Home Rule Ireland

samcster94

Banned
What are the odds of Home Rule under Queen Victoria's reign(even with Orange Protestant stonewalling)??? A painting depicts that alternate history given the painter predicted it would happen but it never did.
 
You need to avoid the fall of Parnell. That was a disaster for the Home Rule movement that set it back a couple of decades, as well as depriving Ireland of the only figure with the stature who might have successfully brought Home Rule to the entire island.
The Protestant elite wouldn't have been happy, but it's possible that under Parnell they would have grumbled and accepted constitutional protections. Afterwards, a Curragh mutiny or equivalent becomes more likely.
 
If I may, perhaps this could come as the result of STRONGER Anti-Catholic sentiment remaining in England proper and Orangist stonewalling. If the Roman Catholic Relief Act is never passed into statute; thus preventing large numbers of Irishmen from taking their seats in the British parliament, you could get a simmering crisis/uncomfortable political question if the enfranchised Irish still elect Catholic represenatives out of protest, creating a rift between the values of British representative tradition and popular fears by Englishmen and Scots voting in representatives who'll keep away the possibility of Catholics deciding on laws that will govern their Protestant country. In that case, I could see a "compromise" eventually occuring where Ireland is granted a separate parliament where Catholic representatives ARE allowed for ruling on purely domestic affairs in exchange for giving up representation in the British parliament, by re-establishing the Kingdom of Ireland as a technically seperate but subordinate entity (Probably giving the Protestant-majority counties the right to opt out)
 
It wasn't only the Protestant elite but also lower middle class shopkeepers and farmers and working class Protestants who were unhappy. What made this particularly difficult was their concentration in Ulster where they had a local majority in six counties. No-one voluntarily seeks to become part of a minority group when (as part of the UK) they were part of an overall majority although a local minority.
Look at Anglos in California or Hawaii, they are local minorities within those states, though not in the USA overall so it doesn't cause them tremendous angst. Now if California or Hawaii were to develop a strong local independence movement from the USA supported by a majority of the inhabitants the political reaction of the local Anglo population would probably be very similar to that of Irish unionists.
Before Parnell's fall there was a suspicion that the Catholic Church might interfere in politics. After the fall of Parnell, with well documented cases of priests preaching against him from the pulpit this was seen as a certainty not a supposition and liberal as well as conservative Protestantism swung towards unionism.
 
I heard somewhere that Parliament did decide to give Ireland Home Rule, but this happened in 1914 and not long before WW1. So it was put on hold.
 
It wasn't only the Protestant elite but also lower middle class shopkeepers and farmers and working class Protestants who were unhappy. What made this particularly difficult was their concentration in Ulster where they had a local majority in six counties. No-one voluntarily seeks to become part of a minority group when (as part of the UK) they were part of an overall majority although a local minority.

Would it be feasible to have Home Rule in OTL's Southern Ireland, with the six counties continuing to be governed from Westminster?
 
This is what it ended up being in the final Irish Home Rule bill.

Would this have been feasible in earlier ones - difficult to say.

I don't see why not; they were already being governed by Westminster and local/county officals. It'd just be a matter of keeping the same institutions in place while removing them from the south and replacing them with equivalents from institutions subject to an Irish parliament
 
Wouldn't even have to do very much of that. There weren't actually a lot of government institutions in pre- WW1 Britain. I think it was AJP Taylor who pointed out that prior to 1914 an Englishman who was not a cab-driver who drank whiskey and who had an income of less than £500 (£20,000 in today's money) would only come into contact with his country's government when he posted a letter or asked directions from a policeman. It wouldn't have been significantly different for a Victorian Irishman
 
Top