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Home , Edward Carson

PROFILES Asquith’s flawed Irish compromise

MINI PROFILE The British prime minister’s delays and indecision ultimately BY DONAL FALLON condemned to partition, writes Ronan Fanning JOHN EDWARD REDMOND was born on 1 September 1856 at Ballytrent HEN Herbert Henry Q Thirdly, that ‘if, in the light of such House in Wexford. He was the son of Asquith became Prime evidence or indication of public opinion, William Archer Redmond, a Home Minister on 8 April it becomes clear as the Bill proceeds that Rule MP who would profess that 1908 his Liberal Party some special treatment must be provided Ireland possessed an “indefeasible was enjoying its last for the counties, the Government W ever overall majority will be ready to recognise th[at] necessity’. right to be governed by an Irish Parliament”. Sharing his father’s belief, in the House of Commons. That enabled The cabinet’s conclusions amounted to John was first elected a Member the new Prime Minister to do what he most a tacit invitation to revolution: the more of Parliament in 1881 for New Ross, wanted to do about Ireland: nothing. seditious the Ulster Unionists became, representing the Irish Parliamentary A barrister by profession, Asquith was the more persuasive would be the ‘fresh Party (IPP). In a single evening, not a wealthy man. He never forgot that the evidence’ and the more likely that ‘public Redmond would make his maiden split over the first Home Rule Bill in 1886 opinion’ would indicate that they must speech and be suspended and had condemned the Liberal Party to almost receive ‘some special treatment’.A mass expelled from the House. 20 years in the wilderness of opposition. rally in , on 9 April 1912, when A committed Parnellite, he became This explains why the guiding principle of 100,000 Irish Unionists marched in military an important figure in the minority his Irish policy from the moment he entered formation past Andrew (the of the IPP that remained loyal to 10 Downing Street until the moment he left leader of the Conservative Party) and its leader after his downfall, stating it in December 1916 was that Ireland should was but the first of many “it is because I believe that your never again deny him power. instalments of such evidence. maintenance is necessary to the Things changed when the two Privately, Asquith, like Lloyd George and success of our cause”. Following general elections in 1910, caused by the Churchill, favoured exclusion. Publicly, he Parnell’s death, Redmond took over constitutional crisis over the reduction of was determined to postpone unveiling what the leadership of the Irish National the powers of the , once more he believed was an inevitable compromise UCD Professor Ronan Fanning League, the Parnellite faction, but by reduced the Liberal Party to dependence until the last possible moment. ‘I have MARK CONDREN 1900 political unity was restored. on John Redmond’s Irish parliamentary always thought (and said) that, in the end, His relationship with advanced party for its working majority in the House we should probably have to make some sort nationalists was complex. While he of Commons. The price for the Irish party’s would so alienate John Redmond and his of bargain about Ulster as the price of Home opposed the use of physical force, support was a renewed commitment party that it would put at risk his majority Rule,’ he reminded Churchill when the Irish he was a vocal supporter of the by Asquith’s government to introduce in the House of Commons. crisis was coming to a head in September Amnesty Association in the 1890s. home rule once the obstacle of the inbuilt In the end, as the prime minister 1913. ‘But I have never doubted, that, as a He championed the cause of Fenian Unionist majority in the House of Lords had informed the king, the Cabinet ‘acquiesced’ matter of tactics and policy, we were right prisoner Thomas Clarke, describing been dismantled. — that most Asquithian of words — in three to launch our Bill on its present lines.’ him as “a man of whom no words of This seemed to have been achieved by the conclusions: Asquith, moreover, clearly understood praise could be too high”. Parliament Act of 1911. But although the act Q Firstly, that the Home Rule Bill ‘as the risks of such a strategy and he spelt Under his leadership, the IPP once destroyed the House of Lords’ permanent introduced should apply to the whole of them out in a memorandum for the King in more became an important force in veto on home rule, it sanctioned a two- Ireland’; the autumn of 1913. After acknowledging Westminster, holding the balance year veto.A Home Rule bill could be and Q Secondly, that the leaders of the Irish that the enactment of the Home Rule Bill of power from 1910. He utilised this was introduced in 1912, but it could not be Parliamentary Party ‘should from the first in its original form entailed ‘the certainty importance to push the Liberal enacted before the summer of 1914. This be given clearly to understand that the of tumult and riot, and more than the Government of HH Asquith on the created the perfect climate for Asquith’s Government held themselves free to make possibility of bloodshed’ in Unionist Ulster, issue of Home Rule. The outbreak preference for procrastination. The such changes in the Bill as fresh evidence of he went on to paint a much bleaker scenario of the First World War saw the enforced delay gave concrete expression to facts, or the pressure of British opinion, may if the bill were abandoned. postponing of its implementation, his principle of ‘Wait and See’, the phrase he render expedient’; and ‘If the Bill is rejected or indefinitely and Redmond encouraged the Irish repeatedly used in the House of Commons postponed, or some inadequate and Volunteer movement to support the when asked about his Irish policy. SNAPSHOT disappointing substitute put forward in its British war effort, insisting famously This also explains what happened on HERBERT HENRY ASQUITH place, the prospect is, in my opinion, much that “the interests of Ireland — of the 9 February 1912 when, after the most more grave. The attainment of Home Rule whole of Ireland — are at stake in this significant cabinet discussion of Irish policy Born: , 12 September 1852 has for more than 30 years been the political war”. since Gladstone’s conversion to home rule Educated: City of London School; (as distinguished from the agrarian) ideal It is this decision which has in 1886, Asquith’s government decided Balliol College Oxford of the Irish people. Whatever happens dominated much of the historical on the terms of the third Home Rule in other parts of the , discourse and debate around his Bill. The pragmatists, the most powerful Affiliation: Liberal at successive general elections, the Irish career. of whom were and Career: Lawyer, MP (1886-1924), representation in Parliament never varies... , proposed the temporary Home Secretary (1892-95), ‘It is the confident expectation of the vast Donal Fallon is an author and exclusion of Unionist Ulster from the bulk of the Irish people that it will become historian, currently researching Chancellor (1905-08), terms of the bill. But Asquith preferred Prime Minister (1908-1916) law next year. If the ship, after so many republican commemoration and procrastination because he feared that stormy voyages, were now to be wrecked memory at UCD publicly grasping the nettle of partition Died: Berkshire, 15 February, 1928 in sight of port, it is difficult to overrate

8 | Irish Independent 1916 Collection Irish Independent I 16 October 2015 PROFILES

MINI PROFILE Edward Carson BY DR RICHARD McELLIGOTT EDWARD CARSON was born in in 1854. Having studied law at Trinity College he qualified as a barrister in 1877, rising quickly in the profession. Following his election as an MP for Dublin in 1892, his impressive performances in the House of Commons during the debates on the Second Home Rule Bill earned him celebrity status in Britain. In 1895 he achieved international fame as the prosecutor who secured the imprisonment of . In 1910 Carson became chairman of the Irish Unionist Parliamentary Party. His new role placed him at the head of the Unionist campaign against Above: the shock, or its consequences. They would the Third Home Rule Bill. Carson was Asquith extend into every department of political, determined to keep Ireland as an photographed social, agrarian and domestic life. It is not integral part of the United Kingdom. in Ireland with too much to say that Ireland would become He believed that without the industrial friends and ungovernable – unless by the application of and economic power of Ulster, a family in forces and methods which would offend the Home Rule State in Ireland could not July 1912. conscience of , and arouse the function. Left: An deepest resentment in all the self-governing Therefore his strategy was to Asquith Dominions of the Crown.’ make Home Rule unworkable by cartoon from Asquith’s analysis was chillingly co-ordinating a massive campaign of Vanity Fair prophetic. Within six years nationalist Unionist opposition in the province. in 1904. Ireland had taken precisely this path and He presided over a demonstration in become ungovernable except by the forces September 1912 when 471,414 people GETTY IMAGES and methods applied in 1920-21 by the Black signed the Ulster Solemn League and and Tans and the Auxiliaries. Covenant or, in the case of women, The Ulster unionists’ threat of violence the Declaration. bore fruit on 9 March 1914 when Asquith Carson is often seen as the man told the House of Commons that his who militarised modern Irish politics, government would exclude Unionist Ulster by sanctioning the formation of the from the terms of the Home Rule Bill for paramilitary UVF in to six years. Edward Carson’s contemptuous resist Home Rule, by armed force if dismissal of the change of policy Asquith necessary. With the outbreak of the had imposed upon the hapless John First World War, Carson pledged Redmond — ‘we do not want a sentence of Unionist support for the British death with a stay of execution for six years’ war effort. Unlike John Redmond, — disguised his acknowledgement of its he accepted an invitation to enter larger significance. The Asquith’s wartime coalition Cabinet had probably been unavoidable since the formed in May 1915. cabinet meeting of 6 February 1912; on 9 He was appointed Attorney- March 1914 it became inevitable. General of England and, when Lloyd George took over the premiership, HE compromise that put the First Lord of the Admiralty. Carson Irish problem on ice for the grew increasingly disillusioned over duration of the Great War merely the Government’s attempts to find T disguised this inevitability. The a political settlement to satisfy core of the compromise was Redmond’s Nationalist and Unionist aspirations proposal that if the government would during the Anglo-Irish War. postpone the introduction of the amending He was a vehement critic of the bill providing for Ulster’s exclusion, he Anglo-Irish Treaty and passed over would agree to the suspension of the the offer to lead the newly created coming into effect of the Home Rule Bill state of to his (despite its being immediately put upon lieutenant, James Craig. He retired to the Statute Book) until the amending bill the House of Lords and died in 1935. became law. Put simply, Redmond agreed to the Dr Richard McElligott lectures in suspension of Home Rule, and Asquith Modern Irish History at UCD and is agreed to the suspension of partition. the author of several works on the Irish But the announcement of the deal was Revolutionary period accompanied by an explicitly partitionist and public assurance from Asquith that ‘the employment of force, any kind of force, for... the coercion of Ulster, is an absolutely unthinkable thing... a thing which we would never countenance.’ The apocalyptic violence of the Great War changed everything in nationalist Ireland. But although the revolutionary nationalists of Sinn Féin swept aside the constitutional nationalists of the Irish Parliamentary party at the 1918 election, one thing had not changed: Éamon de Valera was as impotent as John Redmond to resist the partitionist solution to the Irish problem to which Asquith irrevocably committed the British government.

Ronan Fanning is Professor Emeritus of Modern History at UCD and this article is based on his book ‘Fatal Path: British Government and Irish Revolution 1910-1922’ (London, 2013). His new book ‘Éamon de Valera: A Will to Power’ was published in October.

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