Conscription Crisis of 1918

The Conscription Crisis of 1918 stemmed from a move by the British government to impose conscription (military draft) in Ireland in April 1918 during the First World War. Vigorous opposition was led by trade unions, Irish nationalist parties and Roman Catholic bishops and priests. A conscription law was passed but was never put in effect; no one in Ireland was drafted into the British Army. The proposal and backlash galvanised support for political parties which advocated Irish separatism and influenced events in the lead-up to the Irish War of Independence.

In early 1918, the British Army was dangerously short of troops for the Western Front. In the German Spring Offensive of 1918, German troops broke through the Allied lines in several sectors of the front in France, with a local advantage in numbers of four to one, putting severe strain on the Allied armies. The British Army, in one day, suffered a major setback, with the Imperial German Army over-running ninety-eight square miles of territory and penetrating, at the furthest point, to a depth of four and a half miles.

Conscription in Great Britain had already been established by the Military Service Act of January 1916, which came into effect a few weeks later in March 1916. By 1918 David Lloyd George was Prime Minister, leading a coalition government, and in addressing a very grave military situation it was decided to use a new Military Service Bill to extend conscription to Ireland and also to older men and further groups of workers in Britain, thus reaching untapped reserves of manpower. Lloyd George connected the new conscription legislation to a new Home Rule Bill, which had the effect of alienating both nationalists and unionists in Ireland. Despite opposition from the entire Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), conscription for Ireland was voted through at Westminster.

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