Commemorating the Home Rule Act of 1914

Last week, we held an event at the Embassy commemorating the centenary of the Home Rule Act of 1914. ('Home Rule' would probably now be called 'devolution'.) We had an excellent panel of speakers - distinguished historians, Lord Paul Bew, Prof. Michael Laffan of UCD and Prof. Richard Toye of the University of Exeter, as well as former Taoiseach, John Bruton, who has a great interest in the history of that period – and broadcaster Fergal Keane, as an expert moderator. Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Jimmy Deenihan TD also made some introductory remarks.

The wide-ranging audience included many Westminster parliamentarians, as well as academics, Irish community, business and cultural representatives, advisers, officials and media. Someone on the night commented on the fact that we were marking the centenary of an Act of Parliament that was never actually implemented. The outbreak of the First World War caused it to be deferred and by the time the war ended Ireland had been 'changed utterly' as a consequence of the Easter Rising of 1916. Ireland eventually became independent in 1922 on the back of a war of independence that took place between 1919 and 1921.

Even though the Home Rule Act did not have its intended outcome, it seems to me that it is worthy of commemoration. This is because it represented the culmination of a century-long struggle by generations of Irish parliamentarians at Westminster to restore the Irish parliament that had been abolished by the Act of Union of 1800.

Two previous attempts to achieve Home Rule in the 1880s and 1890s had been blocked. After the second British General Election of 1910, when the Irish Parliamentary Party held the balance of power at Westminster, its leader, John Redmond, pressed the Asquith Liberal Government to proceed with Home Rule for Ireland. Under the terms of the Parliament Act, the House of Lords could now only block a Bill twice. This meant that in 1914, the Bill, which was previously passed in 1912 and 1913, would become law.

The imminence of Home Rule led to a full-blown political crisis in 1913-14 as the Ulster Volunteers were established to resist Home Rule and the Irish Volunteers to press for its implementation. There was a serious stand-off during the summer of 1914 culminating in a conference of the parties at Buckingham Palace in July of that year. There was a significant risk of civil conflict between nationalist and unionist Ireland. Indeed, Prime Minister Asquith expressed the view in 1914 that the outbreak of war had one 'bright spot' in that it had for its duration settled matters in Ireland.

In August 1914, John Redmond – who believed Home Rule would be enacted once World War One was over - committed himself to supporting the British war effort and urged his supporters to enlist in the army. As a consequence, hundreds of thousands of Irishmen went to fight on the battlefields of the First World War, almost 50,000 of whom lost their lives in the conflict. A majority of those who volunteered for service came from nationalist Ireland and were moved by the plight of Catholic Belgium which had been invaded by Imperial Germany. They saw it as their patriotic duty to join the fight against Germany.

I take the view that we need to be inclusive in commemorating our history. The period whose centenary is now being marked was a complex and troubled era in world history. It was also a decisive decade for Ireland. At the beginning of the decade, Home Rule was the height of ambition for nationalist Ireland. By the decade's end, Ireland was independent, but divided.

The decade between 1912 and 1922 saw Ireland involved in the most destructive war thus far in human history. It undertook a struggle for independence and endured a civil war. All of these events, and the people who made them, deserve to be remembered.

The Home Rule Act of 1914 is an important part of the story of Ireland during that decade. It probably came a decade too late to achieve its intended aim of political reconciliation between Ireland and Britain. As it happened, that reconciliation was delayed for almost a century. Earlier this year, President Higgins, as part of his historic State Visit, visited the Houses of Parliament where he delivered a keynote address in a place as he put it 'where, for more than a century, many hundreds of dedicated parliamentarians, in their different ways, represented the interests and aspirations of the Irish people.'

We had a really lively and stimulating debate at the Embassy about the Home Rule Act, with varying assessments being offered of the significance of this century-old Act of Parliament. In the years ahead, I plan to commemorate other aspects of our overlapping histories in an inclusive manner so as to enable us to understand our past and to continue to build a better future.

Daniel Mulhall, Ambassador