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The general elections of 1910 left Asquith's Liberal government dependent, to stay in office, on the votes of the Irish Nationalist MPs. The price of their support was a renewed attempt to drive through Home Rule for Ireland. That would recreate the Dublin parliament absorbed into Westminster over a century earlier. Gladstone had twice tried to introduce Home Rule but it had split the Liberals. The party then left it on the back burner. Now it was back on the front burner. The problem was that there was powerful opposition to Home Rule, in Britain, but also in Ireland, where Protestant opponents, especially in Ulster, went so far as to raise an armed force to resist it. That meant that Britain might find itself in the paradoxical position of having to use the military against people not for wanting to leave British rule, but to stay within it. The resistance had support in Britain, right up to the top of the Unionists, led by Andrew Bonar Law, the son of a Presbyterian minister from Antrim in Ulster. However, the Parliament Act, which Law referred to as the ‘Home Rule in disguise bill', meant that legislation could be driven through parliament without the agreement of the House of Lords, where the Unionists were in a powerful majority. Long debates led to no compromise. With the Parliament Act behind it, the Home Rule bill finally became law, as the Government of Ireland Act of 1914. But lack of support in the army for action against the Ulstermen left it uncertain it could ever be enforced. By then, though, other events had overtaken the whole issue. On 4 August, Britain joined what would become the Great War. Relations between Britain and Ireland would be relegated once more to the back burner. Illustration: Ulster Volunteer Force parading in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1914. Public domain. Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.
The year is 1912. The bitter arguments about Home Rule for Ireland are reaching boiling point. But with Ulster in uproar, the Tories encouraging mutiny and thousands of rifles pouring into Ireland, is the United Kingdom really heading for a bloody civil war? And was Sarajevo really the turning point that saved Britain from a sectarian inferno?In today's episode, Tom and Dominic are joined by friend of the show Dan Jackson to discuss the thrilling climax to the Home Rule saga, with appearances from characters such as H. H. Asquith, Andrew Bonar Law and Sir Edward Carson. We end with Britain and Ireland plunging into the abyss of the Great War - and the Easter Rising fast approaching...*The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*:Tom and Dominic are going on a U.S. tour in 2023, performing in Washington D.C. and New York! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.comTwitter: @TheRestHistory@holland_tom@dcsandbrook Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
By 1922, the Lloyd George government was challenged on many fronts, which led to a general election and a new prime minister, Andrew Bonar Law. Perhaps the biggest challenge was debt repayment to the United States.
Iain Dale talks to Theresa May's former speechwriter Keelan Carr about the so-called “Unknown Prime Minister” Andrew Bonar Law, who served as Prime Minister for only seven months 1922-23.
If Lord Derby was the ‘forgotten Prime Minister’ and Andrew Bonar-Law was the ‘Unknown Prime Minister’ then Robert Banks Jenkinson (1770-1828), 2nd Earl of Liverpool, who was Britain’s longest serving prime minister since William Pitt the Younger, surely deserves is own epithet. While not providing us with that, William Anthony Hay, Associate Professor of History at Mississippi State University has instead provided us with the definitive modern study of Lord Liverpool’s political career–Lord Liverpool: A Political Life (Boydell Press, 2018. In a beautifully written and produced book, one that any student of late 18th century and early 19th century British history will not wish to be without, Hay delineates for the reader Lord Liverpool’s manifold achievements and failures in office. From such seismic events as the War of 1812 with the United States, the endgame of the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna, the Corn Laws, the Peterloo Massacre, to the escalating contention over the issue of Catholic Emancipation. Hay’s book puts Liverpool’s career and his efforts at resisting change into context, bringing this period of British history into needed focus. It shows Liverpool as a defender of the eighteenth-century British constitution, documenting his efforts at adapting institutions to the challenges of war and then the very different post-1815 world. Despite being shaped by eighteenth-century assumptions, Liverpool emerges as one of the key individuals who laid the foundations for the nineteenth-century Britain that emerged from the Reform era. Charles Coutinho holds a doctorate in history from New York University. Where he studied with Tony Judt, Stewart Stehlin and McGeorge Bundy. His Ph. D. dissertation was on Anglo-American relations in the run-up to the Suez Crisis of 1956. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. It you have a recent title to suggest for a podcast, please send an e-mail to Charlescoutinho@aol.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
If Lord Derby was the ‘forgotten Prime Minister’ and Andrew Bonar-Law was the ‘Unknown Prime Minister’ then Robert Banks Jenkinson (1770-1828), 2nd Earl of Liverpool, who was Britain’s longest serving prime minister since William Pitt the Younger, surely deserves is own epithet. While not providing us with that, William Anthony Hay, Associate Professor of History at Mississippi State University has instead provided us with the definitive modern study of Lord Liverpool’s political career–Lord Liverpool: A Political Life (Boydell Press, 2018. In a beautifully written and produced book, one that any student of late 18th century and early 19th century British history will not wish to be without, Hay delineates for the reader Lord Liverpool’s manifold achievements and failures in office. From such seismic events as the War of 1812 with the United States, the endgame of the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna, the Corn Laws, the Peterloo Massacre, to the escalating contention over the issue of Catholic Emancipation. Hay’s book puts Liverpool’s career and his efforts at resisting change into context, bringing this period of British history into needed focus. It shows Liverpool as a defender of the eighteenth-century British constitution, documenting his efforts at adapting institutions to the challenges of war and then the very different post-1815 world. Despite being shaped by eighteenth-century assumptions, Liverpool emerges as one of the key individuals who laid the foundations for the nineteenth-century Britain that emerged from the Reform era. Charles Coutinho holds a doctorate in history from New York University. Where he studied with Tony Judt, Stewart Stehlin and McGeorge Bundy. His Ph. D. dissertation was on Anglo-American relations in the run-up to the Suez Crisis of 1956. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. It you have a recent title to suggest for a podcast, please send an e-mail to Charlescoutinho@aol.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
If Lord Derby was the ‘forgotten Prime Minister’ and Andrew Bonar-Law was the ‘Unknown Prime Minister’ then Robert Banks Jenkinson (1770-1828), 2nd Earl of Liverpool, who was Britain’s longest serving prime minister since William Pitt the Younger, surely deserves is own epithet. While not providing us with that, William Anthony Hay, Associate Professor of History at Mississippi State University has instead provided us with the definitive modern study of Lord Liverpool’s political career–Lord Liverpool: A Political Life (Boydell Press, 2018. In a beautifully written and produced book, one that any student of late 18th century and early 19th century British history will not wish to be without, Hay delineates for the reader Lord Liverpool’s manifold achievements and failures in office. From such seismic events as the War of 1812 with the United States, the endgame of the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna, the Corn Laws, the Peterloo Massacre, to the escalating contention over the issue of Catholic Emancipation. Hay’s book puts Liverpool’s career and his efforts at resisting change into context, bringing this period of British history into needed focus. It shows Liverpool as a defender of the eighteenth-century British constitution, documenting his efforts at adapting institutions to the challenges of war and then the very different post-1815 world. Despite being shaped by eighteenth-century assumptions, Liverpool emerges as one of the key individuals who laid the foundations for the nineteenth-century Britain that emerged from the Reform era. Charles Coutinho holds a doctorate in history from New York University. Where he studied with Tony Judt, Stewart Stehlin and McGeorge Bundy. His Ph. D. dissertation was on Anglo-American relations in the run-up to the Suez Crisis of 1956. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. It you have a recent title to suggest for a podcast, please send an e-mail to Charlescoutinho@aol.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
If Lord Derby was the ‘forgotten Prime Minister’ and Andrew Bonar-Law was the ‘Unknown Prime Minister’ then Robert Banks Jenkinson (1770-1828), 2nd Earl of Liverpool, who was Britain’s longest serving prime minister since William Pitt the Younger, surely deserves is own epithet. While not providing us with that, William Anthony Hay, Associate Professor of History at Mississippi State University has instead provided us with the definitive modern study of Lord Liverpool’s political career–Lord Liverpool: A Political Life (Boydell Press, 2018. In a beautifully written and produced book, one that any student of late 18th century and early 19th century British history will not wish to be without, Hay delineates for the reader Lord Liverpool’s manifold achievements and failures in office. From such seismic events as the War of 1812 with the United States, the endgame of the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna, the Corn Laws, the Peterloo Massacre, to the escalating contention over the issue of Catholic Emancipation. Hay’s book puts Liverpool’s career and his efforts at resisting change into context, bringing this period of British history into needed focus. It shows Liverpool as a defender of the eighteenth-century British constitution, documenting his efforts at adapting institutions to the challenges of war and then the very different post-1815 world. Despite being shaped by eighteenth-century assumptions, Liverpool emerges as one of the key individuals who laid the foundations for the nineteenth-century Britain that emerged from the Reform era. Charles Coutinho holds a doctorate in history from New York University. Where he studied with Tony Judt, Stewart Stehlin and McGeorge Bundy. His Ph. D. dissertation was on Anglo-American relations in the run-up to the Suez Crisis of 1956. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. It you have a recent title to suggest for a podcast, please send an e-mail to Charlescoutinho@aol.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
“I had been brought up under the union jack and had no desire to live under any other emblem.” The words of C.P. Crane, a Tipperary R.M., in 1923, would have found an echo in the hearts of many of Waterford’s loyalist community. By 1926 their population had declined by 40% compared to 1911 and those who survived now lived in a different environment. In 1912 the small but influential loyalist community in Waterford had been vocal in their opposition to Home Rule. Led by Sir William Goff-Davis Goff and Dr Henry Stuart O’Hara, Church of Ireland bishop of the united dioceses of Waterford, Lismore, Cashel and Emly, they had publicly protested against the Home Rule Bill. On October 2 that year Dr O’Hara had led a prayer service in Christchurch which concluded with a signing of the Ulster Covenant by some of his flock – possibly a unique event in Munster. By 1914 they were very much aware that Home Rule for at least three provinces was inevitable and that in the event of a civil war they were extremely vulnerable. Those who attended an anti-Home Rule event had their names noted by a local newspaper which led to sharp exchanges in the House of Commons between the Conservative leader, Andrew Bonar-Law and John Redmond, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party and MP for Waterford. The outbreak of WW1 changed that, at least temporarily, and they responded enthusiastically to the call to arms. They paid a high price for their loyalty to King and Empire. After the war, they again found themselves vulnerable, especially between the Truce (July 1921) and the end of the Civil War (May 1923), a period in which they were subject to opportunistic violence, a republican campaign of ‘Big House’ burnings and social disorder. This paper looks at the experiences of Waterford’s loyalist community during the revolutionary decade. Pat McCarthy, a native of Waterford city, holds a PhD and an MBA from UCD and worked for many years in the pharmaceutical manufacturing sector. He is the author of The Irish Revolution 1912-23, Waterford (Four Courts Press, 2015), Waterford and the 1916 Rising (Waterford city and county council 2016) and has published extensively in the Irish Sword (journal of the Military History Society of Ireland) and Decies (journal of the Waterford Archaeological and Historical Society).
The one hundredth anniversary of the start of the First World war looms on the horizon. 1914 is a date forged into the British consciousness, just as it's carved into monuments the length and breadth of the UK and many places beyond. With that awareness comes an understanding that it was the war to end all wars, shocking the culture, politics, and societies of Europe, but particularly Britain, out of their comfortable progress and reshaping everything. But in this series Michael Portillo challenges that notion. Looking at a series of themes, the suffrage movement, the Irish question, the decline of the liberal party and the arts, he argues that to a large extent Britain was already in a state of flux by 1913 and many of the developments we think of as emanating from or being catalysed by the war, were actually in full flow. If pre-war politics is remembered for anything it's the dying days of the Liberal party as a dominant force in British politics. But Michael turns his attention to the Tories of the day, the party that appeared to be dicing with political death as tensions over Home Rule in Ireland turned from potential to reality. The ambitions and manoeuvring of their leader Andrew Bonar Law make sobering reading for a former Tory politician. Producer: Tom Alban.
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