The Liberals and the Irish Parliamentary Party, 1909-14

Abstract

Prime minister H.H. Asquith’s flawed handling of the third Home Rule Bill, the apparent exhaustion of the Irish Parliamentary Party leaders’ initiative, and the electoral decimation of the Liberal and Irish parties in the general election of 1918 are historical problems that have persisted since the publication of George Dangerfield’s The Strange Death of Liberal England. A pervasive scholarly focus on the question of Ulster and the negotiations of British politicians to find a solution has left comparatively unexplored the Liberal/Irish nationalist political dynamic. This thesis examines the political manoeuvrings of the third Home Rule crisis from this unconventional perspective, and considers less extensively researched primary source material. It considers efforts to reanimate the issue of Irish self-government in Britain, and argues that the identification of Home Rule with British democracy caused Liberal enthusiasm to flare in 1914. The thesis presents evidence that the Irish Party leaders were much more strategic in their thinking than has been appreciated hitherto, and that John Redmond thwarted efforts at collusion between Asquith’s government and the Unionist opposition. It also suggests that seeds of the electoral disintegration of the Liberal and Irish Parliamentary parties may be found in the third Home Rule crisis, when the actions of the parties’ leaderships radically diverged from the aspirations and expectations of their respective political constituencies.

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