Home Rule: The Liberal Party's Quest to Pacify Ireland

Abstract

This paper examines a period in Irish history when the Liberal Party of the United Kingdom attempted to grant Home Rule to Ireland. From 1801 to 1922, what today is the Republic of Ireland was one of four countries which constituted the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. From the 1860s to the 1910s, Irish nationalists pushed for a policy known as Home Rule in order to devolve lawmaking authority from the British Parliament in London to a new Irish Parliament in Dublin. This dramatic change in the United Kingdom’s constitutional structure would have kept Ireland in the UK, but the Irish people would have enjoyed greater control over their country’s internal affairs. This paper will explain why Home Rule never came to pass despite the Liberal Party’s multiple efforts to make it a reality, resulting in the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War.