Abstract
IN the time-hallowed nationalist characterisation, the British government of Ireland was despotic and cruel, systematically extirpating Irish cultural and economic life, and ruling through a sequence of repressive laws and ameliorative measures which were at best piecemeal and inadequate, at worst framed to delude and divide. This alternation of ‘coercion and conciliation’ persisted into the final years of the Union. During this phase, in the nationalist view, Liberal statesmen perpetrated the ultimate betrayal of Irish nationality — the partition of Ireland.1 These grave charges are answered from the Unionist side by their polar opposites: that Liberal governments failed in their elementary duties to suppress crime and enforce the law, surrendered to nationalist demands, betrayed and destroyed the United Kingdom.2
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Notes and References
Cf. P. S. O’Hegarty, A History of Ireland Under the Union (1952);
D. Macardle, The Irish Republic 1911–1925 (1937);
D. Gwynn, The History of Partition 1912–1925 (1950).
Cf. W. A. Phillips, The Revolution in Ireland 1906–1923 (1923).
D. W. Gutzke, ‘Rosebery and Ireland, 1898–1903: a Reappraisal’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, LIII, no. 127 (1980) p. 92.
Parliamentary Debates, 4th series, 174, col. 79.
C.B. A Life of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1973) p. 112.
MacDonnell to Bryce, 15 May 1906 (Bryce MSS, NLI, Dublin).
A. C. Hepburn, ‘The Irish Council Bill and the Fall of Sir Antony MacDonnell, 1906–7’, IHS, XVII (1971) 474.
Bryce to MacDonnell, 13 August 1906 (MacDonnell MSS, Bodleian Library, Oxford). Hepburn, ‘Irish Council Bill’, p. 475.
Cabinet Memorandum by Chief Secretary for Ireland, 5 March 1907 (PRO, CAB.37 87 26).
Dillon to Morley, 19 December 1906. F. S. L. Lyons, John Dillon. A Biography (1968) p. 291.
E.g. F. S. L. Lyons, Ireland Since the Famine (1971) p. 261.
The most detailed modern critique is in P. Jalland, The Liberals and Ireland: The Ulster Question in British Politics to 1914 (Brighton, 1980).
R. Fanning, ‘The Irish Policy of Asquith’s Government and the Cabinet Crisis of 1910’, in A. Cosgrove and D. McCartney (eds), Studies in Irish History Presented to R. Dudley Edwards (Dublin, 1979) pp. 279–303.
Birrell to Churchill, 26 August 1911 (Verney MSS, cited by Jalland, Liberals and Ireland, p. 59).
S. Koss, Asquith (1976) pp. 134–9.
W. S. Churchill, The World Crisis, vol. I (1923) p. 181.
Dillon to T. P. O’Connor, 2 October 1913 (Dillon MSS, Trinity College, Dublin). M. Laffan, The Partition of Ireland 1911–1925 (Dublin, 1983) p. 35.
Law to Lord Lansdowne, 8 October 1913 (Bonar Law MSS 33/5/68, House of Lords Record Office). D. G. Boyce, ‘British Conservative Opinion, the Ulster question, and the partition of Ireland, 1912–21’, IHS, XVII (1968).
R. Jenkins, Asquith (1964) pp. 281–2.
For a further exploration of the ‘British way’ in civil crisis politics, see C. Townshend, Britain’s Civil Wars. Counterinsurgency in the Twentieth Century (1986).
Cabinet Memorandum by Attorney General, ‘Power to Prevent Importation of Arms, &c, into Ulster’, 27 November 1913 (CAB.37 117 f. 81).
M. and E. Brock (eds), H. H. Asquith, Letters to Venetia Stanley (Oxford, 1982) no. 106.
Birrell to Nathan, 26 July 1914, and notes on Inquiry, in Ross file (Balfour MSS, British Library Add. MS 49821).
Asquith to Venetia Stanley, 24 July 1914. Letters, no. 103.
L. O Broin, Dublin Castle and the 1916 Rising (1970).
C. Townshend, Political Violence in Ireland (Oxford, 1983) pp. 303–10.
Dillon to Lloyd George, 11 June 1916 (Lloyd George MSS, House of Lords Record Office D/14/2/35).
R. B. McDowell, The Irish Convention 1917–18 (1970) p. 68.
D. G. Boyce and C. Hazlehurst, ‘The unknown Chief Secretary: H. E. Duke and Ireland, 1916–18’, IHS, xx (1977);
Lyons, Ireland Since the Famine, p. 386;
D. Fitzpatrick, Politics and Irish Life 1913–1921 (Dublin, 1977) p. 153.
C. Townshend, The British Campaign in Ireland 1919–1921: the development of political and military policies (Oxford, 1975) p. 9;
R. Holmes, The Little Field-Marshal. Sir John French (1981) pp. 338–53.
Townshend, British Campaign, pp. 43–6.
For the evolution of British opinion see D. G. Boyce, Englishmen and Irish Troubles. British Public Opinion and the Making of Irish Policy 1918–22 (1972).
Cabinet Memorandum by First Lord of the Admiralty, 24 September 1919 (G.T.8215, CAB.24 89).
Earl of Birkenhead, House of Lords 21 June 1921. 45 HL Deb., 5s, col. 690.
Townshend, British Campaign, p. 83.
N. Mansergh, ‘The Government of Ireland Act, 1920: Its Origins and Purposes. The Working of the “Official” Mind’, Historical Studies (1971) ed. J. G. Barry (Belfast, 1971).
C. Townshend, ‘The Irish Insurgency 1918–1921: the Military Problem’, in R. Haycock (ed.), Regular Armies and Insurgency (1979).
Macready to Sir Henry Wilson, 28 September 1920 (Anderson MSS, PRO C.O.904 188).
The case of the Boer leaders, pre-eminently Jan Smuts, offered an obvious precedent. (See, e.g. ‘Ireland’, The Round Table, No. 43, June 1921, p. 516.) But the British, however great their hostility towards the bittereinders, had to concede that their struggle originated as a lawful international war.
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© 1988 Charles Townshend
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Townshend, C. (1988). British Policy in Ireland, 1906–1921. In: Boyce, D.G. (eds) The Revolution in Ireland, 1879–1923. Problems in Focus Series. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18985-4_9
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