From the Revival to the Rising 1891-1916

The fall of Parnell confirmed the paralysis of the Home Rule issue, which remained on ice until the Liberal government’s challenge to the power of the House of Lords’ in 1910 resulted in the reunited Irish party holding the balance of power again at Westminster. In this context Home Rule was back in active politics, and by 1912 a Home Rule bill was due to become law after three years . This upped the ante in the struggle about Ireland ’s future between Unionism and Nationalism. Irish Unionism, in its opposition to Home Rule, retained considerable British Conservative party support, and Liberals were faint supporters of their Irish allies.

The Land revolution had created a class of satisfied small proprietors, buying out their generally uneconomically viable holdings through British government-backed mortgages; a scheme designed to satisfy small farmer demands, rescue landlords from estates now said to be unrealisable assets, and assuage conservative fears about the ambiguous status of property ushered in by the Land Commission in its rent-setting phase.

The outbreak of what was expected to be a short war in August 1914 relieved Asquith from Irish fears. The UVF were incorporated with ease into the British army, and Redmond pledged the majority of the Irish Volunteers to the British war effort, as an indication of nationalist Irish support and goodwill on the eve of a Home Rule settlement, albeit one with a proto-partition style Home Rule Bill on the statute books. The Irish Volunteers –some 180,000 men, in the main followed Redmond , but a core minority under Eoin MacNeill and containing most of the pre-war advanced nationalist activists of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and Sinn Fein, remained at home and opposed Britain ’s war. See film footage of Irish Volunteers Joining Up.

In association with John Devoy and Irish- American groups, through Roger Casement’s mission to raise arms and men in Germany , the radicals planned a rebellion against British rule with outside support. The collapse of Casement’s mission in Germany , his capture by the Royal Irish Constabulary on Good Friday 1916, indicated that no realistic stand could be made through rebellion at this time. Eoin MacNeill countermanded an order for a rising on Easter Monday, but key activists lead by Thomas Clarke, Padraig Pearse and James Connolly defied his orders, seized the General Post Office and other key buildings in Dublin , and declared an Irish Republic . Knowing that their plans were known to the authorities, and feeling that no such attempt could be made again at that time, they proceeded despite Casement’s frantic attempts to get them to call it off.   See film footage of the 1916 Easter Rising.

In those same months of April and May 1916 thousands of Irish unionists and nationalists in British army uniforms died on the Western Front. The complex loyalties of the nationalists amongst them are partly expressed by Francis Ledwidge in his poem for his friend Thomas MacDonagh, and in Tom Kettle’s powerful prayer for his daughter.

The Asquith government, after the executions, tried in the early summer of 1916 to introduce immediate Home Rule for 26 counties, to shore up the Irish parliamentary party, who seemed potentially doomed otherwise. Despite the agreement of Carson and Joe Devlin and Redmond the plan failed, partly because Arthur Balfour failed in his honest endeavour to get Tory backbenchers to vote for it. Some Tory leaders like Balfour felt that they owed Redmond something, but they could see no way to deliver for him.

Prisoners interned as Sinn Fein suspects (as the Rising was erroneously labelled by Dublin Castle ) were released from camps in England in 1917, to soften the possibility of US entry into the War on the allied side. See film footage of the Return of the Suspects.  They soon organised into a newly constituted Sinn Fein and won six of seven crucial by-elections between 1917 and 1918. In the summer of 1917, Dublin Castle began a desultory harassment of realigned Sinn Fein and Volunteer supporters , banning meetings, prohibiting the wearing of uniforms and arresting leaders. In September 1917, one of these men- Thomas Ashe, died on hunger strike.