The incident is important in 20th-century Irish history, and is notable for being one of the few occasions since the English Civil War in which elements of the British military openly intervened in politics.
With Irish Home Rule due to become law in 1914, the British Cabinet contemplated some kind of military action against the unionist Ulster Volunteers who threatened to rebel against it.
In early 1912, the Liberal British government of H. H. Asquith had introduced the Third Home Rule Bill for Ireland, which proposed the creation of an autonomous Irish Parliament in Dublin.
In September 1913, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), John French, had expressed his concerns to the government and to the King (who had also asked Asquith for his views) that the British Army, if ordered to act against the UVF, might split, with some serving officers even siding with the Ulster Unionists, given that many shared the same view of preserving and defending a Protestant British Empire and believed Home Rule for mainly Catholic Ireland would threaten it.
[1] Major-General Henry Hughes Wilson, Director of Military Operations, was in regular contact with Opposition leaders (including Bonar Law) and with retired officers who supported the Volunteers.
Churchill, who spoke at Bradford (14 March) to say that there were "worse things than bloodshed, even on an extended scale" and "Let us go forward together and put these grave matters to the proof", and Seely appear to have been courting some kind of confrontation with the UVF.
The plan was to occupy government buildings, to repel any assaults by the UVF and to guard the armouries at Omagh, Enniskillen, Armagh, Dundalk and Carrickfergus to prevent thefts of weapons.
[5] The politicians later claimed that at the meeting when Paget arrived in London, they merely gave verbal amplification to orders which he had already received from the War Office, but Asquith later admitted that this was untrue; at the meeting Paget was also told to send troops to Newry (an old, empty barracks with no stores) and Dundalk, both in Irish nationalist areas and so unlikely to be seized by the UVF, but of strategic importance in any move to bring Ulster under military control.
Paget was summoned to another meeting on 19 March at which Seely declared that the government was pressing ahead with Home Rule and had no intention of allowing civil war to break out, suggesting that the UVF were to be crushed if they attempted to start one.
The following night Churchill told French that his ships would have Belfast in flames in 24 hours, while other vessels were ready to help deploy troops to Ulster (in case of a strike by loyalist railwaymen).
[8] The next morning (Friday 20 March), Paget addressed Generals Rolt, Cuthbert, Gough,[9] and Fergusson (GOC 5th Infantry Division), and three staff officers, at his Parkgate Street H.Q.
Paget told Gough, who queried whether "disappear" meant absence with or without leave, and who had a family connection to Ulster but did not live there, that he could expect no mercy from "his old friend at the War Office" (John French).
[14] General Sir Charles Fergusson, then commanding the 5th Division in Ireland, toured units on the morning of Saturday 21 March to ensure their future compliance with government policy.
When he saw the King that evening, French, advised by Haldane (Lord Chancellor) that Paget should not have asked officers about "hypothetical contingencies," also threatened to resign if Gough were not reinstated.
At French's suggestion Seely obtained a document from the Cabinet, stating that the Army Council were satisfied that the incident had been a misunderstanding, and that it was "the duty of all soldiers to obey lawful commands."
[22][23] Asquith (25 March) publicly repudiated the "peccant paragraphs" which had been added to the Cabinet statement, and French, the Adjutant-General Spencer Ewart and Seely had to resign.
[25] The event contributed both to unionist confidence and to the growing Irish separatist movement, convincing nationalists that they could not expect support from the British army in Ireland.