World War I Changes the Game
In August 1914, outside events suddenly changed the whole debate. World War I was breaking out in Europe, and Parliament wanted to solve the Irish problem quickly so that it could concentrate on the coming war. John Redmond, the leader of the Home Rulers, offered the United Kingdom the use of the Irish Volunteers for home defense in exchange for a provisional acceptance of the Home Rule Bill, leaving aside the Ulster question for the time being. Asquith's Parliament agreed, and the bill was put on the books with the proviso that it would not go into effect until a year had passed or the war was over. Both sides saw this as a way to move forward on the Ireland issue without coming to a final decision on Ulster.
To some Irish Nationalists, England's enemy was their friend. The IRB's Roger Casement went to Germany and asked for a brigade of Irish prisoners of war to fight against England. The prisoners told him to go to hell. The Germans weren't impressed, but they sent him home with a boatload of weapons anyway. The boat sank, and British troops captured Casement. He was executed for treason in 1916.
The act was immediately received as a tremendous step forward for Ireland, and Nationalists felt free for the first time in decades to express British patriotism. Thousands of young men from all parts of Ireland came forward to serve in the war, including many members of the UVF and the Irish Volunteers. In the early days, morale was high.
As the war ground on, however, Irish opinions began to turn. Not only did the war delay the enactment of home rule, but each month brought new lists of Irish casualties from the battlefields of Europe as well. The British military didn't accept Redmond's offer to use the Volunteers, nor did it arm them for home defense. It was rumored that the English draft would soon spread to Ireland. To make matters worse, a change in government put Ulster Unionist leaders in the British Cabinet, making Nationalists suspect that home rule might be delayed indefinitely. It was in this environment that the radicals in the IRB and Sinn Féin decided to make their move.
The Easter Rebellion (The Easter Rising)
On April 24, 1916, Easter Monday, a group of armed Irish Volunteers moved into the General Post Office in Dublin and occupied the building. Patrick Pearse (or Pádraig MacPiarais), a schoolteacher and Sinn Féin activist, read the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, a statement declaring Ireland's independence. Simultaneously, armed Volunteers took over other significant buildings throughout the city.
The General Post Office on O'Connell Street is one of Dublin's most famous landmarks. Today it is both a monument and a very busy post office. You can still see bullet holes in the wall, left there from the Easter Uprising. In Ireland, “going postal” has a whole different meaning.
The uprising was a surprise for Unionists and Nationalists alike; with home rule already on the books, armed revolution seemed a little extreme. British troops were quickly sent into the city, and soon much of central Dublin was in flames. The Volunteers lacked either the arms or the organization to put up a real military resistance to the British army, and after a week the last of the rebels surrendered. The fighting killed 450, and afterward more than 1,000 Irish were sent to prisons in England.
At the time of the Easter Rebellion, most Irish people — even Nationalists — didn't think violence was the answer to Ireland's problems. Most people were content to let the constitutional procedures take their course. Ensuing events, however, soon led to a change in opinions.
In May of 1916 the British army began executing leaders of the rebellion. They shot or hanged sixteen men. Most Irish thought that they had decided to execute the prisoners much too hastily and without fair trials. In addition, there were reports of bad treatment of imprisoned rebels. The British released the remaining prisoners by Christmas in 1916, primarily as a gesture to help bring the United States into the war, but that did little to quiet emotions in Ireland.
Independence to All but Six
Prime Minister Asquith appointed David Lloyd George (who would replace Asquith as prime minister later that year) to resolve the Irish home rule question once and for all. Lloyd George, relying heavily on the advice of Unionist associates, settled on a compromise in which Ireland got home rule but the six majority Protestant counties in the north remained part of the Union (the British Empire).
To southern Nationalists, this was unacceptable. To make matters worse, the British army seized the weapons from Irish Volunteer groups in the south but allowed UVF forces to keep theirs. People in the south began to believe that the Home Rule Bill on the books was a charade.
This gave Sinn Féin its big chance. Led by Éamon de Valera, a half-American mathematician who had taken part in the Easter Rebellion, Sinn Féin began to take Parliament seats away from the traditional home rule candidates. Sinn Féin's stated goal was an independent, unified Republic of Ireland. While the party was vague about how exactly it wanted to accomplish this, its message struck a chord with a young Irish population that was tired of World War I and the endless stalemate of the home rule debate.
Sinn Féin's parliamentary successes were limited to Nationalist hotbeds until the British government gave them two great boosts: first, it extended army conscription to Ireland, an act the Irish had dreaded for years; second, it arrested de Valera and other Sinn Féin leaders on vague and insubstantial charges of a plot against the government. Both actions were highly unpopular, and they convinced the majority of the Irish that the British government was not serious about letting Ireland run its own affairs.
