John Redmond - Home Rule Enacted

Home Rule Enacted

But like most leaders in the nationalist scene, not least his successors in the republican scene, he knew little of Ulster or the intensity of Unionist sentiment against home rule. His successor, John Dillon, claimed that Redmond had removed all the obstacles to Irish unity except those of the Ulster unionists. He had persuaded British public and political opinion of all hues of its merits. William O’Brien and his dissident AFIL Party warned in similar vein, that the volatile Northern Ireland situation was left unresolved.

Home rule was vehemently opposed by many Irish Protestants, the Irish Unionist Party and Ulster's Orange Order, who feared domination in an overwhelmingly Catholic state. Unionists also feared economic problems, namely that the predominantly agricultural Ireland would impose tariffs on British goods, leading to restrictions on the importation of industrial produce; the main location of Ireland's industrial development was Ulster, the north-east of the island, the only part of Ireland dominated by unionists. Most unionist leaders, especially Sir Edward Carson—with whom Redmond always had a good personal relationship, based on shared experiences at Trinity College Dublin and the Irish bar—threatened the use of force to prevent home rule, helped by their supporters in the British Conservative Party. Redmond misjudged them as merely bluffing. Carson predicted that if any attempt to coerce any part of Ulster were made, "a united Ireland within the lifetime of any one now living would be out of the question".

During negotiations early in 1914, two lines of concessions for the Carsonites were formulated: autonomy for Ulster in the form of 'Home Rule within Home Rule', which Redmond was inclined to, or alternatively the Lloyd George scheme of three years as the time limit for temporary exclusion. Redmond grudgingly acquiesced to this as "the price of peace". From the moment Carson spurned 'temporary' exclusion, the country began a plunge into anarchy. The situation took on an entirely new aspect in late March with the Curragh Mutiny together with the spectre of civil war on the part of the Ulster Covenanters, who formed the Ulster Volunteers to oppose Home Rule, forcing Redmond to then in July take over control of their counterpart, the Irish Volunteers, established in November 1913 to enforce Home Rule.

Asquith conceded to the Lords' demand to have the Home Rule Act 1914, which had passed all stages in the Commons, amended to temporarily exclude the six counties of Northern Ireland, which for a period would continue to be governed by London, not Dublin, and to later make some special provision for them. A Buckingham Palace Conference failed to resolve the entangled situation. Strongly opposed to the partition of Ireland in any form, Redmond and his party reluctantly agreed to what they understood would be a trial exclusion of now six years; under Redmond's aspiration that "Ulster will have to follow", he was belatedly prepared to concede a large measure of autonomy to it to come in.

Redmond's confidence was strong and communicated itself to Ireland. But whatever could be said to shake confidence was said by William O'Brien and Timothy Healy, who denounced the Bill as worthless when linked to the plan of even temporary partition and declared that, whatever the Government might say at present, "we had not yet reached the end of their concessions". On the division they and their All-for-Ireland Party abstained, so that the majority dropped from 85 to 77. Using the Parliament Act, the Lords was deemed to have passed the Act; it received the Royal Assent in September 1914.