Asquith v Law rivalry to blame for outbreak of Irish Revolution?

josephryan1989

When H. H. Asquith became leader of the Liberals he inherited his party's dependence on the support of the IPP who held the balance of power in the British Commons.

Publically we know Asquith gave his backing to Home Rule when in fact he despised Redmond and was an Imperialist who opposed the dissolution of the Empire while senior members of his Cabinet especially Lloyd George who was anti-Catholic and Winston Churchill whose father Randolph played the Orange card decades before to defeat Gladstone's drive for Home Rule back in 1886 opposed forcing Ulster Protestants into a 32 county Ieish .

We know Bonar Law deliberately stoked up Unionist opposition aided by Carson but was open to a coalition with the Liberals so both sides could ditch their Orange and Green Irish allies. Both Law and Asquith were open privately to implementing Home Rule in Ireland but excluding Ulster but neither politician was prepared publically prepared to do so.

This intractable situation threatened civil war in Britain but was avoided by the outbreak of World War I which allowed Home Rule to be suspended.

The subsequent 1916 Rising followed as Republicans who had been prepared to go along with the Home Rule project lost patience.

If Asquith and Law had the courage to turn off the Home Rule Crisis they allowed to grow for selfish short term political ambition might the disastrous Irish 20th Century have been avoided?

KingBrian2

josephryan1989 wrote: »

When H. H. Asquith became leader of the Liberals he inherited his party's dependence on the support of the IPP who held the balance of power in the British Commons.

Publically we know Asquith gave his backing to Home Rule when in fact he despised Redmond and was an Imperialist who opposed the dissolution of the Empire while senior members of his Cabinet especially Lloyd George who was anti-Catholic and Winston Churchill whose father Randolph played the Orange card decades before to defeat Gladstone's drive for Home Rule back in 1886 opposed forcing Ulster Protestants into a 32 county Ieish .

We know Bonar Law deliberately stoked up Unionist opposition aided by Carson but was open to a coalition with the Liberals so both sides could ditch their Orange and Green Irish allies. Both Law and Asquith were open privately to implementing Home Rule in Ireland but excluding Ulster but neither politician was prepared publically prepared to do so.

This intractable situation threatened civil war in Britain but was avoided by the outbreak of World War I which allowed Home Rule to be suspended.

The subsequent 1916 Rising followed as Republicans who had been prepared to go along with the Home Rule project lost patience.

If Asquith and Law had the courage to turn off the Home Rule Crisis they allowed to grow for selfish short term political ambition might the disastrous Irish 20th Century have been avoided?

It seems to me that home rule of what the likes of Redmond and Parnell or Issac Butt before were asking for was incompatible with British Imperialism. Asquith and early British PM's were all about the Empire covering the globe and all being part of one big happy Kingdom ruled by a select few people.

Parnell was focused on Davitt and the land league. Organising better policies for the middle classes of Dublin and appealing to ideals well in advance of their time. Discussing the tenement situation, women being granted voting rights & boys being conscripted into the army. British Imperialists would have seen such local democracy as superfluous and the opposite of becoming the foremost super power.

recedite

josephryan1989 wrote: »

If Asquith and Law had the courage to turn off the Home Rule Crisis..

And how would they do that?

josephryan1989

recedite wrote: »

And how would they do that?

They should have given Home Rule to a 26 county Southern Ireland and a 6 county Northern Ireland by telling Carson and Redmond they had to compromise. Carson and Redmond were both opposed to a partitioned Ireland and neither wanted to severe Westminster's apron strings. With a bit of foresight the hot air could have been taken out of Irish politics without both sides arming and violence and bloodshed.
Britain itself and not just Ireland was on the verge of civil war over Home Rule before World War I helped both sides - Tories and Liberals to co-operate in the war effort.
Bizarrely the Unionists who were opposed to Home Rule and partition got Home Rule in the six counties in 1920.
When Bonar Law inherited Lloyd George's Irish policy when he succeeded him as Prime Minister he did nothing to dismantle the Irish settlement that had been engineered.

recedite

josephryan1989 wrote: »

They should have given Home Rule to a 26 county Southern Ireland and a 6 county Northern Ireland by telling Carson and Redmond they had to compromise.

That was on the cards, but postponed until the end of the war. In 1916 the future outcome of WW1 was very uncertain. As with WW2 the German side looked like they were winning during "the first half". If the UK had been seen to be "breaking apart" at that point, it potentially could have had disastrous consequences for them.

Arguably, Pearse and the extremists within the minority IRB faction who had joined the Irish Volunteers guessed that such a settlement was very likely to be implemented at the end of the war.
Therefore they had to engineer a situation which would prevent that from happening. They knew that the leader of the Irish Volunteers would not agree to their plan, so they planned the insurrection behind his back.

josephryan1989

recedite wrote: »

That was on the cards, but postponed until the end of the war. In 1916 the future outcome of WW1 was very uncertain. As with WW2 the German side looked like they were winning during "the first half". If the UK had been seen to be "breaking apart" at that point, it potentially could have had disastrous consequences for them.

Arguably, Pearse and the extremists within the minority IRB faction who had joined the Irish Volunteers guessed that such a settlement was very likely to be implemented at the end of the war.
Therefore they had to engineer a situation which would prevent that from happening. They knew that the leader of the Irish Volunteers would not agree to their plan, so they planned the insurrection behind his back.

The talks failed prior to WW1 because Redmond and Carson were unable to compromise.

Pearse and the men you erronously refer to as extremists knew that Home Rule would simply create a puppet parliament in Dublin. It fell far short of even the Free State that the treacherous Griffith and Collins later agreed to over the heads of President De Valera and the Irish canbinet.

The 1916 Rising was necessary to assert Irish sovereignty in arms prior to the end of the war when Home Rule was going to be fudged by the Liberals or completely shelved by the Tories and Unionists.

feargale

josephryan1989 wrote: »

Pearse and the men you erronously refer to as extremists knew that Home Rule would simply create a puppet parliament in Dublin.

Who are extremists if not a minority of a minority who resort to violence without a popular mandate?

josephryan1989 wrote: »

It fell far short of even the Free State that the treacherous Griffith and Collins later agreed to over the heads of President De Valera and the Irish canbinet.

The Treaty was ratified by a majority in Dail Eireann and its opponents failed to get a majority in a subsequent election.

josephryan1989

feargale wrote: »

Who are extremists if not a minority of a minority who resort to violence without a popular mandate?

Because of an imperialist war there had not been a democratic election since 1910. The rebellion Carson was given a post in the war cabinet while Redmond refused a position and probably would have been excluded in any case.

Redmond forfeited his leadership of Irish nationalism by sacrificing thousands of Irishmen to the meatgrinder of the trenches in return for a bluff created by the Liberals in their parliamentary games with the Tories. Asquith had no intention of implementing Home Rule, standing up to mutinous British Army mutineers or fighting the Ulster loyalists.

The Irish Parliamentary Party was moribund even before the Easter Rebellion. The surge of support for Sinn Féin who campaigned on an openly Republican platform vindicates the Rising. As soon as the common man and woman had the vote in 1918 for the first time they voted for a Republic.

The Treaty was ratified by a majority in Dail Eireann and its opponents failed to get a majority in a subsequent election.

The Treaty was ratified under the threat of coercion.

The Unionist and Tory conspiracy that began with Ulster Covenant, the creation and arming of the UVF culminated in the creation of the Stormont Parliament weeks before the July 1921 truce which brought the Irish War of Independence to an end. The Irish delegation only signed when they were threatened with immediate and terrible war. A frightened Irish electorate who had already experienced the terror of the Black and Tans and were terrified of a British re-invasion and voted for Pro-Treaty parties.

Collins was led to believe or allowed himself to believe the Boundary Commission would lead to majority Catholic counties of Northern Ireland joining the South. When the Boundary Commission was finally set up after the civil war six county border was made permanent.

The British government threatened to re-invade if Collins did not order the bombardment of the Republican positions in Dublin and once the turncoat betrayed his comrades in arms the British armed the Free Staters with armoured cars, artillery, rifles, machine guns and ammunition.

The British policy always favored the Unionists.
When they could not keep southern Ireland under their thumb thanks to the heroism of Irish republican revolutionaries they resorted to shoring up their power in the six counties. The result was the creation of the sectarian Unionist gerrymandered statelet that remained in existence until 1972.

The Cosgrave government ruled as an authoritarian government until Fianna Fáil swept them away and De Valera's slow destruction of legacy British rule culminating the 1937 constitution was the real democratic will of the people.

recedite

josephryan1989 wrote: »

They should have given Home Rule to a 26 county Southern Ireland and a 6 county Northern Ireland .

josephryan1989 wrote: »

Pearse and the men you erronously refer to as extremists knew that Home Rule would simply create a puppet parliament in Dublin..

Make up your mind
First you say Home rule was the obvious solution, then you say it only creates a puppet govt.
If you can't come up with a coherent plan with the benefit of 100 years of hindsight, its no wonder they couldn't successfully plan it all out in advance, negotiating at the time in the middle of a world war.

feargale

josephryan1989 wrote: »

The Irish Parliamentary Party was moribund even before the Easter Rebellion. The surge of support for Sinn Féin who campaigned on an openly Republican platform vindicates the Rising.

Tell us about this surge of support. Facts and figures please.

josephryan1989

feargale wrote: »

Tell us about this surge of support. Facts and figures please.

SF won 73 seats out of 105 Irish seats in the 1918 House of Commons election. They won 46.9 % or 476,087 of the 1,015,515 votes cast.

If that isn't a surge I don't know what is.

purplepanda

It was impossible to gauge "popular support" when only males who owned property above a certain value could vote in parliamentary elections.

All women & males without property resident in Ireland were disqualified from voting in elections before 1918. Only half of Irish males had the vote before that date.

Therefore talk of mandates & support before 1918 is irrelevant as the non democratic process in place before this date didn't allow proper judgement of the peoples opinions!

Amazing how many Unionists tend to forget that the UK before 1918 was actually a non democratic state before the introduction of universal suffrage although women under 30 still couldn't vote until 1928.

feargale

josephryan1989 wrote: »

SF won 73 seats out of 105 Irish seats in the 1918 House of Commons election. They won 46.9 % or 476,087 of the 1,015,515 votes cast.

If that isn't a surge I don't know what is.

Ah no. I'm talking about 1916. Tell us about the surge up to 1916.

josephryan1989

feargale wrote: »

Ah no. I'm talking about 1916. Tell us about the surge up to 1916.

I was talking about the surge in 1918 in my post. When did I say anything about a surge in support in 1916??

KingBrian2

I was reading the Revolution Papers today, a fair bit of really good details in them. Reading sections in the Gaelic paper. Irish American publication. All about Tammany Hall and how the Americans over their were falling in line to support the war effort in US while at the same time campaigning on behalf of Irish Nationalism.

All about how Irish blood had be shed in all major US wars and the cause of Ireland was the cause of liberty. All this flag waving patriotism and propaganda stuff. Goes to show how involved these people were and while the US had stayed out of the war for the most part many were deeply unhappy supporting a power that was equally oppressing Irishmen and Irishwomen.

The 1916 rising did not change the calculations made by America to remain neutral during the war or to include Ireland as part of the peace movement when the war came to an end in 1919. The Irish Americans did their best to promote the interests of Ireland at this period of global unrest.

feargale

As an aside do both of you support or oppose the Good Friday Agreement?

The Chieftain

feargale wrote: »

Who are extremists if not a minority of a minority who resort to violence without a popular mandate?

Well, let's see.

First, and most important, by 1916 the popular will of the majority of the Irish people against the Union had been ignored for 118 years - since the 1798 vote against such a Union in the Irish Parliament. Given that reality, I am always fascinated by denunciations of the patriots of 1916 by appeals to mandates. It was the Union that lacked a mandate from start to finish, not the other way around.

Second, given the fact that the will of the nation was ignored for 118 years, a resort to revolution was fully justified. Indeed one can argue that it was long overdue - your argument is presumably that 119 years would have done the trick, where 118 didn't? I note that the "extremist minority" who constituted the rebels in the US in 1776 had far less to complain of than the Irish patriots of 1916, yet no one questions the justness of the US rebellion - at least none that I have ever heard.

Third, since when does anyone ever hold an election on whether to have a revolution? That criticism always leaves me wondering whether I should laugh or cry.

The Chieftain

purplepanda wrote: »

It was impossible to gauge "popular support" when only males who owned property above a certain value could vote in parliamentary elections.

All women & males without property resident in Ireland were disqualified from voting in elections before 1918. Only half of Irish males had the vote before that date.

Therefore talk of mandates & support before 1918 is irrelevant as the non democratic process in place before this date didn't allow proper judgement of the peoples opinions!

Amazing how many Unionists tend to forget that the UK before 1918 was actually a non democratic state before the introduction of universal suffrage although women under 30 still couldn't vote until 1928.

If you believe your own criticism that the pre-1918 UK was fundamentally non-democratic, then you must support the declaration of a republic in 1916.

purplepanda

The Chieftain wrote: »

If you believe your own criticism that the pre-1918 UK was fundamentally non-democratic, then you must support the declaration of a republic in 1916.

I support the declaration of the rights & freedom of an Irish nation & people, including armed resistance to British rule which never had a mandate.

If I was present during those times, I would have accepted the treaty like men Michael Collins & Sean MacEoin did & supported the building of a new nation afterwards, instead of further futile conflict with Britain which would have inflicted too much suffering on the Irish people..

The republic could always have been achieved at a later date. With the hindsight of history I don't think that outcome was a achievable outcome during the rising & war of independence.