The First Home Rule Bill

No one could predict the outcome of the general election of 1885 in Ireland. The number of voters had been tripled by the Reform Act of the year before. Party scrutineers were fiercely vigilant during the extraordinary turnout reaching over 93 per cent in some divisions.

Liberal representation on the island was completely wiped out. The Irish Parliamentary Party leaped to 85 seats, an 86th seat being won for them in Liverpool by T P O’Connor. Because the Conservatives and Liberals were so evenly matched in numbers, Charles Stewart Parnell, at the head of the most disciplined political party in the United Kingdom, could call the shots.

At first Parnell decided to keep the Conservatives in power. But it was unlikely that Prime Minister Lord Salisbury would ever concede Home Rule. And what about Gladstone, the Liberal leader?

In December 1885 Thomas McKnight visited the leading Liberal, Sir Edward Cowan, at Craigavad in north Down. Ulster Liberals had just completed the magnificent Reform Club at the entrance to Royal Avenue in Belfast. Now there was not a single Liberal MP representing Ireland.

McKnight startled his host by saying abruptly: 'Gladstone has gone over to the Home Rulers.'

Cowan replied incredulously: 'Impossible! Absurd!'

"I put Mr. Gladstone’s letter in Sir Edward’s hands, " said McKnight, "He read it slowly and then hesitated to speak. What do you think of it?’ I asked.
‘I must candidly say that I do not like it.’
‘Nor I. It means to us utter ruin.’ "

The news of Gladstone’s conversion immediately brought Liberals and Conservatives together in Ulster. Solid Protestant opposition in the north to Home Rule had not really entered into the calculations of either Parnell or Gladstone.

Parnell duly transferred the Irish Party’s support to the Liberals. With some distaste Queen Victoria accepted Gladstone as her Prime Minister for the third time on 30th January 1886, disinclined as she was to 'take this half-crazy and in many ways ridiculous old man for the sake of the country'

It would be quite wrong to conclude that Gladstone had gone over to Home Rule simply to get back into power. For years he had immersed himself in books on Irish history and it is clear that deep conviction was behind his decision to take his party along this treacherous course.

The leading Conservative politician, Lord Randolph Churchill, wrote to a friend in February: 'I decided some time ago that if the Grand Old Man went for Home Rule, the Orange card would be the one to play.'

And play that card he did. Churchill was billed as the principal speaker at a ‘Monster Meeting of Conservatives and Orangemen’ in Belfast’s Ulster Hall on 22nd February.

When he put in at Larne, Churchill proclaimed to cheering supporters: 'Ulster will fight, and Ulster will be right.'

Then, after enjoying loyal airs played by the Ballymacarrett Brass Band and the Britannic Flute Band, the audience in the Ulster Hall listened to Churchill for one and a half hours with rapt attention:

'On you it primarily rests whether Ireland shall remain an integral portion of this great empire sharing in its glory…or whether, on the other hand, Ireland shall become the focus and the centre of foreign intrigue and deadly conspiracy.'

He urged loyalists to organise so that Home Rule might not come upon them ‘as a thief in the night’.

Not since the second reading of the Great Reform Bill in 1832 were the Commons and its public gallery so packed as when Gladstone introduced the Home Rule Bill on 8th April 1886.

The journalist Frank Harris recorded the occasion: 'The house was so thronged that members sat about on the steps leading from the floor and even on the arms of the benches and on each other’s knees…every diplomat in London seemed to be present; and cheek by jowl with the black uniforms of bishops, Indian princes by the dozen blazing with diamonds lent a rich Oriental flavour to the scene.'

Gladstone spoke for two and a half hours, Harris continued:

'His head was like that of an old eagle – luminous eyes, rapacious beak and bony jaws…His voice was a high, clear tenor; his gestures rare but well chosen; his utterance as fluid as water…he seemed so passionately sincere and earnest that time and time again you might have thought he was expounding God’s law conveyed to him on Sinai.'

By later standards the Prime Minister was offering a very limited form of devolution – little more than control over the police, civil service and the judiciary. But, whatever their private reservations, the Nationalist MPs gave Gladstone their full backing.

Parnell knew that all his party’s disciplined energy would be needed to secure the passage of the Bill: there was rebellion within the Liberal ranks.