- Irish Home Rule bills
The Irish Home Rule bills were bills introduced in the
British House of Commons during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, intended to grant self-government and national autonomy to the whole of Ireland within theUnited Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and reverse parts of theAct of Union 1800 . There were four suchHome Rule bills. Of the two that passed the Parliament of the United Kingdom the Third Bill, enacted as theHome Rule Act 1914 , was never implemented, while the Fourth Bill, enacted as theGovernment of Ireland Act 1920 established two separate Home Rule territories in Ireland, of which the one was implemented by theParliament of Northern Ireland , but the second not implemented in the rest of Ireland. The bills were:* 1886: First Irish Home Rule Bill defeated in the
British House of Commons and never introduced in theHouse of Lords .
* 1893: Second Irish Home Rule Bill passed the House of Commons, but defeated in the House of Lords.
* 1914: Third Irish Home Rule Act passed withRoyal Assent but never came into force, due to the intervention ofWorld War I (1914–18) and of theEaster Rising inDublin (1916).
* 1920: Fourth Irish Home Rule Act (replaced Third Act, passed and implemented as the Government of Ireland Act 1920) which establishedNorthern Ireland as a Home Rule entity within theUnited Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and simultaneously resulted in the partition of Ireland.Historical background
Under the
Act of Union 1800 the separate Kingdoms of Ireland and Great Britain were merged onJanuary 1 1801 , to form theUnited Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland . Throughout the 19th century Irish opposition to the Union was strong, occasionally erupting in violent insurrection. In the 1830s and 1840s attempts had been made under the leadership ofDaniel O'Connell to repeal the Act of Union and restore the Kingdom of Ireland, without breaking the connection with Great Britain. These attempts to achieve what was simply called "repeal" failed.Until the 1870s, most Irish people elected as their Members of Parliament (MPs) Liberals and Conservatives who belonged to the main British political parties. The Conservatives, for example, won a majority in the 1859 general election in Ireland. A significant minority also voted for Unionists, who fiercely resisted any dilution of the Act of Union.
Different concepts
The term ”Home Rule”, first used in the 1860s, meant an Irish legislature with responsibility for domestic affairs. It was variously interpreted, from the 1870s was seen to be part of a federal system for the United Kingdom: a domestic Parliament for Ireland while the Imperial Parliament at Westminster would continue to have responsibility for Imperial affairs. The Republican concept as represented by the
Fenian s and theIrish Republican Brotherhood , strove to achieve total separation fromGreat Britain , if necessary by physical force, and complete autonomy for Ireland. For a while they were prepared to co-operate with Home Rulers under the "New Departure".Charles Stewart Parnell sought through the ‘constitutional movement’, as an interim measure a parliament inDublin with limited legislative powers.Arthur Griffith envisaged a dual monarchy along Austro-Hungarian lines. For Unionists Home Rule meant a Dublin parliament dominated by theCatholic Church to the detriment of Ireland’s economic progress. In England the Liberal Party underW. E. Gladstone was fully committed to introducing Home Rule whereas the Conservatives tried to alleviate any need for it through ‘constructive unionism’, passing many acts of parliament beneficial to Ireland.truggle for Home Rule
In the 1870s a former Conservative barrister
Isaac Butt who was instrumental in fostering links between Constitutional and Revolutionary nationalism through his representation of members of the Fenians Society in court, established a new moderate nationalist movement, the Irish Home Government Association, renamed theHome Rule League in 1873. Under it, Ireland would still remain part of the United Kingdom but would have limited self-government.Some few years after his death a radical young Protestant landowner,
Charles Stewart Parnell , turned the home rule movement, or theIrish Parliamentary Party as it became known, into a major constitutional political force. It came to dominate Irish politics, to the exclusion of the previous Liberal, Conservative and Unionist parties that had existed there. The party's growing electoral strength was first shown in the 1880 general election in Ireland, when it won 63 seats. By the 1885 general election in Ireland it had won 86 out of the 103 Irish seats.Adversary Lords
Two attempts were made by Liberals under
British Prime Minister William E. Gladstone to enact home rule bills. Gladstone, impressed by Parnell, had become personally committed to granting Irish home rule in 1885. With his famous Gladstone beseeched parliament to pass theIrish Government Bill 1886 and grant Home Rule to Ireland in honour rather than being compelled to one day in humiliation. His bill was defeated in the Commons by 30 votes.Having sparked the formation of the
Ulster Unionist Party in 1885 to oppose the threat of home rule, the bill caused Gladstone to temporarily lose power. Returned to power after the 1892 general election Gladstone, undaunted, made a second attempt to introduce Irish Home Rule following Parnell’s death with theIrish Government Bill 1893 which he controversially drafted in secret and thereby flawed. Eventually largely orchestrated through parliament on the Irish side byWilliam O’Brien , only to be defeated in the Conservative's pro-unionist majority controlledHouse of Lords .Home Rule in sight
Ten years followed in which the Conservatives were in power. The only concession towards self-determination came with the highly successful
Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898 virtually introducing "grass-roots" home rule. In the 1906 general election the Liberals returned an overall majority, but Irish home rule was not yet on their agenda until after the second 1910 general election when the nationalistIrish Parliamentary Party under its leaderJohn Redmond held the balance of power in the House of Commons. Prime MinisterH. H. Asquith came to an understanding with Redmond, that if he supported his move to break the power of the Lords in order to have the finance bill passed, Asquith would then in return introduce a new Home Rule Bill. TheParliament Act forced the Lords to agree to a curtailment of their powers. Now their unlimitedveto was replaced with a delaying one lasting only two years.The Third Home Rule Bill introduced in 1912 was as in 1886 and 1893 ferociously opposed by
Ulster unionists, for whom Home Rule was synonymous withRome Rule as well as being indicative with economic decline.Edward Carson andJames Craig leaders of the unionists, were instrumental in organising theUlster Covenant against the "coercion of Ulster", at which time Carson reviewed Orange and Unionist volunteers in various parts of Ulster. These were united into a single body known as theUlster Volunteers in January 1913 [Stewart, A.T.Q., "The Ulster Crisis, Resistance to Home Rule, 1912-14", p.70, Faber and Faber (1967) ISBN 0-571-08066-9] . This was followed in the south by the formation of theIrish Volunteers to restrain Ulster. Both Nationalists and Republicans, except for the All-for-Ireland Party, brushed unionist concerns aside with "no concessions for Ulster", treating their threat as a bluff. The Act receivedRoyal Assent and was placed on the statute books September 18 1914, but suspended for not later than the duration ofWorld War I which had broken out in August. The widely held assumption at the time was that the war would be short lived.Changed realities
The southern Irish Volunteers split into the larger
National Volunteers and followed Redmond’s call to support the Allied war effort to free Europe from oppression and ensure the future implementation of home rule by voluntarily enlisting inIrish regiment s of the10th (Irish) Division or the16th (Irish) Division of the New British Army. The men of the Ulster Volunteers join the36th (Ulster) Division . During 1914-18 Irish regiments suffered severe losses.A core element of the remaining Irish Volunteers who opposed the nationalist constitutional movement towards independence and the Irish support for the war effort, staged the 1916 Easter Rebellion in Dublin. Initially widely condemned, the
British government 's mishandling of the aftermath of the Rising, including the rushed executions of its leaders by General Maxwell, led to a rise in popularity for anIrish republican movement namedSinn Féin , a small separatist party taken over by the rebellion's survivors. Britain made two futile attempts to implement Home Rule, first after the Rising then at the end of the 1917-18Irish Convention . With the collapse of the allied front during the GermanSpring Offensive , Britain had a serious manpower shortage and in a fatal misconception the Cabinet agreed on 5. April to enact Home Rule immediately linked in a "dual policy" of extending conscription to Ireland. This signalled the end of a political era Jackson, Alvin "Home Rule: An Irish History 1800—2000" Ch.9, pp.212-213, Phoenix Press (2003) ISBN 0-75381-767-5 ] , which resulted in a public swing towards Sinn Féin and physical force separatism. All interest in Home Rule faded.Home Rule enacted
After the end of the war in November 1918 Sinn Féin secured a majority of 73 Irish seats in the general election, twenty five of these seats taken uncontested. In January 1919 twenty-seven Sinn Féin MPs assembled in Dublin and proclaimed themselves unilaterally as an independent parliament of an
Irish Republic , ignored by Britain. TheAnglo-Irish War ensued.Britain went ahead with its commitment to implement Home Rule by passing a new Fourth Home Rule Bill, the
Government of Ireland Act 1920 , largely shaped by the Walter Long Committee which followed findings contained in the report of the Irish Convention. Long, a firm unionist, felt free to shape Home Rule in Ulster's favour, and formalised dividing Ireland intoNorthern Ireland andSouthern Ireland . The latter never functioned, but was replaced under theAnglo-Irish Treaty by theIrish Free State which later evolved as theRepublic of Ireland .The Home Rule
Parliament of Northern Ireland came into being in June 1921. At its inauguration, inBelfast City Hall , King George V made a famous appeal drafted by Prime Minister Lloyd George for Anglo-Irish and north–south reconciliation. The Anglo-Irish Treaty had provided for Northern Ireland's Parliament to opt out of the new Free State, which was a foregone conclusion. TheIrish Civil War followed.Home Rule had an after-life in Northern Ireland lasting up until 1970, when the Thirty Year Troubles erupted. The future of Home Rule lies in moratorium.
Notes
External links
* [http://www.proni.gov.uk/ulstercovenant/ Ulster Covenant - Public Record Office of Northern Ireland]
* [http://www.belfastsomme.com/uvf.htm History of the 1912 UVF]
* [http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/ CAIN - University of Ulster Conflict Archive]
* [http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/verse/p1/ulster.html "Ulster, 1912" (Kipling) at Words (etext library)]
*UK-SLD|1073884
* [http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/politics/docs/goi231220.htm#1 Text of the Act as applied in Northern Ireland in 1956]
* [http://www.bailii.org/nie/legis/num_act/1920/192000067.html Text of the Act as originally enacted in 1920] , from BAILII
* [http://www.parliamentaryyearbook.co.uk/other/House-of-Lords-Library.html House of Lords Library - Record Office, for Texts of Irish Government bills]* [http://www.taoiseach.gov.ie/eng/index.asp?docID=2517 Department of the Taoiseach] - Irish Soldiers in the First World War).
See also
*
Sir Edward Carson
*James Craig
*Charles Stewart Parnell
*John Redmond
*John Dillon
*William O'Brien
*Rudyard Kipling
*Parliament of Southern Ireland
*Parliament of Northern Ireland
*Solemn League and Covenant (Ulster)
*Unionists (Ireland)
*Devolution
*Curragh incident
*Easter Rising
* (beseech in its favour)
*Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898
*Parliament Act 1911
*History of the Republic of Ireland
*Partition of Ireland
* History of Ireland (1801–1922)Further reading
* Irish Government Bill 1893, available from the House of Lords Record Office
* Government of Ireland Act 1914, available from the House of Lords Record Office
* W. S. Rodner "Leaguers, Covenanters, Moderates: British Support for Ulster, 1913-14" pages 68-85 from "Éire-Ireland", Volume 17, Issue #3, 1982.
* Loughlin, James "Gladstone, Home Rule and the Ulster Question, 1882-1893", Dublin: (1986)
* Jeremy Smith "Bluff, Bluster and Brinkmanship: Andrew Bonar Law and the Third Home Rule Bill" pages 161-174 from "Historical Journal", Volume 36, Issue #1, (1993)
* Thomas Hennessey, "Dividing Ireland", World War 1 and Partition, (1998), ISBN 0-415-17420-1
*Robert Kee , "The Green Flag: A History of Irish Nationalism",(2000 edition, first published 1972), ISBN 0-14-029165-2
* Alvin Jackson, "HOME RULE, an Irish History 1800-2000", (2003), ISBN 0-7538-1767-5
* Geoffrey Lewis, "Carson, the Man who divided Ireland" (2005),ISBN 1-85285-454-5
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