"Fight and be Right"
- Thread starter EdT
- Start date
Chapter 5
“The modes of thought of men, the whole outlook on affairs, the grouping of parties, all have encountered violent and tremendous changes in the deluge of the world. But as the deluge subsides and the waters fall short, we see the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone emerging once again. The integrity of their quarrel is one of the few institutions that has been unaltered in the cataclysm which has swept the world.”
__________________________________________________
(Taken from ‘The Fall of the Liberal Party’ by Steven Dyson, Peterson 1964)
“By adding Parnell’s eighty-five MPs to his own three hundred and thirty-four members, Gladstone hoped that, even given a number of pro-Union Liberal rebels voting with the Conservatives, he could pass a Home Rule measure that could be subsequently muscled through the House of Lords in a more dramatic version of the 1884 Reform controversy. It had happened between 1830 and 1832 over Reform; he reasoned that it could happen again, even if the Tories refused to cooperate, even if Queen Victoria was not King William IV. The repeal of the Act of Union would be his new crusade, dispelling the notions that both the Party was falling to the ‘unauthorised programme’ of Chamberlain and that aged seventy-five he was no longer up to great challenges...
Yet Gladstone had underestimated the scale of the Liberal opposition to his new course; a factor that Conservatives had detailed knowledge of, as the Queen was passing on to Northcote the private letters sent to her by George Goschen, Chamberlain and Hartington[1]. The three men represented the full range of Unionist sentiment on the Liberal benches. Goschen, the financier, thought Home Rule would be economically disastrous for both Ireland and Britain. Chamberlain was influenced by Imperialist beliefs as strong as his Radical ones, and the aristocratic Hartington looked upon the Irish question as primarily one of defending landowning rights[2]. Each man had a significant body of support in the Liberal Party, and their secession from it would drastically reduce Gladstone’s majority in the Commons. The question everyone asked in the late summer of 1885 however, was would it diminish it enough?”
(Taken from ‘Britain, from Churchill to Chamberlain’ by Peter Moorcroft, Star 1983)
“On September 4th, the Duke of Richmond met Hartington at his home on Arlington St. They agreed that there was little obstacle to their acting together to resist Home Rule, but a formal alliance was not practical for the time being. Negotiations did continue between Goschen and Churchill over an electoral armistice between his followers and the Conservatives in certain seats...
Three days later, Northcote gave his first speech on the issue, and any hope that Gladstone might have had that the Conservatives would support Home Rule was immediately dashed. ‘Once set up, the legislature at Dublin will soon make an independent nation’ Northcote predicted, ‘whole flotillas of the Royal Navy will be needed to guard the western approaches of an island controlled, filled, possibly prepared and equipped, by a Government that hates you bitterly!’ Yet he was entirely trumped in his militant Unionism by an astonishing speech that Randolph Churchill delivered in the Ulster Hall in Belfast on September 15th...”
(Taken from ‘Lord Randolph Churchill’ by Timothy James, Picador 1978)
“Churchill had never proclaimed much sympathy for Ulster, either in public or in private. He despised the Ulster Tories in the house, and he sharply criticised Northcote’s visit to Belfast in 1882. In the spring, he had even written to Gorst complaining that ‘those foul Ulster Tories have always been the ruin of our party’[3]. However, Churchill soon saw, almost before anyone else, the significance of Ulster. He saw in that deeply Protestant country the ‘political dynamite’ about which he spoke so often.
The Churchills had impeccable Protestant credentials going back to the Glorious Revolution, and in late August he decided to cross the Irish Sea to visit Ulster and whip up Unionist support there. He succeeded beyond his wildest expectations. Landing at Larne, he was mobbed by an appreciative crowd; when he arrived at the Ulster Hall to make his speech the next day, a vast gathering of belligerent Ulsterman filled the building and the streets around. The Orange mood was one of uncompromising resistance to Home Rule, and Churchill echoed this mood, playing what was called the ‘Orange Card’ so vociferously that if taken literally it may have been seen as an incitement to civil war.
‘In that dark hour there will not be wanting those of position and influence in England who will be willing to cast in their lot with you and who, whatever the result, will share your fortunes and your fate. For if the Union is repealed, there will not be wanting those who at that exact moment, when the time is come- if that time should come – will address you in words which are best expressed by one of our great English poets:
The combat deepens; on ye brave/Who Rush to Glory or the grave,
Wave, Ulster, all thy banners wave/And charge with all thy chivalry!’[4]
A roar of excited cheering greeted this conclusion, and Churchill returned home having lit a formidable fire. Three weeks later, Parliament returned from its summer recess. On October 5th, Gladstone finally moved the First Reading of the Irish Home Rule Bill in his grand, lilting tone, in a speech lasting more than three hours. The battle had begun.”
(Taken from ‘Britain, from Churchill to Chamberlain’ by Peter Moorcroft, Star 1983)
“Three days after the first debate, Northcote and Hartington appeared together on the same public platform at Her Majesty’s Theatre in the Haymarket. It was the first manifestation of what Churchill was already calling the ‘Unionist Party’. The doors had to open half an hour early because of the huge press of people who then packed the house. Two vast Union Flags adorned the back of the stage. The event was not a success. Hartington began by saying how ‘noble and generous’ Gladstone was, but his name merely drew boos and hisses from the largely Tory audience. The reception was enough to persuade the fastidious Whigs to drop the idea of public meetings altogether[5]...
The Tory wooing of Radicals passed off slightly better, not least because of Chamberlain’s willingness to swallow some pride. Three days after Hartington and Northcote’s meeting Churchill and Chamberlain shared a platform together in Birmingham. After Chamberlain gave a long speech extolling the need to ‘put country before Party every time’, Churchill announced, to great cheering, that ‘no Liberal shall suffer in his electoral prospects by reason of the part he has taken in the Defence of the Empire.’ It was an offer of a free run in their constituencies to any Liberal who voted against the Home Rule Bill...”
(Taken from ‘The Fall of the Liberal Party’ by Steven Dyson, Peterson 1964)
“While the Home Rule debate continued in the House of Commons at an unusually high level or oratory on both sides, frantic negotiations went on behind the scenes. There was a certain unreality in the Gladstone-Chamberlain talks; the Liberal whips were sure that they could break Chamberlain’s hold in Birmingham, but Chamberlain confounded the Government by demanding and winning an overwhelming vote of confidence from the local Liberal Parties in mid November. Outside his city however, the National Liberal Federation turned against him. Chamberlain, although defeated in the country, salvaged Birmingham from the wreckage and established a unionist ‘National Radical Federation’. On the Whig front, Gladstone effectively abandoned Goschen as a lost cause but persisted in trying to win Hartington back around through his friend and Hartington’s brother Frederick Cavendish[6]. In this he was relatively successful. Hartington would not relent from his staunch opposition to Home Rule but pledged not to abandon his Party either...
Further splits came, but this time they were from the Opposition benches. During the Commons debate on the second reading of the Home Rule Bill on November 17th, Parnell revealed that a senior Conservative had decided to endorse Home Rule. Further investigation revealed the turncoat to be the Earl of Carnarvon[7]... The eve of the first major test of the Home Rule Bill saw the situation extraordinarily confused; despite the defections of Chamberlain and Goschen and the opposition of Hartington, it was by no means certain that they would carry enough Liberals with them to defeat the Second Reading...”
(Taken from ‘Britain, from Churchill to Chamberlain’ by Peter Moorcroft, Star 1983)
“Late at night on November 23rd, Gladstone rose in the House to wind up the momentous debate. Pale to the lips and exhausted by the intrigues of the past two months, he brought the debate to its conclusion with one of his greatest speeches;
‘Ireland stands at your bar, expectant, hopeful, supplicant. She asks a blessed oblivion of the past, and in that oblivion our interest is even deeper then hers. So I hail the demand of Ireland. Think, I beseech you, think wisely, think not for a moment but for all the years that are to come, before you reject this Bill.’
The House proceeded to the division immediately after this peroration. The crowd pouring into the ‘No’ lobby found John Bright sitting alone. He was asked why he had not listened to the Prime Minister’s speech. ‘Once I had heard him I could not have trusted myself.’ was the reported answer. So strong had been the speech that anxiety increased among the opponents of the Bill. Members gathered outside the lobbies, eagerly counting with the tellers. Suddenly, there was a cheer from the Bar, and pandemonium broke out when it was announced that the Bill had been passed by the smallest of margins, 329 votes to 323[8]. 88 Liberals had voted with the Conservatives; to his eternal embarrassment, Hartington had elected to abstain along with several other Whigs[9]...”
(Taken from ‘The Fall of the Liberal Party’ by Steven Dyson, Peterson 1964)
“The Home Rule Bill’s successful passage through the Commons at the Second Reading was only the first hurdle. However long the Conservatives might delay proceedings through the same obstructionist tactics that the Irish members had used in the previous Parliament, eventually the Bill would reach the House of Lords. Here, Gladstone hoped that he would be able to compel its passage. Even at this early stage however, he had a premonition that matters may not prove to be as simple. As the New Year dawned, Frederick Cavendish asked Gladstone what he would do if the Peers rejected the Bill. Gladstone laughed; ‘I shall ennoble five hundred chimney sweeps, and they shall pass the bill for me’ he replied. For all Gladstone’s confidence however, the solution of a mass creation of Peers was not in his hands. Only the Queen could take such a step, and she was certainly of no mind to do so unless given no choice...”
(Taken from “The Encyclopaedia of British Politics”, ed Fred Timms, Star 1976)
“SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT: Agreement signed by Unionists in Ulster in January 1886 emphasising their loyalty to the British Crown and their determination not to accept any imposition of Home Rule on Ireland by the British Government. The passage of the Home Rule Act through the House of Commons in December 1885 caused panic in Unionist circles in Ireland, particularly in Ulster, where the majority of the population were Protestant. As part of a general campaign against Home Rule, the Orange Order and the Unionist leader Major Edward Saunderson decided to organise a show of opposition to the plans by encouraging ‘loyalists’ to sign a Covenant, deliberately named to evoke the document signed by the Scottish Covenanters in the 17th Century. In the end, over three quarters of a million people signed the Covenant, some in their own blood[10]...”
(Taken from “Irish Terrorism; 1880-1940” by Eoghan Matthews, Republic 1982)
“The new year brought fresh omens. Fresh from signing their covenant, Ulstermen began to drill with wooden guns in Antrim glens. On January 5th, an advertisement appeared in the Belfast Morning News: “WANTED: Men trained in military drill. Loyalist please. Own gun helpful”. There were rumours that half a million British loyalists were getting ready to cross the Irish Sea to support an armed rebellion. Propaganda proliferated on both sides. An oblique paragraph appeared in the Liberal-supporting Pall Mall Gazette under the headline “MR PARNELL’S RETREAT” announcing for no particular reason that the Irish leader was residing in a particular house in Eltham and might be observed any day ‘riding out towards Sidcup’, amongst other movements... [11]“
(Taken from ‘Lord Randolph Churchill’ by Timothy James, Picador 1978)
“On January 7th, the Conservative leader had dinner at Churchill’s house to discuss the ongoing obstruction of the committee stage of the Home Rule Bill. Randolph was in roaring spirits, and when the guests entered the room they were appalled to discover that the place of the Leader of the Opposition was marked by a china Dresden goat. The meal passed off without too much embarrassment however, and afterwards Churchill, Northcote, John Gorst and Balfour set to the matter at hand.
Northcote had been subdued the entire evening; Balfour privately confided to Lady Churchill that he felt the goat had been a step too far. When Churchill went upstairs to find a paper they had been discussing, Northcote sank into a chair, his groans attracting the attention of John Gorst in the next room. Gorst got him onto a sofa and doctors were sent for, but at 10.46 PM Northcote expired of a heart attack in the presence of Churchill, Lady Churchill, Balfour and Gorst[12]...”
__________________________________________________
[1] The Queen, a staunch opponent of Home Rule and an implacable enemy of Gladstone, did this OTL as well.
[2] OTL Hartington was also motivated by the death of his brother in the Phoenix Park murders, but ITTL this hasn’t happened and Frederick Cavendish is actually one of Gladstone’s most fervent supporters. This makes the Hartingtonian Whigs slightly less belligerent then OTL, willing to vote against Gladstone but not necessarily split the party.
[3] Churchill said this OTL as well, although slightly later.
[4] Churchill gave a similarly inflammatory speech in Belfast during OTL’s Home Rule crisis.
[5] An incident similar to this happened OTL, although Hartington was more fixed in his anti-Home Rule campaign and so swallowed his objections.
[6] OTL Cavendish was killed in Phoenix Park; here, he’s around to try to split Hartington from the Liberal Unionists.
[7] Carnarvon resigned from Salisbury’s brief 1885 Government OTL because of the Irish issue.
[8] OTL, the Bill failed by 341 votes to 311; ITTL the better Liberal result in the 1885 election and Hartington’s hesitation as well as Salisbury’s absence mean that the Unionists are just pipped at the post.
[9] Hartington voted against ITTL; 102 Liberals joined him unlike the 88 who came out ITTL.
[10] OTL, an ‘Ulster Covenant’ was popularised in the 1912 Home Rule crisis; the equivalent ITTL is rather more successful as it is signed by Unionists across Ireland.
[11] Similar adverts and articles appeared in May 1886 OTL.
[12] OTL Northcote died in a similar way in 1887; he had a serious heart condition and doctors later said that they were amazed that he had survived as long as he had. ITTL the added stress of the Home Rule crisis has not helped his health.
“The modes of thought of men, the whole outlook on affairs, the grouping of parties, all have encountered violent and tremendous changes in the deluge of the world. But as the deluge subsides and the waters fall short, we see the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone emerging once again. The integrity of their quarrel is one of the few institutions that has been unaltered in the cataclysm which has swept the world.”
__________________________________________________
(Taken from ‘The Fall of the Liberal Party’ by Steven Dyson, Peterson 1964)
“By adding Parnell’s eighty-five MPs to his own three hundred and thirty-four members, Gladstone hoped that, even given a number of pro-Union Liberal rebels voting with the Conservatives, he could pass a Home Rule measure that could be subsequently muscled through the House of Lords in a more dramatic version of the 1884 Reform controversy. It had happened between 1830 and 1832 over Reform; he reasoned that it could happen again, even if the Tories refused to cooperate, even if Queen Victoria was not King William IV. The repeal of the Act of Union would be his new crusade, dispelling the notions that both the Party was falling to the ‘unauthorised programme’ of Chamberlain and that aged seventy-five he was no longer up to great challenges...
Yet Gladstone had underestimated the scale of the Liberal opposition to his new course; a factor that Conservatives had detailed knowledge of, as the Queen was passing on to Northcote the private letters sent to her by George Goschen, Chamberlain and Hartington[1]. The three men represented the full range of Unionist sentiment on the Liberal benches. Goschen, the financier, thought Home Rule would be economically disastrous for both Ireland and Britain. Chamberlain was influenced by Imperialist beliefs as strong as his Radical ones, and the aristocratic Hartington looked upon the Irish question as primarily one of defending landowning rights[2]. Each man had a significant body of support in the Liberal Party, and their secession from it would drastically reduce Gladstone’s majority in the Commons. The question everyone asked in the late summer of 1885 however, was would it diminish it enough?”
(Taken from ‘Britain, from Churchill to Chamberlain’ by Peter Moorcroft, Star 1983)
“On September 4th, the Duke of Richmond met Hartington at his home on Arlington St. They agreed that there was little obstacle to their acting together to resist Home Rule, but a formal alliance was not practical for the time being. Negotiations did continue between Goschen and Churchill over an electoral armistice between his followers and the Conservatives in certain seats...
Three days later, Northcote gave his first speech on the issue, and any hope that Gladstone might have had that the Conservatives would support Home Rule was immediately dashed. ‘Once set up, the legislature at Dublin will soon make an independent nation’ Northcote predicted, ‘whole flotillas of the Royal Navy will be needed to guard the western approaches of an island controlled, filled, possibly prepared and equipped, by a Government that hates you bitterly!’ Yet he was entirely trumped in his militant Unionism by an astonishing speech that Randolph Churchill delivered in the Ulster Hall in Belfast on September 15th...”
(Taken from ‘Lord Randolph Churchill’ by Timothy James, Picador 1978)
“Churchill had never proclaimed much sympathy for Ulster, either in public or in private. He despised the Ulster Tories in the house, and he sharply criticised Northcote’s visit to Belfast in 1882. In the spring, he had even written to Gorst complaining that ‘those foul Ulster Tories have always been the ruin of our party’[3]. However, Churchill soon saw, almost before anyone else, the significance of Ulster. He saw in that deeply Protestant country the ‘political dynamite’ about which he spoke so often.
The Churchills had impeccable Protestant credentials going back to the Glorious Revolution, and in late August he decided to cross the Irish Sea to visit Ulster and whip up Unionist support there. He succeeded beyond his wildest expectations. Landing at Larne, he was mobbed by an appreciative crowd; when he arrived at the Ulster Hall to make his speech the next day, a vast gathering of belligerent Ulsterman filled the building and the streets around. The Orange mood was one of uncompromising resistance to Home Rule, and Churchill echoed this mood, playing what was called the ‘Orange Card’ so vociferously that if taken literally it may have been seen as an incitement to civil war.
‘In that dark hour there will not be wanting those of position and influence in England who will be willing to cast in their lot with you and who, whatever the result, will share your fortunes and your fate. For if the Union is repealed, there will not be wanting those who at that exact moment, when the time is come- if that time should come – will address you in words which are best expressed by one of our great English poets:
The combat deepens; on ye brave/Who Rush to Glory or the grave,
Wave, Ulster, all thy banners wave/And charge with all thy chivalry!’[4]
A roar of excited cheering greeted this conclusion, and Churchill returned home having lit a formidable fire. Three weeks later, Parliament returned from its summer recess. On October 5th, Gladstone finally moved the First Reading of the Irish Home Rule Bill in his grand, lilting tone, in a speech lasting more than three hours. The battle had begun.”
(Taken from ‘Britain, from Churchill to Chamberlain’ by Peter Moorcroft, Star 1983)
“Three days after the first debate, Northcote and Hartington appeared together on the same public platform at Her Majesty’s Theatre in the Haymarket. It was the first manifestation of what Churchill was already calling the ‘Unionist Party’. The doors had to open half an hour early because of the huge press of people who then packed the house. Two vast Union Flags adorned the back of the stage. The event was not a success. Hartington began by saying how ‘noble and generous’ Gladstone was, but his name merely drew boos and hisses from the largely Tory audience. The reception was enough to persuade the fastidious Whigs to drop the idea of public meetings altogether[5]...
The Tory wooing of Radicals passed off slightly better, not least because of Chamberlain’s willingness to swallow some pride. Three days after Hartington and Northcote’s meeting Churchill and Chamberlain shared a platform together in Birmingham. After Chamberlain gave a long speech extolling the need to ‘put country before Party every time’, Churchill announced, to great cheering, that ‘no Liberal shall suffer in his electoral prospects by reason of the part he has taken in the Defence of the Empire.’ It was an offer of a free run in their constituencies to any Liberal who voted against the Home Rule Bill...”
(Taken from ‘The Fall of the Liberal Party’ by Steven Dyson, Peterson 1964)
“While the Home Rule debate continued in the House of Commons at an unusually high level or oratory on both sides, frantic negotiations went on behind the scenes. There was a certain unreality in the Gladstone-Chamberlain talks; the Liberal whips were sure that they could break Chamberlain’s hold in Birmingham, but Chamberlain confounded the Government by demanding and winning an overwhelming vote of confidence from the local Liberal Parties in mid November. Outside his city however, the National Liberal Federation turned against him. Chamberlain, although defeated in the country, salvaged Birmingham from the wreckage and established a unionist ‘National Radical Federation’. On the Whig front, Gladstone effectively abandoned Goschen as a lost cause but persisted in trying to win Hartington back around through his friend and Hartington’s brother Frederick Cavendish[6]. In this he was relatively successful. Hartington would not relent from his staunch opposition to Home Rule but pledged not to abandon his Party either...
Further splits came, but this time they were from the Opposition benches. During the Commons debate on the second reading of the Home Rule Bill on November 17th, Parnell revealed that a senior Conservative had decided to endorse Home Rule. Further investigation revealed the turncoat to be the Earl of Carnarvon[7]... The eve of the first major test of the Home Rule Bill saw the situation extraordinarily confused; despite the defections of Chamberlain and Goschen and the opposition of Hartington, it was by no means certain that they would carry enough Liberals with them to defeat the Second Reading...”
(Taken from ‘Britain, from Churchill to Chamberlain’ by Peter Moorcroft, Star 1983)
“Late at night on November 23rd, Gladstone rose in the House to wind up the momentous debate. Pale to the lips and exhausted by the intrigues of the past two months, he brought the debate to its conclusion with one of his greatest speeches;
‘Ireland stands at your bar, expectant, hopeful, supplicant. She asks a blessed oblivion of the past, and in that oblivion our interest is even deeper then hers. So I hail the demand of Ireland. Think, I beseech you, think wisely, think not for a moment but for all the years that are to come, before you reject this Bill.’
The House proceeded to the division immediately after this peroration. The crowd pouring into the ‘No’ lobby found John Bright sitting alone. He was asked why he had not listened to the Prime Minister’s speech. ‘Once I had heard him I could not have trusted myself.’ was the reported answer. So strong had been the speech that anxiety increased among the opponents of the Bill. Members gathered outside the lobbies, eagerly counting with the tellers. Suddenly, there was a cheer from the Bar, and pandemonium broke out when it was announced that the Bill had been passed by the smallest of margins, 329 votes to 323[8]. 88 Liberals had voted with the Conservatives; to his eternal embarrassment, Hartington had elected to abstain along with several other Whigs[9]...”
(Taken from ‘The Fall of the Liberal Party’ by Steven Dyson, Peterson 1964)
“The Home Rule Bill’s successful passage through the Commons at the Second Reading was only the first hurdle. However long the Conservatives might delay proceedings through the same obstructionist tactics that the Irish members had used in the previous Parliament, eventually the Bill would reach the House of Lords. Here, Gladstone hoped that he would be able to compel its passage. Even at this early stage however, he had a premonition that matters may not prove to be as simple. As the New Year dawned, Frederick Cavendish asked Gladstone what he would do if the Peers rejected the Bill. Gladstone laughed; ‘I shall ennoble five hundred chimney sweeps, and they shall pass the bill for me’ he replied. For all Gladstone’s confidence however, the solution of a mass creation of Peers was not in his hands. Only the Queen could take such a step, and she was certainly of no mind to do so unless given no choice...”
(Taken from “The Encyclopaedia of British Politics”, ed Fred Timms, Star 1976)
“SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT: Agreement signed by Unionists in Ulster in January 1886 emphasising their loyalty to the British Crown and their determination not to accept any imposition of Home Rule on Ireland by the British Government. The passage of the Home Rule Act through the House of Commons in December 1885 caused panic in Unionist circles in Ireland, particularly in Ulster, where the majority of the population were Protestant. As part of a general campaign against Home Rule, the Orange Order and the Unionist leader Major Edward Saunderson decided to organise a show of opposition to the plans by encouraging ‘loyalists’ to sign a Covenant, deliberately named to evoke the document signed by the Scottish Covenanters in the 17th Century. In the end, over three quarters of a million people signed the Covenant, some in their own blood[10]...”
(Taken from “Irish Terrorism; 1880-1940” by Eoghan Matthews, Republic 1982)
“The new year brought fresh omens. Fresh from signing their covenant, Ulstermen began to drill with wooden guns in Antrim glens. On January 5th, an advertisement appeared in the Belfast Morning News: “WANTED: Men trained in military drill. Loyalist please. Own gun helpful”. There were rumours that half a million British loyalists were getting ready to cross the Irish Sea to support an armed rebellion. Propaganda proliferated on both sides. An oblique paragraph appeared in the Liberal-supporting Pall Mall Gazette under the headline “MR PARNELL’S RETREAT” announcing for no particular reason that the Irish leader was residing in a particular house in Eltham and might be observed any day ‘riding out towards Sidcup’, amongst other movements... [11]“
(Taken from ‘Lord Randolph Churchill’ by Timothy James, Picador 1978)
“On January 7th, the Conservative leader had dinner at Churchill’s house to discuss the ongoing obstruction of the committee stage of the Home Rule Bill. Randolph was in roaring spirits, and when the guests entered the room they were appalled to discover that the place of the Leader of the Opposition was marked by a china Dresden goat. The meal passed off without too much embarrassment however, and afterwards Churchill, Northcote, John Gorst and Balfour set to the matter at hand.
Northcote had been subdued the entire evening; Balfour privately confided to Lady Churchill that he felt the goat had been a step too far. When Churchill went upstairs to find a paper they had been discussing, Northcote sank into a chair, his groans attracting the attention of John Gorst in the next room. Gorst got him onto a sofa and doctors were sent for, but at 10.46 PM Northcote expired of a heart attack in the presence of Churchill, Lady Churchill, Balfour and Gorst[12]...”
__________________________________________________
[1] The Queen, a staunch opponent of Home Rule and an implacable enemy of Gladstone, did this OTL as well.
[2] OTL Hartington was also motivated by the death of his brother in the Phoenix Park murders, but ITTL this hasn’t happened and Frederick Cavendish is actually one of Gladstone’s most fervent supporters. This makes the Hartingtonian Whigs slightly less belligerent then OTL, willing to vote against Gladstone but not necessarily split the party.
[3] Churchill said this OTL as well, although slightly later.
[4] Churchill gave a similarly inflammatory speech in Belfast during OTL’s Home Rule crisis.
[5] An incident similar to this happened OTL, although Hartington was more fixed in his anti-Home Rule campaign and so swallowed his objections.
[6] OTL Cavendish was killed in Phoenix Park; here, he’s around to try to split Hartington from the Liberal Unionists.
[7] Carnarvon resigned from Salisbury’s brief 1885 Government OTL because of the Irish issue.
[8] OTL, the Bill failed by 341 votes to 311; ITTL the better Liberal result in the 1885 election and Hartington’s hesitation as well as Salisbury’s absence mean that the Unionists are just pipped at the post.
[9] Hartington voted against ITTL; 102 Liberals joined him unlike the 88 who came out ITTL.
[10] OTL, an ‘Ulster Covenant’ was popularised in the 1912 Home Rule crisis; the equivalent ITTL is rather more successful as it is signed by Unionists across Ireland.
[11] Similar adverts and articles appeared in May 1886 OTL.
[12] OTL Northcote died in a similar way in 1887; he had a serious heart condition and doctors later said that they were amazed that he had survived as long as he had. ITTL the added stress of the Home Rule crisis has not helped his health.
No such thing at this point in history. There wasn't, technically, even a combined leader of the party; there was just a Tory leader in the Commons (Randolph will doubtless take over this position from the now defunct Northcote) and one in the Lords.
They were both technically equal as well, unless either of them had been PM in a previous administration. Both took their positions more or less by what we would now call 'backroom dealing.'
Well, I'd argue that 'Backwoodsmen' in the commonly-thought of sense were something of a myth. That said, there are certainly going to be overtones of 1912-1914; TTL's Home Rule crisis has aspects of all three of OTLs.
And the road to hell? Things are going to get a bit hairy for some people, yes- I wouldn't call this TL a dystopia however, although an observer from OTL's 1880s and 1890s might be a little aghast.
No election, as V-J points out. As for an Irish Civil War, there will be disturbances. There were in OTL around this time too though...
Quite. There's also the monarch to consider- if the Queen indicates she's unlikely to call a particular person to be PM, that can be quite a problem for them. Of course, it doesn't prevent them coming to power- she hated Gladstone for example, but all the other Liberals declined to be made Premier in his place...
maverick
Banned
Well, for once there's the mentioned heroic return Salisbury makes ala Cincinnatus ten years after his resignation...that is in the early 1890s...I wonder, does he return as Prime Minister or as Leader of the Tories given that emergency that is sure to force his return and the analogy to the Roman Dictator...
Also, the amusing introduction of the alternate Mosley as the 'Red Baronet' makes me wonder if that's a reference to the lack of a great war ITTL and a Junker-led flying circus over the skies of France and Russia...
Meanwhile...Updates every thursday, aye?
Also, the amusing introduction of the alternate Mosley as the 'Red Baronet' makes me wonder if that's a reference to the lack of a great war ITTL and a Junker-led flying circus over the skies of France and Russia...
Meanwhile...Updates every thursday, aye?
Salisbury is already dead in the water at this point- he left public life in 1884 after his handling of the Reform Act went tits up. This leaves the Duke of Richmond in the Lords, and Northcote's allies R A Cross and W H Smith (as in the newsagents, and HMS Pinafore for that matter) in the Commons as Churchill's main opposition.
And yes, OTL by all rights the Queen should have chosen Northcote or even Hartington over Salisbury. Her main reason for not doing so was because she adored Cecil almost as much as she hated Gladstone rather than any constitutional reason.
Salisbury's political ressurection comes about for a number of reasons, but the main factor is a relatively dramatic political crisis, I'll say that. You'll have to wait and see to find out in what guise the comeback is made though!
Perhaps- it's mostly because I liked the name, to be honest...
Generally, yes- this week, I'm not so sure. This is for two reasons, firstly last week was an appalling one for me work-wise (13 hour days, the joys of organising opposition to Post Office closures
) so I didn't make much progress on the next part to be published, and secondly because I may be writing a guest post for Decades of Darkness detailing British politics in that TL.I do have a few parts ready to go, but they're a bit of a change of pace and I want to deploy them immediately after a cliffhanger for maximum effect!
For whatever reason the thought entered my mined, I'm begining to wonder if, with the help of our terrorist friend William Lomasney, we won't see something similar to what happened in "What If Gordon Banks Had Played" befall the Parliment building, either during before Churchill gets started or being the reason for his downfall in government...
Hey! Someone else has read that too...
I never thought I could feel sorry for Enoch Powell, but by the end of that you do. It's not his fault...
OT: So, pretty busy EdT? hmm, organising anti-Post Office closure things... sounds good!
Well, at present the Fenians are quiet while Home Rule is on the table. If it fails however then they won't be happy, that's for sure. A 'spectacular' against Parliament might be tempting, although a complete Guy Fawkes would be very difficult if not impossible to pull off- explosives aren't as good as they are in the 1970's and to demolish the chamber entirely as the IRA did in the (fantastic) Gordon Banks TL would be very difficult indeed.
Another thing to bear in mind is that there's an important event coming up in 1887 that might make a tempting focus for agitation.
By the way Scott, I will reply to your email soon- promise!
Hey! Someone else has read that too...
I never thought I could feel sorry for Enoch Powell, but by the end of that you do. It's not his fault...
OT: So, pretty busy EdT? hmm, organising anti-Post Office closure things... sounds good!
It's a fantastic TL isn't it? I'd love to do an Enoch Powell TL as the third part of a thematic trilogy consisting of 'A Greater Britain' and 'Fight and be Right', but anything I wrote would be a pale shadow of "Gordon Banks". Captures Powell absolutely perfectly, I think.
As for the Post Offices, it's all part of the job- have twenty proposed for closure in the constituency, so detailed submissions needed to be sent off to Post Office Ltd amongst other things. Which meant a 40-page briefing document, public meetings, press releases and the like. The consultation has now closed thank god, so I can get back to catching up with my massive pile of correspondence. It really is sisythan...
That is true; I doubt that they could even pull anything off like that event, but even just the metal dagger to the average Londoner, even Briton too, would be there if only an explosion and smoke whisping by Big Ben... following other bombs, the fact that they would even attempt such a target would be huge. And since I'm still with the Irish thought here, shall we hear of Charles Parnell again?
Well then, I shall wait until 1887 (from 2008) to see what happens next!
No worries; you've had a busy week, you'll get to it when you can.
I agree; as for the third, I'll asume you've thought of Eden with Suez going worse? Or is he too well known?
Well, OTL and ITTL they managed to set off a bomb in the Chamber of the Commons, although while it was empty. An attack on Parliament while it was in session would be pretty big stuff though- though it'd risk causing collateral damage to the Irish MPs.
And yes, we will hear of Parnell again!
Well then, I shall wait until 1887 (from 2008) to see what happens next!
It happened OTL too, I hasten to add. A nice case of convenient timing given the political events of the period!
Thanks, shall try over the next few days.
That had crossed my mind, indeed. I do think it's not obscure enough! If I were to do a third, I think the candidates are Keith Joseph and a certain Robert Kilroy Silk (Seriously!
)maverick
Banned
How funny! I had Keith Joseph as PM in my TL "Kings of Camelot" (In which Joseph Kennedy Jr. survives and becomes POTUS) ...being PM between 1980 and 1988...
Anyhow, I've diverted too much attention already advertising for old TLs...
As for 1887, i'd guess it has less to do with Verdi's premiere of the Opera Othello and more with a certain Golden something regarding a certain someone in a certain palace cellebration...wasn't that kind of the pod for that old project of yours?
Anyhow, I've diverted too much attention already advertising for old TLs...
As for 1887, i'd guess it has less to do with Verdi's premiere of the Opera Othello and more with a certain Golden something regarding a certain someone in a certain palace cellebration...wasn't that kind of the pod for that old project of yours?
Well, you got the Golden Jubilee and the Jubilee Plot that could do it...although since Ed said it happens in OTL as well, I'm more inclinded to think about Bloody Sunday instead...than again (with the help of Wiki) the Jubilee Plot sounds too good to pass up.
As for thinking about Keith Joseph and a certain Robert Kilroy Silk, I'd say Joseph may be the better known amongst the two outside of the UK, although a quick check of Wiki again shows Silk to be an...interesting character. With him, you could almost make parts of it turn into FAH, which would be something I haven't seen to much of.
) the Jubilee Plot sounds too good to pass up.As for thinking about Keith Joseph and a certain Robert Kilroy Silk
, I'd say Joseph may be the better known amongst the two outside of the UK, although a quick check of Wiki again shows Silk to be an...interesting character. With him, you could almost make parts of it turn into FAH, which would be something I haven't seen to much of.
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