The aftermath of the crumbling of the Belfast ("Good Friday") agreement is a good moment to look again at the three Home Rule Bills which dominated British policy towards Ireland in the 30 years before 1914. Edward Pearce's book is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the political passions which dominate the Emerald Isle. He describes the visceral response to Home Rule from a strand of Conservative opinion which was convinced that the British empire itself would flounder if Gladstone's Irish policy succeeded. (There are echoes here of the more extreme opposition to Irish policy over the last decade, although the analogy applies more aptly to the resistance to the Maastricht treaty and the European policy of the last Conservative government.)
Britain had not sought to starve Ireland in the potato famine. Although Peel had worried about creating a dependency culture, help was given, but the legend of British callousness took root. Solutions to the Irish question were still available. Isaac Butt offered the Commons an answer which might have reconciled Irish ambitions with British self-interest. But his plan was torpedoed by Disraeli. High politics supplanted cool judgement as the ground was tilled for the mighty battle to come over Gladstone's Home Rule Bills.
Gladstone and Lord Salisbury occupy centre stage in this tale, but Parnell, Chamberlain, Balfour, Randolph Churchill and others all have their roles. Tragedy and farce have often stalked Irish policy and upset the calculations of rational men. They did so here. Joe Chamberlain-on the path from Radical Joe to Empire Joe-was poorly handled by Gladstone; he became a mortal enemy of the Grand Old Man and his obsession. "Five million Irish have no greater right to govern themselves... than five million Londoners" was Chamberlain's crisp comment on the policy.
Ireland was already a potent brew in 1885 when Salisbury headed a minority administration with Irish members holding the balance of power (as Unionists were to do in the mid-1990s-although they did not inhibit policy, despite republican claims to the contrary). Salisbury did not like Home Rule, knowing that it would split the Tories. He was content for the party to surrender minority office and leave the problem to the Liberals. Gladstone had no such inhibition. He was arrogant and magnificent as he alienated colleague after colleague by his failure to consult. In March 1886, Chamberlain, seizing his moment, posed four questions in cabinet on Irish policy and resigned on receiving the prime minister's answers.
The right-wing press were bitterly hostile to Gladstone (another parallel with Maastricht). Pearce quotes extensively from contemporary speeches and journals to give a flavour of the bitter atmosphere of the day; it can have been no surprise when the Bill crashed, with one third of Gladstone's own (unconsulted) Liberal party opposed to the legislation. The inevitable dissolution of parliament was followed by a crushing election defeat for the Liberals (eerily similar to that suffered by the Conservatives in 1997).
Salisbury, back in power, kept Home Rule at bay while Gladstone plotted for another try. He and Parnell seemed to be reaching an accommodation when, in another tragedy for Irish ambitions, the latter fell from grace after his affair with Katy (not Kitty) O'Shea and died soon after. His destruction was a high tide of hypocrisy. Gladstone, back in power in 1893, had introduced another Home Rule Bill the year before, but after weighty opposition in the Commons, the Lords finally crushed it. Gladstone went-this time, for good.
Pearce's ire is reserved mostly for the unreasoning opposition of some Conservatives and the extent to which this unreason caught the national mood. Ireland was not to return to the forefront of politics until 1912-an interregnum which Pearce covers with a brisk account of the struggle which finally determined the supremacy of Commons over Lords.
Asquith produced a third Home Rule Bill, but resistance had not abated. Edward Carson contemplated Ulster's secession. Even Kipling was called to the colours:
...what answer from the North
One Law, one Lord, one Throne
If England drive us forth
We shall not fall alone.
It is a riveting tale, and Conservative diehards do not come out of it well. But their passions were not artificial: they came from the very deepest old Tory instincts before, with a big heave, the party began to make way for the more constructive leadership of Baldwin, Macmillan and their successors.
I have one complaint about the book. The title is ponderous and, for this reader at least, a disincentive to picking it up. Do not be put off. It's a compelling narrative and, by the end, every reader will better understand the tussle to solve the Irish question which has bedevilled generations.
"Lines of Most Resistance" (rrp?18.99) can be bought through Prospect Bookstore at ?16.99 plus 99p p&p. Call 020 8324 5649
