WI: No Home Rule Bills

abc123

Banned
So, my question is: What if, somehow, Gladstone never proposed any of his Home Rule Bills for Ireland?
Or, better to say, what if idea of Home Rule was never proposed by anyone ( from major british political parties ) for Ireland?

What consequences?:confused:
 

Thande

Donor
It's hard to see how Home Rule would be entirely avoided as a proposal. The Irish mostly voting for the Home Rule League and then the Irish Parliamentary Party ensured that most elections in the 19th century resulted in hung parliaments with the Irish party holding the balance of power. Sooner or later British politicians are going to get fed up with this and try and wangle some means of kicking the Irish MPs out via Home Rule, which was a bigger motivator for Home Rule on Gladstone's part than people realise.

The only other way to get around this would be to pass some law outlawing parties that don't stand MPs in all parts of the UK, but that would probably have massive repercussions. (And the Irish parties could always stand candidates in English and Scottish constituencies with large expatriate Irish populations, such as Liverpool).
 

abc123

Banned
It's hard to see how Home Rule would be entirely avoided as a proposal. The Irish mostly voting for the Home Rule League and then the Irish Parliamentary Party ensured that most elections in the 19th century resulted in hung parliaments with the Irish party holding the balance of power. Sooner or later British politicians are going to get fed up with this and try and wangle some means of kicking the Irish MPs out via Home Rule, which was a bigger motivator for Home Rule on Gladstone's part than people realise.

The only other way to get around this would be to pass some law outlawing parties that don't stand MPs in all parts of the UK, but that would probably have massive repercussions. (And the Irish parties could always stand candidates in English and Scottish constituencies with large expatriate Irish populations, such as Liverpool).

What about a silent deal between Conservatives and Liberals to back up other party ( in reality, wich party get the most of the votes, get's Prime Ministers position ) and so effectivly exclude Irish PP from deciding who will be PM?
 

perfectgeneral

Donor
Monthly Donor
How about including Canada in parliament? The extra seats might shift the balance. The overseas voting principle is established by Irish seats.
 
Or kicking out the Irish MPs and treating Ireland more as a colony?

That's probable work better from the start though, Ireland always a colony and never integrated into Britain.
 

Pangur

Donor
Or kicking out the Irish MPs and treating Ireland more as a colony?

That's probable work better from the start though, Ireland always a colony and never integrated into Britain.

All that would achieve would be to reenforce the physical force groups in Ireland with rebellion either happening or about to happen. Depending on how long the British stay it would also be more than reasonable to suggest that the Irish diaspora would be an even bigger problem for the UK be they in England, the US or where ever. The line about `fighting for the rights of small nations' put forward in WW1 would have been even more hollow than it was in the OTL

Another consideration would be the reaction of the budding trade union movement in the UK. As it stood there was a degree of support for the Irish, go this road and that support would have been far stronger
 
I think you have to come up with multiple PoD's that prevent the demand for Home Rule becoming so strong, for a start have Pitt face down George III over his opposition to Catholic Emancipation as part of the Act of Union. If you can then have Ireland, and not just Ulster, industrialise more intensively in the following years creating a prosperous Catholic merchant class who will see their interests served by being in the Union just as the Ulster Protestants did. This will also create a demand for more workers in Irish cities meaning less people living in extreme poverty in the rural areas. You can also have measures to protect the rights of tenant farmers from summary eviction.

Above all you need to either prevent, or more realistically, reduce the impact of The Great Famine as it was the feeling that Britain hadn't done enough to help that really pushed Home Rule up the agenda. Peel's Government carried out a series of relief measures that was helping the situation but after Russell won the 1847 election he, under the influence of Trevelyan, ended those measures and that was when the death rates and the numbers of emigrants really shot up. So you need Russell to over rule Trevelyan and maintain the relief, also there was a famine in the 1790's when the Government blocked food exports so as to provide relief. The same measure wasn't carried out in The Great Famine and the idea that Britain let Ireland starve out of hatred remains a potent one in Irish Nationalism.

So if you can show the ordinary Irishman that the Union "works for Ireland" then you could potentially prevent the groundswell of opinion in favour of Home Rule ever developing.
 
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