Talk:Government of Ireland Act 1914

message: Could a section on the amazingly anti-democratic anti- rule of law antics of the Conservative and Unionist party be added. Their statements after the passing of this act support violent action against the will of the British Parliment. Pretty 'understandable' from the Irish Republicans (note I'm English, but fairly neutral) but amazing from the Conservatives who were a main stream party.
I'm still also hugely confused by the logic that Unionists could somehow violently stop British Rule leaving Ireland. ( In this case Overtly, many would argue they've done in more indirect ways with huge success ).  
How could Loyalists claim to be so if they offered violence to Britain? 
How can you physcially stop someone from not ruling you? yet the North somehow achieved this? 
I've heard many interesting and many stupid conspiracy theories about British/Ire but non relating to how a minority managed to pull off such an amazing feat without at least being alluded to in gossip. To this day many Loyalists seem to presume (i.e. without even giving it thought) that the Britsh people should have no say in Northern Ireland leaving the UK?
: It wasn't so much that Unionists refused to leave the UK as much as they refused to be part of Ireland.  The Tories were sympathetic (Randolph Churchill: Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right) because they saw Home Rule as the slippery slope to collapse of the Empire (they were right!).  The British Army (historically at times, seemingly the military wing of the Conservative Party) was in near mutiny at the idea that they should be used to impose the proposed law (see the Curragh incident and later, UDI in Rhodesia).  So actually for Unionists to retain the status quo suited their desires and British pride.  But no, I don't think that it would be appropriate to put that polemic in the main article: apart from being very POV, the key points are in various articles and it would really clutter this one.  I suppose you could add something to the history of the Tory Pary. --Red King 4 July 2005 23:57 (UTC)
I disagree. Tory intransigence, their support for hardline Unionists and the UVF, and events like the Curragh mutiny confirmed to many previously moderate Irish nationalists that they would never get a fair crack of the whip in a United Kingdom. This is what led to Irish independence, which Home Rule never would have. Before these antics, no substantial or influential group in Ireland was advocating outright independence. Home Rule and Home Rule only had been the sole goal of all Irish nationalists but an unrepresentative few until then. The Tories ensured that militant Irish separatism would prosper. There's nothing POV about that, its exactly what occurred. Without the Tories and the British army, Irish independence would have been a pipe dream.
Lapsed Pacifist 5 July 2005 01:28 (UTC)
Thanks for the info -Currargh mutiny etc- I accept that the title Tory Traitors is very bias sounding at first. But it remains true that the 'law and order' party went against the Will of the UK parliment and their stupid beloved monarch (which ever imbred was stamping Acts at that time).  I don't accept that Home Rule III would never lead to a de facto Indepenence as it did elsewhere. I think it could have taken ages but surely it could have been better than the f*ck up that was R Ire till well pass WW2 and N Ire remains. (It's great having a monarch still, anytime I feel overly nationalistic a dose of 'God Save the Queen' sorts me out)
Also I half agree with Lapsed Pacifist but without the Tories (modern)and the British Army there would probably have been no British Ireland to become independant.
Tory Traitors as a term breaches NPOV rules in conveying an implicit judgment. Whether it is accurate or not is irrelevant. It would have to be phrased in a less POV manner. FearÉIREANN(talk) 5 July 2005 22:41 (UTC)
OK thanks for the info again it's something thats bugged me for years. Do you think there's any room for at least an honourable mention of Randolph Churchill little gem, I believe its relevant to the failure of Home Rule III and would help clear up obvious confusion as to why a British Act of partliment was effectively ignored. <---moved this text. It was not my comment but added in by someone else. FearÉIREANN(talk) 6 July 2005 20:11 (UTC)
: Well, it was 28 years earlier and in a private letter, so probably not admissable evidence! --Red King 6 July 2005 14:05 (UTC)
:::One man's traitor is another man's patriot. A lot of Tories at the time regarded the Liberal Government of the day as virtual traitors - this was in an era when Asquith was howled down in the House of Commons at least once, and Ronald Waterhouse MP flung a book at Churchill's head, drawing blood. Opposition to Irish Home Rule did not look quite so silly in the late nineteenth century in an era when the USA and Germany were unified by force, very much against the wishes of the southerners in the first case.
:::Quite apart from the moral issue (as they saw it) of handing over loyal British subjects who had no wish to be ruled from Dublin, they also believed the Liberal Government was acting unconstitutionally in railroading through major constitutional change without a UK-wide electoral mandate. No Liberal Government ever won a majority on a Home Rule platform - the issue was deliberately kicked into touch in 1906 as it was such an electoral albatross for the Liberals. The Liberals had removed the Lords' veto (supposedly, the Lords were "the watchdog of the constitution" who would act in the long-term national interest, but would ultimately back down if a Government was seen to have a clear electoral mandate, as over Irish Disestablishment in 1869 or the Budget in 1910) but had not replaced the Lords with an elected house as promised (as of 2013, this STILL hasn't happened...), leaving the constitution "in abeyance" as was said at the time. The hope was that the Government could at least be forced to put matters to a General Election. Although there had been talk of not renewing the Mutiny Act (the annual legal permission needed by the Crown since 1688 to keep an Army) or reviving the Royal Veto, in the end it was the Curragh Incident (probably more cockup than conspiracy) which made Partition a virtual inevitability.
:::Calling the Army the military wing of the Tory Party is a bit unfair. Most officers, then as now (and indeed over then-Rhodesia in the 1960s), were Tory sympathisers, but at the same time they stayed aloof from party politics. Better handled, they did eventually obey orders to move on Ulster once it was clearly for the protection of arms depots - but the government mishandled things, possibly as they were hoping to provoke the UVF into rebelling, as did General Paget.Paulturtle (talk) 13:24, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tory Traitors 

message: I notice that a move related to this page was proposed in March 2005, but ended in no consensus. In March 2006, it was proposed that the Home Rule Act 1914 and the Third Home Rule Act pages be merged together. One editor appears to have gotten mixed up over the two issues and added a message of support for the merge to the old move discussion. Currently the merge proposal stands at one support and no objections. Does anyone have any comments? Road Wizard 18:18, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Unless someone comes forward with an objection, I would suggest a simple merge of the two articles into the already existing Home Rule Act 1914. However, I have no strong feelings about the issue, and if you want to move the combined article after it is merged, then that is fine also. According to the merge guidelines, the merge should be carried out 5 days after the proposal is made (in this case I would say 5 days after the discussion starts) unless somebody objects. Road Wizard 21:09, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed Merge 

message: The intro to this article seems to imply that partition didn't come into any legislation until 1920, but it was in the 1914 Act wasn't it as per the shaping of partition section? The intro should say two parliaments where it now says "which allowed for the creation of a separate self-governing parliament in Ireland"?  Aaron McDaid (talk - contribs)  20:47, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've removed the phrasing (but at the same time "temporarily" excluded the six northeastern counties) from the introductory paragraph, as the Act makes no provision for excluding any part of Ireland from home rule.  Unfortunately, I don't know enough about this topic to be certain about what the basis for Ulster's oft-stated exclusion might actually have been, although these lecture notes say that it was eventually agreed that an amendment Act would be passed before the GoIA proper went into effect (see the fourth paragraph from the end).  Hopefully someone else can provide authoritative details.  Silverhelm 13:24, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: At the time I posted this question on this talk page, I was under the impression that partition was in the 1914 Act. But I don't think so any more . I'm just writing here again to 'retract' my question above.  Aaron McDaid (talk - contribs)  14:33, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  timing of the addition of partition 

message: I think the article is unbalanced. Interesting as the general history of Irish independence is, there are other articles on the subject. This should more information on the Act itself. Anyone have a good source describing how it was proposed to work? MathHisSci (talk) 21:29, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I doubt there'd be any serious objection to the inclusion of more detail on the bill's provisions. However, given that the bill, like all the other Home Rule Bills, was never actually implemented, the political struggles around it are far more important - in this case the way it arose from the struggle over the Parliament Act and then the ongoing argument about what was going to happen to the Six Counties. You can't always guarantee that people will easily be able to find the article they need, or that their knowledge level is such that a bit of general historical narrative won't make a few things clearer. That said, the narrative from about the end of WW1 onwards seems to me to belong in the article about the Fourth Home Rule Bill of 1920.Paulturtle (talk) 13:25, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

text: I have now done the splitting. Anybody who wants to expand the slimmed-down article, now's your chance.  Scolaire (talk) 17:17, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: regarding "All the extraneous details post-1914 should be merged into relevant articles": the attempts to implement the act post 1914 were not in themselves the "crisis", reason I give reference to them under the act again.Osioni (talk) 22:55, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: That's fine. Inevitably, trying to split an article so large and so entangled, some of the wrong things were going end up in the wrong articles. Thanks for fixing that.  Scolaire (talk) 12:30, 19 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  More about the Act, less general history 

message: At the moment the first sentence says that the Act was "intended to provide self-government (Home rule) for Ireland within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. I feel that the link followed by a bracketed link looks clunky, but more pertinently, the two articles linked to are really on the same topic, so it's pointless to link to both. Given that we are told it is known as the "Home Rule Bill", I think it makes more sense to say "...intended to provide home rule (self-government) for Ireland...", but the question is: which term should be linked, and which article should it be linked to?  Scolaire (talk) 12:41, 19 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I have opted to link to Home rule, and I am changing the sentence to read "...to provide home rule (self-government within the United Kingdom) for Ireland", with UK linked to UKGBI. It reads better and will make more sense to the newbie reader.  Scolaire (talk) 08:45, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thanks for explaning Scolaire, I'm not going to get into a dispute on the decisions, but I suspect it is (often elsewhere), a convenient way (in the name of "tidiness"!!) of avoiding naming the state of affairs at the time by its real name. In fact for a new generation of (younger) readers who have learnt history (if at all) largely airbrushed, I see it as essential to have titles like UKGB&I, clearly linked, certainly on such lead pages as Irish Home Rule movement, or Home Rule crisis etc. Who would want to bother to look at a UK link? (ok, this 1914 Act page might be regarded as a sub-page). Greetings. Osioni (talk) 20:47, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Links in first sentence 

message: Might be worth a sentence or two to explain why the Irish Government had gone from running a surplus in 1893 to a deficit by WW1. Was it because of the cost of the buying-out of the landlords (Ashbourne Act 1887, Wyndham Act 1903) and other measures of the turn-of-the-century Unionist Government (light railway-building etc)? Or were there economic reasons, the 1890s being the nadir of a period of deflation (known at the time as the "Great Depression" until that title was appropriated by the 1930s)?Paulturtle (talk) 15:39, 19 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: If sources for the claimed deficit can be provided, it might be interesting material for inclusion under the land acts, history of railtransport in Ireland, Irish Parliamentary Party or their talk pages. Osioni (talk) 16:16, 19 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Finances 

message: The section on Partition currently begins, "At the Bill's third reading in the Commons on 21 May 1914 several members asked about a proposal to exclude the whole of Ulster for six years." I think it would be useful to say a little more about this proposal: where did it come from, who came up with it? Does anybody know a good source for this? — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 11:51, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Partition propsal 

message: "Asquith made a second attempt to implement Home Rule in 1917, with the calling of the Irish Convention chaired by Horace Plunkett." 
Surely he was out of office, replaced by Lloyd George, after December 1916?--Wehwalt (talk) 07:55, 20 July 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Have fixed.Paulturtle (talk) 05:44, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Asquith?