Curragh incident

The Curragh incident of 20 March 1914, also known as the Curragh mutiny, occurred in the Curragh, County Kildare, Ireland. The Curragh Camp was then the main base for the British Army in Ireland, which at the time still formed part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Ireland was about to receive a measure of devolved government, which included Ulster.

With Irish Home Rule due to become law in 1914, the British Cabinet contemplated some kind of military action against the Ulster Volunteers who threatened to rebel against it. Many officers, especially those with Irish Protestant connections, of whom the most prominent was Hubert Gough, threatened to resign rather than obey, privately encouraged from London by senior officers including Henry Wilson. Although the Cabinet issued a document claiming that the issue had been a misunderstanding, the Secretary of State for War J. E. B. Seely and the CIGS (professional head of the Army) Sir John French were forced to resign after amending it to promise that the British Army would not be used against the Ulster loyalists.

The event contributed both to unionist confidence, and to the growing Irish separatist movement, convincing Irish nationalists that they could not expect support from the British army in Ireland. In turn, this increased renewed nationalist support for paramilitary forces. The Home Rule Bill was passed but postponed, and the growing fear of civil war in Ireland led on to the British government considering some form of partition of Ireland instead, which eventually took place.

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