formed their own Irish Volunteer Force in November 1913. Recruitment was slow initially with an estimated 10,000 enlisting in the final two months of 1913. This figure progressed steadily throughout the first half of 1914, inspired by the Larne gun-running and Asquith’s vacillation on the inclusion of Ulster in home rule. However, it was not until the summer of that year, when John Redmond succeeded in taking control of the organisation to ensure it did not derail the implementation of home rule, that the
Irish Volunteers
mushroomed to 150,000 members. The Irish Volunteers armed themselves in a similar way to the UVF with the importation of arms through Howth in County Dublin in July 1914 (Townshend, 2005: 44; Fitzpatrick, 1996: 386).

Irish Volunteers (Irish Volunteer Force)
: Paramilitary body formed on 25 November 1913 in response to the formation of the Ulster Volunteers. It split in September 1914 into Redmond’s National Volunteers and MacNeill’s Irish Volunteers, which carried out the Easter Rising. It was rejuvenated in 1917 and 1918 and fought the guerrilla campaign in the War of Independence (1919–21), by which time it was more commonly known as the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

By the summer of 1914, with home rule set to become law by September, Ireland was on the brink of civil war, with two armed militias ready to use violence to fight for and against home rule and the government unsure of the loyalty of the army in Ireland to deal effectively with any such event. However, a conflict was avoided and the Irish political crisis that had consumed British politics for two years was swept aside almost overnight with the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914. On 18 September 1914, 40 years of campaigning by Irish nationalists finally resulted in Irish home rule becoming law. However, it was accompanied by two provisos – it would be suspended for the duration of the war and part of Ulster would be excluded in some form.