1910 – 1916 The Liberal Government came close to granting Ireland Home Rule in 1914. Jeremy Smith examines why it failed and what happened after. Asquith,Asquith, thethe ThirdThird HomeHome RuleRule BillBill andand thethe EasterEaster RisingRising
n abiding myth of Anglo-Irish history has claret, and to a Chief Secretary – Augustine Birrell – been the notion that British policy in Ire whose days were spent composing verse or witty ri- A land was characterised above all else by ‘too postes. Historians have read Asquith’s oft-quoted little, too late’. Whether it was Catholic Emancipa- phrase ‘wait and see’ as an enduring epitaph for his tion in , Disestablishment in , Gladstone’s government’s mishandling of Ireland. land reforms of the s or the Home Rule bills of There is much to commend such a representa- , or (which were not just late but tion. Well before the Dublin Easter Rising in never actually arrived), the British Government has the Liberal government was thought hesitant and ir- displayed an unerring knack towards poor time resolute in its Irish policy – its introduction of the keeping. Explanations of this trait range from Home Rule Bill in April , for example, was seen Machiavellian self-interest to colonial techniques of as the consequence of dependence upon Irish Na- ‘divide and rule’, and from a basic misunderstanding tionalist votes in the Commons rather than any of Irish people and society, to an almost institution- long-standing ideological commitment. During the alised tendency towards prevarication and apathy in Bill’s progress, the Government signally failed to the governance of Ireland. confront the build-up of resistance or to uphold law Irish Republicanism has developed this myth fur- and order in Ireland, allowing the Ulster Volunteer ther. Physical force is held to be legitimised by the Force (UVF) and later the Irish Volunteers to mobi- evidence that a British government will only take lise unchecked and with little hindrance to their at- notice of violence and that when it does so it tends tempts to acquire arms. Indeed an arms ban was not to over-react. Within this paradigm most of the finally introduced until December , several ‘great’ episodes in Irish dissent must be understood years too late and without the political will behind it as justifiable pressure on a recalcitrant authority, for to prevent the Larne and Howth ‘gun-running’ epi- example Fenian activity in the s, the Land Wars sodes in . Unionist leaders Sir Edward Carson of the s and s, the development of the Irish and James Craig, and Andrew Bonar Law, leader of volunteer movement or most recently the emer- the Conservative Party, all avoided prosecution de- gence of the IRA. spite their openly seditious speeches, a show of po- For subscribers to the prevarication and apathy litical weakness that had rarely been extended to model, no period more clearly demonstrates the force Irish Nationalist rhetoricians. More seriously, of the hypothesis than the Liberal ministry of Asquith Asquith fatally delayed his compromise plan to settle between and . The drift towards civil war the differences between Nationalists and Unionists from and then the Dublin Rising of have until the very last moment, early in . By this long been attributed to the almost criminal neglect of stage, with the acute polarisation of attitudes and a Prime Minister who was allegedly more concerned opinions, and both sides highly organised and appar- with love-ditties to Venetia Stanley or befuddled with ently well armed, it is difficult to imagine a more
20 Journal of Liberal Democrat History 33 Winter 2001–02 Home Rule and Ulstermen deter- mined to maintain nine, or at the very least six, counties of Ulster within the United Kingdom. Asquith’s line, there- fore, was one of damage-limitation, aimed at preventing a far more explo- sive situation, if not actual civil war – an aim he successfully achieved between and (indeed, we might argue before ). To characterise the Liberal ministry as indifferent is therefore to misunderstand the dilemmas it faced and tactics it was employing. Indeed, this apparent Liberal indiffer- ence might have had a more positive im- pulse behind it. Asquith realised early on that some form of temporary partition or ‘special treatment’ would be needed to appease the Ulstermen so that Home Rule could be granted to the rest of Ire- land. The difficulty lay in selling this to both sides. Asquith calculated that by al- lowing a sense of looming disaster and unpropitious moment in which to ne- could inform a close acquaintance that ‘I emergency to develop, Nationalists gotiate a settlement. ‘As was so often laugh at the whole thing’. While ele- would be encouraged into accepting and so tragically the case with British ments of Ireland gently smouldered, the some compromises to their Bill, as was policy in Ireland, on each occasion too British Government appeared powerless tentatively achieved by February . little was offered too late.’ and unconcerned, more preoccupied by On the other hand those same pressures Liberal prevarication continued into the forthcoming Fairyhouse races than could scare Ulster into lowering its ex- the war. Unlike the Ulstermen, Nation- by troubling thoughts of insurrection. pectations; a not unreasonable assess- alists under their leader John Redmond But to characterise the Liberal min- ment in light of recent research revealing had followed a constitutional path to istry as indifferent is to misunderstand strains and weaknesses within the Ulster achieving their goal, yet were forced to its predicament and strategy. On one Volunteer Force and plans for a Ulster watch their keenly won Home Rule bill level Asquith would have argued that provisional government. So behind suspended for the duration of the war. his approach was one of common sense, Asquith’s policy of ‘wait and see’ there The postponement allowed elements where no viable alternative existed, and lurked a subtle attempt to manoeuvre advocating physical force in Ireland to on a political question that had become, both Irish parties into settlement. gain influence and eventually to seize by , structurally resistant to an easy, Before the success or failure of this the initiative from the constitutional or indeed to any, compromise. To use a approach could be tested, the outbreak parties. On the outbreak of hostilities modern term, Ireland was already ex- of war deflected attention on to Euro- Redmond offered the Irish Volunteers to periencing ‘zero-sum’ politics, with pean affairs. But failure should not au- the British war effort and requested a Nationalists committed to all-Ireland tomatically be assumed. Facing the unified Irish Brigade, as had been granted to the Ulstermen; both were re- Unionist leaders: Sir Edward Carson and Andrew Bonar Law pudiated. This pointless affront to Redmond was compounded during the Cabinet reshuffle of , when Sir Edward Carson was made Attorney- General. By failing to provide any obvi- ous recompense for the Nationalist par- ty’s loyalty to the British war effort, gov- ernment ‘wait and see’ provided a golden opportunity for more extreme Nation- alists and Republicans, which they took in . Yet even in the days leading up to the Easter Rising, with intelligence reports alerting Dublin Castle to the possibility of a rising at Easter, Birrell
Journal of Liberal Democrat History 33 Winter 2001–02 21 down their importance, resisting ex- ecutions and restoring normalcy as quickly as possible, might have success- fully alienated (if not belittled) the ex- treme Nationalists, undermined what popular sympathy existed for physical force solutions and reinforced the posi- tion of the Irish Nationalists and their commitment to the constitutional path. At fault, then, was not the failure of Liberal policy but its abandonment during the Rising, when arguably the situation most obviously required just Nationalist leader: John Redmond and Irish Volunteers such a liberal approach. In its place policy was handed over to the military Ulstermen with the reality of having to movement’s Easter manoeuvres, the authorities under the command of choose between implementing their cover under which Dublin was to be General Maxwell, who believed the rickety provisional government and ac- seized. Thus, when Patrick Pearse and restoration of order came by unleashing tually taking up arms against a British friends marched into the GPO on a robust coercive regime. This was per- Army, could well have been just the Easter Monday they did so to the as- haps an inevitable shift in policy given type of denouement necessary to push tonishment not just of the British, but the circumstances. But it also reflected Carson and Craig into a settlement. In of many leaders of the Irish Volunteers, wider political developments, including addition, it should not be overlooked the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the growing strength of Unionist forces that the Home Rule Bill was actually Sinn Fein, including the likes of within the Asquith Cabinet since their put on the statute book by Asquith in MacNeill, Hobson and Arthur Griffith. entry in , and the mounting con- September (though suspended for Given this universal amazement it is dif- troversy over the issue of conscription. the war) against the bitter opposition of ficult to imagine how the government Given this drift, the reaction to the Unionists and at some considerable po- might have obviated the very slim possi- Easter Rising marked the formalisation litical risk to his own position. The goal bility of rebellion, particularly without of a policy that had had been sliding to- of O’Connell, Butt and Parnell had slipping into coercive measures that wards ‘militarism’ since . been won and constitutional national- might actually have generated the rebel- As Roy Douglas demonstrates in the ism vindicated. And far from laying the lion they were trying to avoid. Further- article that follows, this would reach a groundwork for the Easter Rising, the more, the eventual scale of the Easter climax in June , when the Union- Bill’s suspension was followed by some Rising, so small in numerical, geo- ists Walter Long and Lord Lansdowne , – , Irishmen signing up graphical and military terms, was surely obstructed Lloyd George’s attempts to to fight in France for the British Em- testament not to Liberal indifference but introduce Home Rule immediately, pire – in contrast to the , Volun- to the relative success of a passive, non- thereby frustrating perhaps the last teers who took part in the Rising. If confrontational Liberal policy. hope of a peaceful resolution of the this was neglect, then it was productive, Second, the galvanisation of Irish Irish problem, and leading directly to successful and for the British army an popular opinion against British rule the strife and civil war of – . invaluable injection of men. was less the product of the Rising than The charge of neglect ultimately rests of the way in which the British au- Jeremy Smith is a Lecturer in History at upon the outbreak of the Easter Rising thorities regained control – in particu- Chester College and the author of The To- in . Yet in two significant respects lar the imposition of martial law, atroci- ries and Ireland: Conservative Party such a claim appears groundless. ties committed by British soldiers that Politics and the Ulster Crisis, – First, the Rising took everyone com- earned popular infamy, such as the kill- and Britain and Ireland: From pletely by surprise. Despite many vague ing of the pacifist writer Sheehy- Home Rule to Independence. snippets of intelligence, both the military Skeffington, and the manner of the and political arms of British rule in Ire- subsequent executions of the rebel 1 Jalland, P., The Liberals and Ireland, London land were united in perceiving no seri- leaders. In other words, what roused (1980) pp. 261-2. 2 Bew, P., John Redmond, Dublin (1996). ous threat to civil order. This was based Irish opinion towards more extremist 3The Earl of Midleton, Records and Reactions, upon Sir Roger Casement’s earlier arrest Nationalist sentiment, and towards Sinn London (1939) p. 229. off the Kerry coast and failure to land Fein from , was a shift in policy 4 Jackson, A., ‘The Larne Gun-Running Incident’, History-Ireland, (1.1.1993); and Foy, M., The arms for the Volunteers, without which a and an approach away from Asquith’s Ulster Volunteer Force: Its domestic develop- ‘practical’ rebellion was impossible. more low-key and non-interventionist ment and political impact, PhD, Queen’s Uni- Moreover, on the very day of the line. Interestingly, many commentators versity Belfast (1986). 5 Jackson, A., ‘Unionist Myths, 1912–1985’, Past planned rising, Eoin MacNeill, presi- have long speculated that a more liberal & Present, (1992); see also Jackson, A., Sir dent of the Volunteers, called off the reaction to the events of , playing Edward Carson, Dublin (1993).
22 Journal of Liberal Democrat History 33 Winter 2001–02