"A pity beyond all telling"

[FONT=&quot]"The Liberal Government, after all, is not the British nation, and the British nation will certainly see you righted. Your interests lie with Great Britain. You have helped her, and you have helped her Empire, and her Empire belongs just as much to you as it does to England. Stick to it, and trust the British people." [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]-Edward Carson, 1914[/FONT]




A little over a century since Pitt had united Ireland with Britain, the Third Home Rule bill was forced through the House of Lords by the Parliament Act. Thus began a struggle for power which would tear John Bull's Other Island apart, sending shock-waves through the Empire.


Across Europe, an attempt upon the life of Archduke Franz Ferdinand failed while he and his wife were on tour in Bosnia. The personal intercession of Franz with his father prevented a further escalation. Franz stressed the loyalty of the majority of the peoples of the Balkans. Though there were some calls for military conflict with Serbia, especially from the German Embassy, these were swiftly rejected. Personal correspondence between the Archduke and the German Emperor, then on a cruise in the North Sea, silenced the grumblings in the Reich that a perfect opportunity was being thrown away.


On the 18th of September 1914 the Third Home Rule Bill received Royal Assent. The Irish Parliament was to meet on the first Tuesday in September, 1915, at which point all Irish MPs at Westminster would vacate their seats, and an election for the remaining 42 MPs in the Imperial Parliament would occur. Redmond stood before the old Parliament building in triumph.


Redmond.jpg




Yet, at the very moment Redmond was celebrating the realisation of Parnell's dream, and Asquith that he had achieved what Gladstone himself could not, other forces were at work. In a farmhouse near Lisburn, a soldier looked across a table at a school teacher.
"This fight will be to the end you realise," said the soldier.
"And I welcome it," said the teacher. The final papers were exchanged, the fruits of long weeks of negotiation.

"Then we will clear the way."
"And we shall have our matryr." They stood. The soldier turned away, and walked slowly to the drinks cabinet.

"If you're still there when I turn around," he said, slowly taking out the family decanter, "I'll shoot you myself."
The school teacher grinned . "Póg ma thoin, Cornal." He left the house, mounted his horse and rode west, as the orange sun set amongst the clouds.
 
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I am getting excited, especially as I live not that far from Lisburn and btw you do know the British had plans to deal with all this, they had moved troops and ships to Northern Ireland incase of a Loyalist uprising
 
Hmm, a Loyalist uprising or Republicans seizing their chance to break into open conflict and finish what Home Rule starts? I have little doubt that if trouble does break out, it'll be three way - Home Rulers, Unionists and Republicans.
 
Hmm, a Loyalist uprising or Republicans seizing their chance to break into open conflict and finish what Home Rule starts? I have little doubt that if trouble does break out, it'll be three way - Home Rulers, Unionists and Republicans.

Indeed, a great twist in that last conversation!.
 
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Things stronger than Parliamentary majorities


"For the first time for more than two hundred and fifty years, one of the great political parties in this country has solemnly declared that it will assist Ulster in resisting by force what the Government mean to do. [HON. MEMBERS: "Shame."] The party which has given that declaration—I am going to speak quite frankly about it—the party which has made that declaration is, as it happens, the largest party in this House, and when you are teaching us to divide the United Kingdom into nationalities it is well to remember that that party has a majority of more than thirty of the representatives of England, the nationality which comprises three-fourths of the population, and raises more than three-fourths of the revenue of the United Kingdom. Whatever hon. Gentlemen opposite may think, I consider that that is serious."
-Andrew Bonar Law, Leader of His Majesty's Opposition.


Whatever may be said about mandates, hon. Gentlemen opposite have got no mandate for civil war. If they are going to fight an election the issue we will fight it on is whether hon. Gentlemen have a mandate for destroying the country or not. We are not going to give way to threats of violence. If we give way to one set of gentlemen why not to another? And why not to another then? It would be the destruction of civilisation in this country if we listened to threats of civil war. If that be the argument, then we had better face it at once. I do not believe myself, however sincere we think them, that hon. Gentlemen will really raise the issue which they propose, or that if they do they will get any sort of support among the people of England. We are going to proceed with this policy; we have passed the Bill into Law under the Parliament Act., The hon. Member who seconded the Resolution let the cat out of the bag, because he told us plainly that the whole trouble arose from the Parliament Act. We know that what it really all means is that hon. Gentlemen opposite wish to destroy the Parliament Act. They wish to put us back into the position from which we have rescued ourselves, which was that a Liberal majority in this House had not the same power as a Conservative majority. The present position is one which we mean to maintain at whatever cost. If hon. Members wish to live under a peaceful constitution in this country they will have to recognise that we are honest, that we are not cowards and that we intend to have the same rights in the State as they have themselves.
- H.H. Asquith, Prime Minister



The shouts and jeers echoed around the chamber. A last ditch attempt to exempt Ulster from the purview of the Irish Parliament had failed. Bonar Law had stormed out even as the count was read. He paced frantically in one of the great rooms of the 'Hotel Cecil'. The two brothers, Robert and James, now Salisbury, sat by the fire. Walter Long and Austen Chamberlain, his rivals for the leadership had been invited. Carson stood, looking out the window. Frost was settling outside.

"Bloody fool." No-one replied. After a long silence, Long ventured to speak.
"The Liberals have shot themselves in the foot. When the Irish Nationalists resign their seats next year, their majority goes with it. We can force a dissolution and win. Then we can pass a Bill to exempt Ulster."

"In a year's time there might not be an Ulster to save," Chamberlain retorted. "And even if we did pass such a law, do you really think Redmond would take any notice?"

"Besides," said Salisbury, "Asquith was right. This is bigger than even Ulster. Three years the Liberals have had the power to circumvent the constitution. And in three years they have achieved more than that humbug Gladstone did in thirty. Them and their pet proletarians." The final emphasis was Latin, not Marx.

"Oh come now," said Long, "I mean none of us were keen on it but they were elected with a platform and carried it out, just as we will." The silence returned.

Carson, spoke, still looking out the window. "I took a solemn convenant." His measured tones drew attention, held it tight. "As did many in this room. It is not wise to deny an oath to God." He turned, walked across the room, took his coat and hat from the stand. "And so, since I have no wish to go to hell," he opened the door, "I shall go to Ulster."
 
Well this is going to end really well, you have backed the Tories and Ulster into a corner and without a nice unifying war this can only end badly.
 
kaine

I have a very bad feeling about this. Not going to end well.

The last bit of the 1st post suggests to me that the hard-liners on both sides are planning something nasty between themselves to bring things to a bloody head.

Depending on whom was saying what when but sounds like either Carson or Redmond is being targeted.

Steve
 
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"Ireland is a country of anomalies, and one more or less does not particularly matter."


Redmond had hit the campaign trail hard. Already back in Ireland when the King had signed the Bill into law, even the autumn rains and winter cold couldn’t stop the reinvigorated fifty-eight year old. An electoral pact had already been agreed, the Liberals becoming quite adept at these by now. Under the Lloyd George- Redmond Pact, the Liberal Party would not stand in any seats of the new Irish Parliament. In return, the 42 remaining Westminster seats would be contested by the newly formed ‘Irish Liberal Party’, to be headed by the Presbyterian Sir James Brown Dougherty, one of Home Rule’s most venerable supporters. This was put to the test sooner than expected.

In November 1914 the MP for Londonderry city, David Cleghorn Hogg, died suddenly. He himself had won the seat in a by-election a year earlier, by just 56 votes. Located right on the border between Unionist and Nationalist power blocks, the seat was a bell-weather, the first test of the parties since the passage of the Home Rule Bill. The convention, that the Liberal candidate would be unopposed, was shattered.

The following election was counter-intuitive, even in a country full of contradictions. Sir James, the ordained Presbyterian minister and long time proponent of Home Rule, was challenged by the brilliant Denis Henry, a Roman Catholic, Jesuit-educated barrister, and determined Ulster Unionist. The stakes were high. For the Nationalists, a victory would be a bulwark against Unionist cries for partition, a popular mandate driving the prospective enclave from the river Foyle, perhaps even as far east as the Bann. In the face of the clear unviability of such an enclave, the notion could not hold. For the Unionists, a victory in Londonderry would be a democratic rejection of the Liberal plan, a Catholic MP proof against allegations of stoking sectarian division. In many ways, the election was the last throw of the dice for Walter Long and the other Tories who favoured a measured, constitutional solution to the crisis, albeit a very different one from Asquith and Redmond. Rumours flew around the city through December. Some said Henry was to be excommunicated, that he was not a real Irishman, having been seduced by the trapping of the bar. Others saw Dougherty, the seventy year old professor of Logic, as having little to do with the proud, young country they hoped was emerging. It was even whispered he was a tee-totaller. The result was close, but ultimately decisive.



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Londonderry City by-election January 7th, 1915


  
Sir James Brown Dougherty, Liberal Party       7335
Denis Henry, Conservative and Unionist Party   7020
In his victory speech, the quiet professor could not help but smile as he put the final boot into his Unionist opponents. "Today we have seen the will of the people of Derry."
 
kaine

By any chance was that bi-election OTL as well? It sounds all too likely a Presbyterian supporter of home rule opposing a Catholic Unionist.;)

Steve
 
kaine

By any chance was that bi-election OTL as well? It sounds all too likely a Presbyterian supporter of home rule opposing a Catholic Unionist.;)

Steve

Haha, quite. They're both real people. In OTL Dougherty went unopposed. Two years later, Henry won Londonderry South against an independent Unionist challenger. However since in TTL there are precious few remaining opportunities to get into Parliament before the September deadline, I thought someone as ambitious as Henry (he ran for North Tyrone previously) would take the chance in his native county.

The Derry point is actually true too, Dougherty always referred to the city by that name according to Hansard.
 
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