Irish Convention

With the urgent need for military manpower on the Western Front following the German spring offensive, the government decided in April 1918 to simultaneously introduce Home Rule and apply conscription to Ireland.

[20] On 6 December 1916 Lloyd George ousted Asquith as Prime Minister with the aid of Carson and Bonar Law and formed a new coalition government with a larger Unionist representation.

Home Rule could, in a sense, have been put into place in spring 1917, but Redmond was reluctant to shoulder the burden of exclusion and hoped the eventual area to be excluded could in time be narrowed down.

Bonar Law announced an amnesty on 15 June in which 120 prisoners were released "in order that the Convention may meet in an atmosphere of harmony and goodwill".

They even regarded a twenty-six county Irish parliament coupled with the rise of Sinn Féin a greater danger to the realm than home rule originally would have been.

Lord Robert Cecil a Unionist Cabinet member, observed that home rule should be granted in return for 'Redmond's patriotism throughout the war which created an honourable obligation that we ought to recognise'.

The first conference meeting was held on 25 July at Regent House, Trinity College Dublin, the chairmanship sought and won by Sir Horace Plunkett, attended by ninety-five delegates.

Elected general secretary was Lord Southborough, employed in the secretariat were Erskine Childers, Frank Cruise O'Brien and Dermot Coffey, all close to Sinn Féin.

The Nationalists led by Redmond and included Joseph Devlin, Stephen Gwynn, J. J. Clancy and T. J. Harbison, to these came the four Catholic bishops and representatives from local government bodies.

[45] Plunkett followed an agenda during the first six-week "Presentation Phase" focused on matters commanding near unanimity, which narrowed the question of where differences were most.

Archbishop Harty made it clear, that in this area where they could have eased tensions, they had no intention of departing from their hardline attitudes, which many Protestants believed fostered animosities which later blocked a settlement.

Widespread hostile demonstrations were raised at the end of September against the convention, particularly Redmond and Devlin, which unsettled the Unionists, causing considerable harm.

A proposal made during the presentation phase, a scheme modelled on the federal system of Switzerland by Lord Londonderry was equally rejected by the bishops.

Opposition to the "Midleton Plan" came not only from the Ulster delegates but from a majority of the nationalists led by Bishop O'Donnell who still held out for full fiscal autonomy.

[67] When the full Convention met on 18 December just before the recess, Midleton made an address in which his scheme further conceded to Ireland the control of excise in addition to all purely Irish services.

[70] The Convention finally turned out to be more than an elitist talking-shop, although an understanding took a long time in coming, yet a form of consensus was for a moment attained with a deal near to being struck.

For a brief period during December – until early January 1918 – it looked as if Midleton's initiative would provide the basis for a political breakthrough,[62] with justification for believing that the convention was moving towards an agreed settlement.

[64] Ulster's Bishop O'Donnell moved into the Nationalist leadership vacuum and held out against any compromise on fiscal autonomy, circulating a memorandum to all members of the convention to this effect.

[72] On 1 January 1918 Midleton returned from London with a written pledge drafted by Lord Desart and initialled by Lloyd George, that if the Southern Unionist scheme were carried by substantial agreement (i.e. by all except Ulster), the Prime Minister would use his influence to give it legislative effect.

[84] Carson in the meantime, wrote to Lloyd George urging that a federal settlement be reached, who took this as a signal of movement within the Ulster Unionist camp.

Cardinal Logue of Armagh who devotedly had hoped for some alternative to Sinn Féin, dismissed Lloyd George's letter and the suggested safeguards for Ulster as 'disguised partition'.

Barrie, the Unionist leader who had wavered towards doing a deal, was summonsed with his delegates to Belfast to meet their "advisory committee" on 25 February and told to hold to traditional partitionist demands.

[89] Had they not revolted but instead led Nationalists, Southern Unionists, labour delegates and perhaps the odd independent-minded Ulstermen, Lloyd George might just have enacted the Midleton scheme.

Midleton had influential political connections in England, his scheme backed by Lord Northcliffe (the press baron who had helped topple Asquith) and his organisation.

[93] Redmond's place as speaker of the moderate Nationalists was taken by Stephen Gwynn who had been called back from the war front the previous year to participate in a compromise with the Southern Unionists.

Redmond was followed as leader the Parliamentary Party on 13 March by John Dillon who was less consensual and more sympathetic to the aspirations and strategies of Sinn Féin.

It wrote off any good feeling the Ulster delegation had built up, Ulstermen had come to respect Redmond during the convention and to regard him as not a bad alternative to de Valera.

Until he was suddenly dramatically overthrown by the bishops (in coalition with Devlin, the Nationalist most disliked in Ulster), intensively reviving all the old fears of clericalism in a future Irish state.

Dillon believed that Lloyd George had 'let HELL loose in Ireland' as part of a Machiavellian plot to evade his promise to grant home rule.

The partition of Ireland under the Act was in place months before the negotiations effecting the Anglo-Irish Treaty were struck on 6 December 1921, by which the south was granted dominion status as the Irish Free State.