essay on third home rule bill

Home Rule: The Third Home Rule Bill

• The Third Home Rule Bill

In 1912 the Third Home Rule Bill passed the House of Commons. The most notable difference from the bill of 1893 was that it would have eventually given control of the police to Ireland. A tremendous outcry arose in Protestant Ulster, which feared Roman Catholic domination. Private armies—the Ulster Volunteers (in the North) and the Irish Volunteers (in the South)—were raised, and civil war threatened if the bill became law. In 1914, Commons again passed the bill, but the House of Lords excluded Ulster from its provisions. The Commons voted to allow Ulster to vote itself out of Home Rule for six years. At the outbreak of World War I the bill was passed once again with the proviso that it should not go into effect until after the war. The law never took effect.

Sections in this article:

• Introduction
• Home Rule in Contemporary Northern Ireland
• The Irish Free State and the Fourth Home Rule Bill
• The Second Home Rule Bill
• The First Home Rule Bill
• Origins of the Home Rule Movement
• Bibliography

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See more Encyclopedia articles on: British and Irish History

Today in 1913 the Third Home Rule Bill passed the House of Commons

Chances of home rule remained strong in ireland just three years before the easter rising..

On January 16, 1913, the third reading of the “Government of Ireland Bill” more commonly known as the Third Irish Home Rule Bill was passed through the House of Commons in London.

Two weeks later it was to be once again rejected—for the third time—by the House of Lords who aligned with the Unionists—living mainly in Ulster— and feared that the introduction of Home Rule would spell a break up for the union of Ireland and England.

For once, this rejection in the House of Lords did not spell a journey back to the drawing board for the advocates of Home Rule in Ireland. With thanks to the Parliament Act in 1911, the House of Lords no longer had the power to defeat a bill, simply delay it, meaning that Home Rule was still to be implemented but with a bit of a wait.

The Home Rule Bill was a piece of legislation that would remove the governance of Ireland from England and return it to Ireland. Following a failed rebellion involving French assistance in 1798, the Act of Union, 1800, was put in place, essentially meaning that the Irish no longer engaged in a personal union with England with the Protestant Ascendancy ruling over the country from Dublin, they were now ruled directly from London.

READ MORE: Irish political cartoons from Home Rule period acquired by Great Hunger Institute (PHOTOS).

Attempts to repeal this union began immediately with “The Emancipator”, Daniel O’Connell fighting for its end throughout the 1840s.

Earlier this week , we saw the anniversary of his first public speech arguing against the Act of Union to a group of Catholics in Dublin in which he declared that it would be better to return to the days of the Penal Laws than to spend any more time in such a union with England.

"Let every man who feels with me proclaim, that if the alternative were offered him of Union, or the re-enactment of the Penal Code in all its pristine horrors, that he would prefer without hesitation the latter, as the lesser and more sympathizers proclaimed to the Catholic meeting on January 13, 1800, “that he would rather confide in the justice of his brethren the Protestants of Ireland, who have already liberated him, than lay his country at the feet of foreigners."

READ MORE: Today in 1800 Daniel O'Connell made his first speech opposing Union with England.

The concept of Home Rule, however, only came to popular attention in Ireland in the 1870s, following further failed uprisings in 1803, 1848, and 1867.

In 1870, Isaac Butt, a barrister and former Tory MP, founded the Irish Home Government Association. Using a cross section of progressive landowners, tenant rights activists, and supporters and sympathizers of the failed Fenian uprising of 1867, Butt and the association evolved into the Home Rule League who earned the alliance of many Irish MPs.

The movement would be revitalized yet again with the introduction of the master organizer Charles Stewart Parnell as leader, turning the Home Rule effort into a powerful political force from parish to parliament level.

By the time it finally passed in 1913, it was the third time a Home Rule Bill was brought in front of the English Houses of Parliament. The first came in 1886 under the Liberal government of Prime Minister William Gladstone with the support of Parnell and the Irish Parliamentary Party. The Bill did not even pass the House of Commons.

The second attempt came in 1893 with Parnell recently deceased and although it passed the House of Commons, it was rejected in the House of Lords.

It wasn’t until 19 years later under Herbert Asquith’s Liberal government that the bill returned. For two general elections, Asquith and his party had held onto power by forming alliance with the Irish Nationalist Party and its leader John Redmond . A condition of this alliance was to finally deliver on Home Rule for Ireland.

The Bill was successfully passed through the two houses at the beginning of 1913 because of the reduced powers of the House of Lords.

Unfortunately for the Home Rule party, the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 sent the British government into emergency mode and the Home Rule Bill was once again placed on the long finger.

With the promise of its immediate implementation at the closing of the war, John Redmond delivered a rousing speech to Irish Volunteers in which he encouraged them to support the British cause against Germany.

As a largely Protestant country attempting to assert their power over smaller Catholic countries, many were happy to obliges to fight against Germany and many even enlisted in the British Army to fight in the trenches.

There was a minority, however, who were unhappy with the English once again not meeting a demand and felt that Redmond was weak in bending to another excuse instead of implementing Home Rule on time. Among this minority were the leaders of the 1916 Rising who were not prepared to wait any longer to regain power from Britain.

Seeing WWI as England’s difficulty and Ireland’s opportunity, they organized the 1916 Easter Rising , a failed uprising that none the less rekindled the flames of rebellion among the Irish people and is being celebrated this year as one of the most significant events on the road to Irish independence.

The Home Rule Bill was never to be.

Irish political cartoons from Home Rule period acquired by Great Hunger Institute (PHOTOS)

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Explainer: The Third Home Rule Bill is 100 years old today. What did it do?

A SMALL NUMBER of events are being held across Ireland today to mark the centenary of the Third Home Rule Bill – legislation which is seen by many as essentially being the first legislation thta ultimately created the Irish state we know today.

But what was that bill – and why is it considered so momentous? Let us try to explain the history behind it all.

We should start with the basics.

In 1800 both the Parliament of Ireland (as it was then) and the Parliament of Great Britain passed the Act of Union, legislation which merged the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland into the United Kingdom.

The countries had (partially) shared a head of state since 1541 – when Henry VIII quashed Silken Thomas’ rebellion and upgraded Ireland from a Lordship to a Kingdom, and proclaimed himself King of Ireland.

If at first you don’t succeed…

The Act of Union, which kicked in in 1801, remained in effect throughout the 19th century, despite a number of Irish nationalist movements – with Charles Stewart Parnell successfully convincing the then-prime minister, William Gladstone of the Liberal Party, to table a bill which would have undone most of the Act of Union, recreating a Kingdom of Ireland with its own parliament (albeit one with limited power) – a concept called ‘Home Rule’.

Despite Gladstone’s appeals – culminating in a now-famous three-hour speech to the House of Commons – this Home Rule Bill was defeated by 341 to 311 in June 1886, thanks largely to the rebellion of 93 backbench Liberals who opposed the Bill because Gladstone had drafted it in secret and without their input.

Bruised by the rebellion of his MPs, Gladstone called a general election later that month and lost power. He returned in 1892 and gave it another crack – but again decided to draft his bill in secret, even excluding his own ministerial staff and cabinet from having any input.

Despite this, the bill cleared the House of Commons in September 1893, but it was already being seen as damaged goods. Gladstone’s secret drafting had resulted in a catastrophic financial error, massively underestimating how much money Ireland should contribute to the British budget, while tensions between the Conservatives and the nationalist Parnellite wing of the Irish Parliamentary Party resulted in regular fist-fights on the opposition benches.

When the Bill was then sent to the House of Lords, the Conservative majority – being firm supporters of Unionism – was in little mood to be open-minded. The Lords obliterated the Bill by 419 to 41 and the movement was defeated again.

Change at home…

In the meantime, though nationalist feelings remained high in Ireland, British politics underwent larger changes. A dispute arose in 1909 when the Liberals – again in power – had a Budget passed by the House of Commons but blocked by the House of Lords (which due to its make-up had a firm Conservative majority), a move considered a break with precedent.

Two general elections were held in 1910 in an effort to allow the public to decide whether the Liberals or Conservatives should prevail, each with inconclusive results. In the end, the only way the Liberals could hang onto power was to strike a deal with the Irish Parliamentary Party, exchanging the support of the IPP’s 74 MPs for a new attempt at introducing Home Rule.

What followed was a fundamental shift in the British political system: knowing that the only way to break the Conservative majority in the Lords was to flood it with new lifelong Liberal members, the Liberals secured the support of King George V to appoint hundreds of new peers and ensure their majority.

The Conservatives backed down – happier to keep their majority in a weakened House of Lords than to give up their stranglehold on power – and the Liberals pushed through new laws which meant the House of Lords could no longer veto legislation, but only delay it. The Lords could now only vote against legislation twice: if the Commons approved it three times, it would be sent straight to the King to be signed into law.

With this done, prime minister Herbert Henry Asquith presented the Third Home Rule Bill to the House of Commons on 11 April 1912 (100 years ago today). That bill created a bicameral parliament, with a 164-member House of Commons and a 40-member Senate, and also allowed Ireland to continue electing MPs for Westminster (though the size of Irish constituencies would become far larger, meaning fewer MPs).

Although the Lords continued to oppose it – and with significant opposition from Ulster-based Unionists, who feared becoming a powerless minority in a country led by Dublin and not the more industrial Belfast – the Commons successfully passed the Bill three times.

…and abroad

There was only one problem: by the time it was passed a third time, and could be sent to the King, there was a bigger issue on the horizon – the United Kingdom was now part of the Great War.

Assuming that the war would be brief, Asquith rushed through a new Suspensory Act which put the provisions of the Home Rule Bill and another law, giving Wales an independent church, on hold until the end of the war.

The legislation was then overtaken by events. The Great War rolled on and on, and nationalism instead expressed itself through the Easter Rising of 1916. Britain then opted to try and implement Home Rule immediately, but agreed not to do so unless an agreement was reached on the status of Ulster within the new jurisdiction.

As World War I continued into 1917 and 1918, Britain found itself short of manpower and tried to link Home Rule to mandatory conscription – something rejected by all nationalist parties – and when the US joined the war, averting the crisis, the conflict was soon ended.

A blank page

But with the Liberals now having kept power for over eight years, and having delayed elections until the end of the war, a general election was called. The Irish Parliamentary Party lost almost all of their seats to Éamon de Valera’s fledgling Sinn Féin, whose members boycotted Westminster and formed their own revolutionary assembly. That assembly became the First Dáil, and declared an independent country called the Irish Republic, a move which led to the Irish War of Independence.

In 1920, the still-not-enacted Third Home Rule Bill (now known as the Government of Ireland Act 1914) was replaced by a Fourth Home Rule Act which partitioned Ireland into two jurisdictions, Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland.

Elections were held to the parliaments of both countries, but De Valera’s Sinn Féín rejected Britain’s right to pass laws for the Irish Republic. Sinn Féin ran candidates in the new election, but those candidates formed the Second Dáil instead.

Eventually a truce was called in the War of Independence, and the Second Dáil sent a team led by Michael Collins to negotiate what became the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which the Dáil ratified by 64 votes to 57.

The outcome was the creation of a 26-county Irish Free State – which slowly excluded the role of the King and eventually became the modern Republic of Ireland we know today – and the Irish Civil War, fought between supporters and opponents of the Treaty.

Read:  Anthem composer and tricolour creator honoured at Glasnevin

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Impact of 1912 Home Rule Bill recalled

The decisive impact of the third home rule bill on the history of ireland over the past century was the theme of the first official….

THE DECISIVE impact of the third Home Rule Bill on the history of Ireland over the past century was the theme of the first official event to mark the 1912-1922 decade of commemoration which took place in Waterford City Hall last night.

The event highlighted the role played by John Redmond, leader of the Irish Party in the House of Commons, who was MP for Waterford from 1891 until 1918, in the creation of modern Ireland.

Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Jimmy Deenihan, who is co-ordinating the commemorative events, said the decade that began with the introduction of the Home Rule Bill in April 1912 remained the most momentous in our modern history.

“Nobody could have foreseen the tumultuous events that would unfold in the following years: the attempts to compromise, the displacement of constitutional politics, the mobilisation of the Volunteer movements, arms importation and the postponement of implementation for the duration of the Great War, by which time the issue had been overtaken, not least by the events of 1916,” Mr Deenihan said.

He said the century that followed was greatly influenced by the historic events of those years and national progress was still being shaped by those developments.

“The centenary anniversaries of the Home Rule Bill and the other events to follow in these coming years present an opportunity for us all to reflect on the experience and achievements of a remarkable era.

“It is my sincere hope that there will be a broad interest in our commemorations and explorations,” he added. “The centenary anniversaries present an opportunity to address our shared history together, with the benefit of all the progress in political and community relations of recent years.

“I hope that we will also have the benefit of the research by historians, supported by their examination of official records and other archives made accessible only in recent times.”

The Minister said the polarisation in the decade after 1912 had not been kind to the legacy of John Redmond, but he quoted from contemporary Cork journalist and writer John Horgan on the Irish Party leader’s legacy: “His reward was to be repudiated and denounced by a generation which had yet to learn . . . that true freedom is rarely served by bloodshed and violence and that in politics compromise is inevitable.”

The chancellor of the National University of Ireland Dr Maurice Manning said the founding fathers of the State were, for the most part, men of 1916 – WT Cosgrave, Éamon de Valera, Richard Mulcahy, James Ryan, Desmond FitzGerald and Seán Lemass.

“The two parties which dominated and shaped the new State were both born of old Sinn Féin and both, maybe in slightly differing ways, saw 1916 as the founding event of the modern Irish State. However much else has changed over the years, that view has not changed,” Dr Manning added,

While some scholars and commentators had questioned that interpretation, the inescapable fact was that 1916 was the central seminal date in the history of modern Ireland.

“The importance of this event is not that it challenges that view – it does not – but it is a reminder at this very early stage in this decade of centenaries of just how complex our history is; that it is not a monochrome but a tapestry of different colours, a web of strands, traditions and personalities, of people who looked at our country, at what it meant to be Irish and what was best for Ireland in very different ways and frequently came to very different conclusions.”

For 40 years, Dr Manning said, the Irish Party was the voice of nationalist Ireland and for 40 years, its goal was an independent Irish parliament. “It educated and socialised generations of Irish people into the workings and values of parliamentary democracy and made enormous gains in land reform, universities, education and local government.”

Historians Frank Callanan and Dermot Meleady detailed events surrounding the Home Rule Bill and Redmond’s life up to 1912. Minister of state for Northern Ireland Hugo Swire MP responded.

Stephen Collins

Stephen Collins is a columnist with and former political editor of The Irish Times

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8 THE THIRD HOME RULE BILL IN BRITISH HISTORY EUGENIO BIAGINI

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Eugenio F Biagini

There is a paradox about the place of the 1912 Home Rule crisis in British history. On the one hand, it polarised opinion and brought the kingdom to the brink of civil war. On the other, twenty-first century observers struggle to understand why a bill that proposed a mild and conservative form of legislative devolution should have caused such violent responses. And it is not only our sceptical generation that takes this view: already in 1930 King George V, in a private conversation with his prime minister, J. Ramsay MacDonald, reportedly said: 'What fools we were… not to have accepted Gladstone's Home Rule Bill. The Empire now would not have had the Irish Free State giving us so much trouble and pulling us to pieces.

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• Current: 1912-1914: Ireland, the Asgard and the Home Rule Crisis

1912-1914: Ireland, the Asgard and the Home Rule Crisis

In its early years, while the home rule crisis developed in ireland, the asgard was used as a cruising yacht by erskine and molly..

Ireland in 1912 was in a state of political turmoil. A Bill to grant Home Rule to the country was once again being debated in Westminster. On two previous occasions in 1886 and 1893 the Home Rule Bill failed to get through both houses of parliament. In 1886 the Bill had failed to get through the House of Commons, the 1893 Bill was passed by the Commons only to be decisively defeated in the House of Lords. At this time the House of Lords had the right to veto any act of parliament indefinitely, and this combined with the fact that it was dominated by the Conservative party seemed to ensure that Home Rule would never be passed.

The Parliament Act 1911

However in 1909 a crisis developed which would resulted in the power of the House of Lords being limited. In that year the Lords attempted to block the budget from being approved. This represented a violation of the traditional role of the Lords, and resulted in the government taking steps to affirm the dominance of the House of Commons over the Lords. To do this they needed the support of John Redmond's Home Rule Party, which was only too keen to see the curtailment of the power of the House of Lords. The Parliament Act of 1911 stipulated among other things, that the Lords would only be able to block Bills from being passed for a period of 2 years. This could allow Home Rule to become a reality, in April 1912 the new Home Rule Bill was put before parliament, it was passed by the Commons, but rejected by the Lords. This would be repeated twice more over the following two years, but following the third rejection the government could use the provisions of the Parliament Act to bypass the House of Lords and send the Bill to be ratified by the King. By 1914 however, the forces opposed to the granting of Home Rule had mobilised creating a major problem for the government.

Unionism and the Ulster Volunteers

For the Unionist portion of the population prospect of Home Rule being granted was a very unwelcome development. Severing the link with Britain was seen as a threat to the religious liberty of the protestant population, and to the economic prosperity of the protestant dominated north-east of the country. There had been riots and acts of protest at the time of the previous Home Rule Bills, but with the inevitable prospect of Home Rule being granted in 1914, more organised and concrete resistance was planned.

In September 1912 over 200,000 men signed the Ulster Covenant pledging to fight the imposition of Home Rule in Ireland. In unionist communities across the north of Ireland small militia groups began drilling, and in January 1913 the Ulster Volunteer force was formally established. The Ulster Volunteers represented a major obstacle for the liberal Government in their efforts to introduce Home Rule in Ireland, they had the full support of the British Conservative party as well as many wealthy business interests in Ireland. With many ex-army personnel to aid in its organisation the UVF continued to drill during the summer of 1913 while the leadership raised money and made efforts to import arms for the movement.    

The Irish Volunteers

As the Ulster Volunteers drilled, many nationalists in the south became concerned that they might threaten the granting of Home Rule. There had long been a tradition of violent nationalism in Ireland represented in 1912 by the Irish Republican Brotherhood, but this had been secretive and marginalised since the emergence of the Home Rule movement. As more moderate elements within the nationalist camp came to see a need for an armed force to protect nationalist interests the more extreme nationalists were keen to get involved as this might afford them the opportunity to further their own objectives. Both the parliamentarian and Militant traditions of nationalism had benefited greatly from the growth of gaelic cultural organisations during the years prior to the introduction of the third Home Rule Bill. Many individuals became involved in politics through these organisations most prominently Eoin MacNeill and Pádraig Pearse. The different groups came together on November 25th 1913 to formally establish the Irish Volunteers with MacNeill as honorary secretary. Their stated aim was ‘to secure and maintain the rights and liberties common to all the people of Ireland’. The organisation attracted many members over the following months and began to drill. The forming of the volunteers was viewed with suspicion by John Redmond and members of the Home Rule Party, despite this, many Home Rulers also became involved.

Curragh Mutiny

As 1914 began, tensions were running high. The threat of violence when the Home Rule Bill came into force prompted the British government to look into using the army to suppress the Ulster Volunteers. This however prompted serious protests from the officers in command of the troops in Ireland. The army was a traditional bulwark of conservatism within the state and thus shared the views of the Unionists on the Home Rule question. Added to this many of the officers came from loyalist Anglo-Irish families. Consequently in March 1914 when the officers were briefed on the plan to move north to act against the Ulster Volunteers the majority choose to resign rather than obey the Governments orders. The incident became known as the Curragh Mutiny, though there had not actually been any insubordination, but the resignations did prompt the government to drop plans to use the Army to move against the Ulster Volunteers.                                     

Larne Gun Running

This episode had greatly boosted the confidence of the Ulster Volunteers who now proceeded forward in the belief that the army would not act against them. Major Frederick Crawford, a member of the Ulster Unionist Council with extensive military experience, had been tasked with organising shipments of arms for the Volunteers. Through an arms dealer in Hamburg he purchased 24,000 rifles and 3 million rounds of ammunition and arranged for them to be shipped to the north of Ireland. The arms were landed successfully at Larne, Bangor and Donaghadee on the night of 24 th /25 th April 1914 and hastily driven away in a fleet of assembled cars. Despite having knowledge of the plan the authorities took no action against these activities, this combined with the Curragh incident the previous month convinced the Irish Volunteers of the need to arm.  

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