The Bachelor’s Walk Incident


When the weapons that had been landed in Howth were being brought into Dublin city, the Dublin Metropolitan Police and the British Army confronted the Volunteers. They managed to escape capture, but shortly afterwards a crowd of civilians jeered and threw rocks at the British soldiers. Though no official order was given, the soldiers fired on the crowd, killing four and injuring 37. The public outcry at the incident caused a surge of recruitment to the Irish Volunteers and heightened the sense of impending crisis.


World War I Puts Everything on Hold


Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914. For the British government, the Ulster Crisis was now a secondary issue. Home Rule, Asquith informed Redmond, would have to be put back until after the war.


Despite the disagreements over the Bill and the outbreak of war, Home Rule was signed into law by King George V on 18 September. The legislation was then suspended until the war had ended and the question of which counties would be partitioned was agreed between nationalists and unionists.


Carson vowed that the UVF would loyally support Britain’s war effort and asked his men to join the British Army. These men would form part of the 36th Ulster Division, which suffered heavy losses at the Battle of the Somme in 1916.


Redmond, having achieved Home Rule for Ireland, gave a famous speech to the Irish Volunteers in Woodenbridge, Co. Wicklow, on 29 September. He appealed to them to join the war effort ‘in defence of right, freedom and religion’. Redmond believed that the British were fighting a just war, and like Carson in the north he wished to demonstrate his loyalty to the British Empire.


Redmond’s speech split the Volunteers. The majority of the 180,000 men sided with Redmond and renamed themselves the National Volunteers. A smaller group of approximately 11,000 led by MacNeill and the IRB broke away, retaining the name Irish Volunteers. Most of these men held strong republican views and believed that Home Rule would not give Ireland real political independence. An estimated 30,000 National Volunteers joined the British Army. While they were fighting in Europe and further afield, the IRB was planning to take advantage of this international conflict to strike at British rule in Ireland.


The Government of Ireland Act, 1920


World War I ended in November 1918. By that time support for Home Rule had dried up and a new wave of nationalism was sweeping Ireland after the 1916 Rising. In 1920 British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, in an attempt to finally solve the Ulster Question, decided to create two Home Rule parliaments in Ireland – a policy he dubbed ‘Home Rule all round’. Initially reluctant to accept a Home Rule parliament of their own, the Unionists, now under the leadership of James Craig, soon saw the advantage of having a parliament in Belfast. This guaranteed their independence from a Dublin-based and, as they saw it, Catholic-dominated government. Under the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, the Northern Ireland parliament opened in Belfast in June 1921, signalling the permanent partition of Ireland.


74


LEAVING CERTIFICATE HISTORY


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