Home Rule

Home Rule in Irish and English history, political slogan adopted by Irish nationalists in the 19th cent. to describe their objective of self-government for Ireland.

Origins of the Home Rule Movement

A basic theme in the history of Ireland through the centuries of English dominance was the desire for control over its domestic affairs. The modern Home Rule movement began in 1870 under the leadership of Isaac Butt , whose program appealed most strongly to the Irish middle classes. The long agricultural depression beginning in 1873 increased economic stimulus for Home Rule, and under the leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell the movement gained support from the agricultural laborers and erstwhile members of the Fenian movement . In this period only a minority had recourse to violence, and Parnell disavowed the murder of two British officials in Dublin in 1882 (see Phoenix Park murders ).

The First Home Rule Bill

In 1886, William Gladstone committed the Liberal party to Home Rule. His bill of 1886 would have established a separate Irish legislature, while reserving many powers, including taxation, to the British Parliament at Westminster. The bill failed to pass, and the incoming Conservative government developed a policy of land reform (see Irish Land Question ) to mollify the Irish. The unity of the Irish party in Parliament collapsed after Parnell was ruined by a divorce scandal in 1890.

The Second Home Rule Bill

In 1893 the Liberals passed the Second Home Rule Bill in the House of Commons, providing a bicameral legislature for purely local matters and Irish representation at Westminster to vote on Irish taxation. While unsatisfactory to Home Rule advocates, the bill was, nevertheless, defeated in the House of Lords. Advocates of constitutional means to Home Rule began to lose ground to republicans and revolutionaries. The ideals of an increasingly self-conscious Irish people, expressed by the Gaelic League and Irish Ireland culminated in the founding (c.1900) of Sinn Féin . The Irish Council Bill of 1907, which was to establish a purely Irish body to direct the spending of Irish tax proceeds, failed to pass because of Irish dissatisfaction with the plan.

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.

The Irish Free State and the Fourth Home Rule Bill

By this time Irish labor leaders like James Connolly had been drawn into the struggle, and Irish radicalism—along with impatience and doubts as to Britain's good faith—brought about the Easter Rebellion of 1916. In 1918, S Ireland elected to Parliament only Sinn Fein members pledged to republicanism instead of Home Rule. These members did not go to Westminster; they set up their own Irish assembly, the Dáil Éireann , which declared Ireland independent. There followed a period of guerrilla war between the nationalist Irish Republican Army (IRA) and a force of British irregulars known as the Black and Tans.

In 1921 the British government entered into negotiations with the de facto Irish government headed by Eamon De Valera . The Irish Free State, with dominion status, was created by an Anglo-Irish treaty in 1921. Remaining ties with Great Britain were gradually discarded (see Ireland, Republic of ). The six counties of Northern Ireland (see Ireland, Northern ) remained part of the United Kingdom, their government established under the provisions of the Fourth Home Rule Bill of 1920, which was rendered void in the South by the establishment of the Irish Free State. The continued British presence in Northern Ireland was abhorrent to Irish nationalists, but except for scattered IRA terrorism, the issue was dormant until Protestant repression led to revived militant nationalism among Northern Ireland's Catholics.

Home Rule in Contemporary Northern Ireland

Escalating violence between Protestants and Catholics and an intensive campaign of terror by the IRA caused the British cabinet to suspend the Northern Ireland government in 1972. A new government was established in 1973, in which the Roman Catholics shared power with the Protestant majority for the first time and provision was made for increased cooperation with the Republic. However, Protestant pressure brought about the resumption of direct British rule of Northern Ireland in 1974. Direct rule continued until 1981.

In 1985, Great Britain signed an agreement with the Irish Republic, giving the latter a consultative role. While the Catholic party (SDLP) favored the agreement, the Protestant Unionist Parties used their majority in the regional Assembly to block it, resulting in the resumption of direct rule in 1985. An accord reached in 1998 provided for a new assembly, but disagreement over the disarmament of paramilitary groups slowed the formation of a multiparty goverment (Dec., 1999) and the end of direct British rule. Disagreements on the same and on other issues have led to several suspensions of home rule.

Bibliography

For an economic interpretation see E. Strauss, Irish Nationalism and British Democracy (1951); for an opposing political interpretation see N. Mansergh, The Irish Question, 1840-1921 (rev. ed. 1965). See also W. K. Hancock, Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs (2 vol., 1937-42; repr. 1964); A. T. O. Stewart, The Ulster Crisis (1967); D. Thornley, Isaac Butt and Home Rule (1964, repr. 1976).

home rule • n. the government of a colony, dependent country, or region by its own citizens.

home rule, the objective of constitutional nationalists from 1870 to 1918. The term was believed to have been coined by Revd Joseph A. Galbraith, a member of the Home Government Association, and was carefully chosen to maximize the appeal of a movement which, in the wake of Anglican disestablishment, was attracting significant support from the Protestant middle and upper classes. Its political usefulness has been described in terms of a ‘transfiguring vagueness’ which enabled the most extreme nationalists, as well as the most moderate, to invest the term with their own meanings.

The most authoritative statement of what home rule meant was made by Isaac Butt, who envisaged an arrangement whereby Ireland, Scotland, and England would have a common sovereign, executive, and ‘national council’ at Westminister for the purposes of statehood in the international arena, while each country would have its own parliament for domestic affairs. In Ireland's case the specific form of parliament would be decided by an Irish assembly elected on the basis of household suffrage. Throughout his leadership Butt refused to commit his ideas to the precise form of a parliamentary bill, believing it best to campaign for the principle of home rule rather than have to defend every detail of its implementation.

Butt's approach to the home rule question was followed by his successor Parnell, and the vagueness of ‘home rule’ took on an enhanced importance as the character of the movement changed in the 1870s, with the decline in landlord involvement and the growing prominence of Fenians, Catholic clergy, and, from 1879, agrarian radicals. Indeed vagueness on the specific meaning of home rule was especially suited to Parnell, whose politics in general were based on ambiguity. Home rule took a concrete form only when Gladstone became converted to the policy and used Butt's ideas, together with colonial precedents, especially those of Canada, as the groundwork for the home rule bill of 1886. This plan envisaged a local assembly consisting of two chambers, charged with responsibility for Ireland's internal affairs, while Westminster retained control of such areas as imperial and foreign affairs, armed forces, currency, security, and major taxation.

However, there were problems inherent in the very concept of home rule, and these became part of the case against Gladstone's plan. Most difficult was the question of taxation and representation. Since Ireland would continue to pay an imperial contribution, it was accepted that Irish MPs would continue to sit at Westminster; but this would give them a voice not only in imperial policies but in the making of governments at Westminster and in the domestic affairs of the British mainland. This was a problem that was never resolved.

Gladstone's plan of 1886 failed to get the unanimous support of the Liberal Party. A section led by Joseph Chamberlain (see central board) allied with the Conservatives to defeat it in the Commons. Nevertheless, despite its weaknesses, it became the template for the second home rule bill, rejected by the Lords in 1893, and for the third, introduced by a Liberal government dependent on Irish nationalist support in 1912. Politically, as distinct from constitutionally, the most significant weakness of the home rule schemes was the failure to cater for the specific interests of Protestant north‐east Ulster; and it was from that quarter that the most strenuous opposition to home rule came in the pre‐war period. The enactment of the third home rule bill in 1914, despite Ulster Unionist opposition, was purely formal, its implementation being suspended until the end of the First World War, by which time the Irish parliamentary party and home rule had been superseded by Sinn Féin and the demand for a republic. By a supreme historical irony the only part of Ireland to be given home rule (see partition) was Unionist Ulster, which had done so much to oppose it.

Bibliography

Kendle, John , Ireland and the Federal Solution: The Debate over the United Kingdom Constitution (1989)
Loughlin, James , Gladstone, Home Rule and the Ulster Question 1882–93 (1986)

James Loughlin