Dublin, April 1916. As the smoke starts to clear the damage done by the savage fighting becomes clear. A week earlier, a shadowy body known as the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) had tried to take advantage of Britain's distraction by the First World War, and had launched an uprising with the aim of creating an independent Irish republic. Now, with the city in ruins and the surviving rebels captured by the British army, it must have seemed that their very lives were in danger.
Hard as it is to believe now, there were many who doubted whether Ireland could be kept in the United Kingdom. Despite being ruled by Britain for 700 years, Ireland was Britain's most troublesome colony. Centuries of armed rebellions had all failed, so in the 19th century Irish nationalism was instead channelled through the route of parliamentary reform; persuading the parliament in Westminster to give Ireland its own assembly. However, in the mainly Protestant north of Ireland, the idea of being ruled by a Catholic-dominated legislature in Dublin caused shivers of fear.
Tensions reached new heights in the 1910s. The Liberal government of Herbert Henry Asquith was dependent on the support of the Irish Parliamentary Party in the House of Commons, and therefore was obliged to press ahead with Home Rule. The Conservative party, reeling from two close election defeats in 1910, responded by backing the calls of Unionists in Ulster for exclusion from Home Rule. In desperation, and encouraged by the Conservatives, the Unionists began to arm to resist rule from Dublin. The nationalists responded by also raising forces.
By 1914, the situation seemed grim. Neither side would back down. When Asquith ordered the army to prepare to disarm the Ulster Unionists and uphold the Home Rule Bill, army officers indicated they would resign rather than carry out their orders. And in what seemed the final straw, three civilians were shot and killed by the army and Dublin Metropolitan Police in July 1914 during the interception of a nationalist gun-running mission. Civil war was now feared to be days away.
But it was another shooting in that long summer which saved Ireland the trauma of a civil war, and thus kept it inside the United Kingdom. The heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was killed by Bosnian Serbs, precipitating an international crisis which plunged Europe into war. The Home Rule Act was suspended until the conflict finished, and both the Irish National Volunteers and the Ulster Volunteer Force pledged their services to the government. It seemed as if Britain had pulled back from the brink.
Then came the Easter Rising of 1916. Irish popular opinion was outraged: the rebels had brought huge damage down on Dublin, and threatened to wreck the cause of nationalism for good. The army was also furious, and wanted to execute the ringleaders to send a message that Britain would not tolerate treason. In the nick of time, Asquith managed to halt the executions, instead imprisoning the rebels for the duration of the war. He knew that public opinion would swing behind republicanism if Britain gave them martyrs.
Instead, it was left to Asquith's successor as Prime Minister, David Lloyd-George, to find a solution to the Irish Question when the Great War ended in 1918. He came up with an ingenious compromise; the nine counties of Ulster were to be excluded from the new devolved Irish Parliament until 1930, when they would start to send representatives to Dublin. As for the rest of Ireland, it would recommence sending MPs to the Westminster Parliament at this date. It seemed a torturous compromise, and there was a fresh wave of bombings from the IRB, still desperately trying to gain independence for Ireland. But most of Ireland's politicians were exhausted by the deadlock, and the deal was accepted in 1922.
And after all the despair and stress, the deal worked. True, it cost Lloyd-George the premiership, as his Conservative allies were disgusted at the apparent betrayal of the Ulster Protestants. But the new regime in Dublin, headed by rebel-turned-politician Eamon de Valera, proved competent enough in the face of chronic economic crises, and there was no wholesale repression of Protestants in public life. Attacks by the IRB soon ceased as the organisation withered away, and most Irish people seemed content with the stability their new status had granted them. There was also a great deal of cross-over with Ulster, as many organisations, such as the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), government departments, churches, and sporting bodies, were run on an all-Ireland basis. But in 1930, when Irish MPs returned to Westminster and Ulster sent its first delegates to Dublin, many feared a return to division.
What staved off further crisis was the Second World War, which had a unifying effect on British society as a whole. Although de Valera was known to be cool towards the idea of war with Germany, he nonetheless gave his backing first to Neville Chamberlain and then Winston Churchill in the war effort. But the Second World War unified British society at a level deeper than high politics, and by the end of the conflict any doubts that the two didn't share a common future were resolutely buried. Historians still doubt whether Britain could have kept going without access to the Atlantic ports of Berehaven and Queenstown, vital lifelines in the Battle of the Atlantic. The Irish regiments of the army played a vital role in the war effort, with many Irishmen serving in the British army. The war also helped to bring former rebels in from the cold; former IRB commander Michael Collins struck fear into the hearts of the Nazis in occupied Europe with his running of SOE, fighting guerilla wars alongside resistance groups. When the war finished, the Irish Labour Party swept both the Westminster seats and the Irish Assembly elections, ending the dominance of the old Irish Parliamentary Party. Defeated, De Valera accepted a peerage as Baron de Valera of Ennis in County Clare; this was the ultimate symbol that Ireland had returned to the fold of normal British life.
The second half of the 20th century continued this pattern, with Ireland sharing in Britain's economic ups and downs, but benefiting enormously overall from the larger economy of its neighbour. The Irish Assembly also proved a useful springboard for politicians who aimed to make it big at Westminster. Liam Cosgrave's experience of managing Ireland's economy made him a valuable addition to Edward Heath's 1970-74 Conservative government, although he later clashed with Margaet Thatcher as one of the leading Wets in her first cabinet. Mary Robinson was one of the driving forces behind Harold Wilson's landmark social reforms, while Charles Haughey's undoubted economic experience was not enough to prevent his lurid private life becoming a damaging distraction for Labour in the 1980s. David Trimble's support for John Major kept his beleaguered government going through the 1990s. And who could forget the unbeatable partnership of Tony Blair and his Foreign Secretary, Bertie Ahern? Or, critics might say, who could forget their selling of honours and dodgy property dealings? More recently, Michael Martin's anti-austerity programme in Labour-run Ireland is proving an ever more embarrassing contrast with David Cameron's administration, with few expecting Peter Robinson to be back in Dublin Castle after May's elections.
But this success story has not been without its pitfalls. It took many Unionists a long time to adapt to the idea of the Irish Assembly, with severe rioting and civil unrest in Belfast and Derry in the late 1960s and early 1970s requiring the army to help the RIC restore order. Mercifully this unrest abated, but not before the career of promising Unionist politician Brian Faulkner had been cut short by his poor response to the crisis. Controversial Unionist politician Ian Paisley also threatened a return to the divisions of the past; in response, voters kept the Irish Unionist Party locked out of Dublin Castle for a generation. The IRB has also re-emerged from the shadows from time to time, most noticeably when it destroyed Nelson's Pillar in Dublin in 1966, and in sporadic attacks against the RIC and the army. But the cause of republicanism in Ireland is going nowhere any time soon. The main republican party, Sinn Fein, polls terribly at both Westminster and Dublin elections. The true mindset in the country was seen during the Queen's visit to Ireland in 2011, the first since George V in 1911, and widely considered a success. Perhaps the best indication that Ireland is here to stay was given by the Queen herself, when she used the trip to make her recently married grandson, Prince William, the Duke of Cork.
P.S. First Ministers of Ireland, 1919-2014
1919-1930- Eamon de Valera (IPP)
1930-1934- William Cosgrave (IUP)
1934-1946- Eamon de Valera (IPP)
1946-1950- William Norton (ILP)
1950-1962- Basil Brooke (IUP)
1962-1970- Jack Lynch (ILP)
1970-1974- Brian Faulkner (IUP)
1974-1978- Gerry Fitt (ILP)
1978-1982- Ian Paisley (IUP)
1982-1998- Dick Spring (ILP)
1998-2002- Bertie Ahern (ILP)
2002-2006- Mark Durkan (ILP)
2006-2010- Peter Robinson (IUP)
2010-2014- Michael Martin (ILP)
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I'm sure you'll all be pleased to see I haven't stopped writing these posts, but finding the time is getting harder and harder! This one has been an on-off concern since mid-2012. There are more in the pipeline, so watch this space!
