there is an old Irish joke that whenever a group meet in Ireland to discuss major things the first item on the agenda is always the split and in a way it's the bitter joke that was true in 1891 with the Parnell split because that's splish broke the Irish parliamentary party for a decade you had to choose separate wings at 100 John Dylan 100 John Redmond but in a way it wasn't really that important because for most of this period the Liberals were I of party either power the Conservatives were in charge and the Conservatives had a very interesting strategy in this period and that was of killing Home Rule with kindness the idea that they would pass legislation to to help Ireland to remove some of the animosity from the soil and not therefore they might remove the demands for Home Rule entirely it was a very clever strategy there had been a second Home Rule bill in 1893 when Gladstone was briefly back in power but that had passed the House of Commons would have been rejected in the House of Lords and what that actually showed was that in the end it are now gone beyond the House of Commons that it didn't really matter how much of a majority you had in favor of Home Rule there the House of Lords would always have a conservative majority and they would always vetoed the legislation so it looked like Home Rule was going to be dead forever and that also served to weaken the parliamentary party if reunited under Edmund at the start of the 20th century but struggled and it's funny when you look at Irish elections in this period right up until but not including 1918 most Irish Home Rule MPs never had to go for re-election no one would stand against him there were some MPs who had been elected since 1886 all the way up to 1918 ever having to go and visit their constituents some of them like James Akeley lived in Paris the entire time only going occasionally to the House of Commons so it was a very curious time for the home rule party the most significant piece of killing Home Rule but kindness legislation that was passed was the Wyndham act of 1903 because the Wyndham Act changed land ownership in Ireland forever what they did was they decided to basically give very good value mortgages to the Irish tenants to allow them to buy their land from the landlords and the amount of money they'd have to repay for the mortgage was actually less than their rents so they're able to buy their land and was actually saving the money and rather than having to pay this rent every year that I didn't lead to anything so the Wyndham Land Act within 10 years had ensured that the land of Ireland finally was being restored to the Irish people and so a major grievance that had in become inflamed during the famine that had broken out during the land more of the 17 1870s and 80s had now pretty much been resolved by 1913 and so the agitation after that revolved certainly outside of Dublin around politics and the whole real party was legitimately concerned that maybe that a man for Home Rule will try up there was also the problem in this period that many were arguing that Home Rule would be wrong rule that Catholics couldn't be trusted Catholics the age-old problem Catholics owed o their allegiance to a foreign power to the Pope the same kind of thing that was thrown at a Catholic candidates in American elections not only against John F Kennedy running in 1960 but against Alfred Smith Al Smith who actually whose family emigrated to America from Parkwood in motion' where I have where I grew up and his Catholicism was always thrown in his face he ran for the presidency for the Democrats in 1928 first Catholic to run for the American presidency and they claimed that if he was elected the Pope would rule Ireland that he was already establishing a base in San Francisco and from there he would direct things others claimed no he had built a tunnel from Rome to America and would use this to travel back and forth to dictate a public policy now they see now ridiculous concerns but they were influential and the same kinds of fears were being stoked in Ireland during these home rule debates the idea that this was at Rome rule and you know what actually played into the hands of the unionists the fall of Parnell because there the bishops had got involved in politics there they had abandoned the leader of Irish nationalism and why because he had fallen in love and was having a relationship with a separated woman with a married woman and that destroyed his life and his career so for those who mourn the death of Parnell there was questions to be answered about the role of the church and for those who hated Parnell and Home Rule they looked at this and saw that the Catholic Church was a negative force in Irish politics the homra party was really going nowhere until in 1909 with the Liberals back in power Lloyd George is transferred Exchequer brought in a budget that was very unpopular and John Redmond even though the budget was very unpopular in Ireland decided well maybe there's a bit of Polish political gain to be gained here and supported the Liberals and the government collapsed what happened was the House of Lords used their veto and this now looked terrible that the veto showed that the House of Lords had too much power it was not meant to use this against a finance bills because otherwise you were going to disrupt the running of the country and so something needed to be done and what happened in 1911 with crisis times in 1910 and the star 1911 what happened in 1911 was that the government decided to pass the Parliament Act and the Parliament act forms the basis of the modern-day British constitution so much people talk about Britain not having a written constitution well you can actually trace so much back to that Parliament Act idea that MPs would be paid it limited the terms of Parliament to five years it's set like the structures for how Parliament's would operate and crucially it had a very important term at with respect to Home Rule because a local rule was never mentioned it wasn't part of it it limited the veto of the House of Lords what it said was that if a bill was passed in the House of Commons three times in successive years usually three times without amendment so in identical format without being changed then the House of Lords couldn't veto it so in other words what it meant was that the House of Lords could only postpone an act they could only postpone an act for two years and that was crucial subtly Home Rule was on the agenda again Home Rule could be secured now because the House of Lords could not block it now you might ask the question this bill this Parliament bill also had to go to the House of Lords so why weren't the Lords clever why didn't they veto this bill and maintain their power well a lot of them wanted to do that but ask what went to the king and he explained what was happening and he secured permission from the king if the House of Lords veto this bill then they would create more Lords hundreds of new Lords they would stack the the benches with commoners with riffraff with people who would discuss the Lord's people who would vote for this bill and they would destroy the House of Lords as a chamber and the Lords now had this terrible dilemma what would they do you had those who wanted to compromise those who wanted no compromise but in the end they gave him and the Parliament Act was passed now suddenly home rule could be achieved and so a home rule bill was brought forward in 1912 and it passed in the House of Commons vetoed in the House of Lords but now suddenly home rule could be achieved it would be brought forward again in 1913 feature and the Lord's and now what meant was that in 1914 home rule would pass home rule would come into effect for all of Ireland John Redmon's had succeeded where Parnell had failed he had succeeded where O'Connell had failed Ireland was now to get her own Parliament and that's what created the momentum then for all of these other things that's what created the mentum then for a Ulster day the solemn League and covenant the creation of the Ulster Volunteer Force for Carson's agitation because suddenly Home Rule was something that was going to be achieved in 1914 and so there were great demands there was great excitement and that's why Ireland's veered towards civil war in the spring and summer of 1914 and that is why the only thing which saved it was the outbreak of the First World War because there was no other way of stopping it this was to become the law of the land and it suddenly put Redmond into a very difficult position when the war broke out because Carson immediately said we are loyal our Ulster Volunteer Force will go and fight for the British Empire what would Redmond do well he called on the Irish Volunteers to join the war effort he gave a very famous speech at wooden bridge in County Wicklow where he said this is important for us because we're getting Home Rule it's been secured it's been achieved we just need to win this war first everyone believed the war would be over by Christmas and so they went on ahead the thing is of those volunteers about two hundred thousand went and followed him a smaller group of about 15,000 stayed behind they refused as called they would not fight for Britain in this and they were to form the nucleus of the 1916 rebellion then what do you see happening in this period that is well I suppose I suppose the great the great it shows how accidents can happen in history home rule was finally won home rule had been achieved it had been achieved because of a parliament act that the Irish had helped bring through it had been achieved because the Liberals were finally able to pass an act to give home rule for Ireland it would have meant civil war in Ireland it would have meant at the Ulster Volunteers fighting against the Irish Volunteers it's impossible to know how the British would have dealt with that it's impossible to know how that might have been resolved it's interesting to speculate what might have happened if Germany had not gone to war in the summer of 1914 dragging Britain and all the other powers into that or if Germany had waited if Germany had waited a few months to see what had happened in Ireland yet but yet the failure to succeed where all the others had succeeded cast a shadow over Irish history then Home Rule was on the agenda Home Rule had been secured but by 1918 when the war was over no one was talking about Home Rule anymore Home Rule was not something that anyone cared about the 1916 rising had changed everything a terrible beauty had been born