PM Asquith's poor handling of the Irish Home Rule Crisis, 1910-1914. - page 2
Keywords: ireland home rule crisis 1910 1914 20th century asquith redmond carson bonar law liberals conservatives ulster unionists unionism irish parliamentary party
By exploiit on 19/06/2010
Level: A Level (Year 13)
Page Number: 2 of 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5
and the subsequent Home Rule bill were presented in Ulster as issues that could not legitimately be decided by party votes at Westminster” (Foster), and Conservatives saw them as a manipulation of the British electorate hence, the growing strength of opposition began to peak at an extra-constitutional level.
As early as September 1911, Unionists in Ulster were threatening the Liberal administration that, should Home Rule become law, they would be prepared to establish their own provisional government, legislating for themselves and ignoring British rule. This in itself was a threat which should have caught the attention of Asquith and his government. Furthermore, Ulster Unionists threatened that they were ready to implement violence as a means of resistance. Asquith’s failure to act upon this threat is even more significant when considering the actions taken by Unionists between 1910 and 1914. As early as January 1912, unionist paramilitary forces were beginning to form and train, and these dissident groups later formed into the Ulster Volunteer Force in January 1913. As well as this, September 1912 saw a week of mass demonstrations in Belfast which saw ‘Ulster Day’ and the signing of the Ulster Solemn League and Covenant on the 18th which stated the intent of unionists to use “all means which may be found necessary to defeat the… conspiracy”. This is important as more than 470, 000 Ulstermen and women signed the covenant, displaying mass support for dissident unionism and further suggesting that Asquith’s belief that the opposition was ‘bluffing’ was naïve. Despite the obvious growth in the opposition’s strength, Asquith and the Irish Chief Secretary, Augustine Birrell, failed to confront the build-up of government resistance at an earlier stage and, by allowing extremism to advance, were somewhat responsible for the troubles they would face in the long-term. On top of this, unionists continued to resist British authority in what can be described as acts of treason; a series of mass meetings and demonstrations throughout the period, led by Carson and Craig as well as by the Conservative leader Bonar-Law, in which violence was threatened through brinkmanship all indicated that the threat of the opposition was serious and should not be ignored by the government, and incidents such as the Curragh Mutiny in March 1914 and the Larne Gun-Running in April of the same year further reinforced this. Opposition leaders “escaped prosecution despite their openly seditious speeches, a further show of political weakness
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