Irish Home Rule 1914?

ShotgunPaddy

I was always under the impression that Unionists under Carson opposed Irish
Home Rule but when I researched this in more detail I realized that they
supported Home Rule for the South and a separate political entity for
Ulster. Partition not Home Rule was the dominant issue in the years leading
to the 1914 Home Rule Bill but amazingly the legislation failed to deal with
the issue. Both Carson and Redmond approved the mobilization of militias to
coerce their political opponents so what would have prevented the Unionists
and Nationalists going to war over partition had not the Great War and 1916
intervened?

Múinteoir

What research do you base this on? It does strike me as odd that a Dubliner like Carson would be a proponent of partition.

ScottishDanny

Carson, while he was an Irish Unionist was also pragmatic. He would have prefered Ireland as a whole to remain in the union but realising this was untenable he aligned himself with the Ulster Unionists (Who originally wanted a nine County Ulster but realised this would not guarantee a protestant unionist majority).

ShotgunPaddy

M&#250 wrote: »

What research do you base this on? It does strike me as odd that a Dubliner like Carson would be a proponent of partition.

Prior to 1912 Ireland had always been considered a single political entity by Nationalist and Unionists alike. However the threat of Home Rule and the potential subjugation of Ulster by a Dublin based parliament forced the Ulster Unionists to consider secession in order to protect their cultural, political and economic links with Britain. This culminated in the signing of the Ulster Covenant on the 28th September 1912. The Covenant states;

"BEING CONVINCED in our consciences that Home Rule would be disastrous to the material well-being of Ulster as well as of the whole of Ireland, subversive of our civil and religious freedom, destructive of our citizenship, and perilous to the unity of the Empire, we, whose names are underwritten, men of Ulster, loyal subjects of His Gracious Majesty King George V, humbly relying on the God whom our fathers in days of stress and trial confidently trusted, do hereby pledge ourselves in solemn Covenant, throughout this our time of threatened calamity, to stand by one another in defending, for ourselves and our children, our cherished position of equal citizenship in the United Kingdom, and in using all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland. And in the event of such a Parliament being forced upon us, we further solemnly and mutually pledge ourselves to refuse to recognize its authority. In sure confidence that God will defend the right, we hereto subscribe our names."

The wording clearly states that the signatories to the Covenant would resist Home Rule. And who are the signatories? The "men of Ulster". The Ulster Covenant is essentially a pre-emptive declaration of independence from a United Ireland and a charter for the creation of a separate British state on the island of Ireland. The Covenant was quickly followed by creation of a militia, the Ulster Volunteer Force set up to defend Ulster from Irish Home Rule. On January First 1913 Carson proposed an amendment to the 1912 Home Rule Bill that proposed excluding the nine counties of Ulster. Later he recommended acceptance of the Government Of Ireland Act 1920(aka Fourth Home Rule Bill) which legislated for the partition of Ireland under a dual parliament Home Rule framework; Home Rule for the North, Home Rule for the South. Of course he would have rather have no Home Rule at all but when presented with the inevitability of a Home Rule solution to the Irish Question he opted for and campaigned for partition which we know was violently opposed by all shades of Nationalism and Southern Unionists who resented being abandoned by Carson.

In modern day Ireland those who support the Unionist tradition and support partition can be grouped as Carsonites while those who follow the Irish Parliamentary Party tradition and oppose partition can be grouped as Redmondites e.g. Fine Gael Carsonite, Fianna Fail Redmondite. Labelling someone like de Valera Redmonite may seem strange but remember Redmond vehemently opposed partition and endorsed the Irish Volunteer Force, precursor to the IRA.

ShotgunPaddy

Extract from a Redmond speech opposing Carson's amendment to the 1912 Home Rule bill advocating a separate state for Ulster. Notice he says Derry not Londonderry. You could cut and paste this straight into a Fianna Fail election manifesto.

"Ireland for us is one entity. It is one land. Tyrone and Tyrconnell are
as much a part of Ireland as Munster or Connaught. Some of the most
glorious chapters connected with our national struggle have been
associated with Ulster--aye, and with the Protestants of Ulster--and I
declare here to-day, as a Catholic Irishman, notwithstanding all the
bitterness of the past, that I am as proud of Derry as of Limerick. Our
ideal in this movement is a self-governing Ireland in the future, when
all her sons of all races and creeds within her shores will bring their
tribute, great or small, to the great total of national enterprise,
national statesmanship, and national happiness. Men may deride that
ideal; they may say that it is a futile and unreliable ideal, but they
cannot call it an ignoble one. It is an ideal that we, at any rate, will
cling to, and because we cling to it, and because it is there, embedded
in our hearts and natures, it is an absolute bar to such a proposal as
this amendment makes, a proposal which would create for all times a
sharp, eternal dividing line between Irish Catholics and Irish
Protestants, and a measure which would for all time mean the partition
and disintegration of our nation. To that we as Irish Nationalists can
never submit."

ShotgunPaddy

Redmond - Limerick October 12th 1913.

"Irish Nationalists can never be assenting parties to the mutilation of
the Irish nation; Ireland is a unit. It is true that within the bosom of
a nation there is room for diversities of the treatment of government
and of administration, but a unit Ireland is and Ireland must
remain.... The two-nation theory is to us an abomination and a
blasphemy."

ScottishDanny

I am as proud of Derry as of Limerick

I not sure who would be more offended! :rolleyes: