Irish Convention

The Irish Convention was an assembly which sat in Dublin, Ireland from July 1917 until March 1918 to address the Irish question and other constitutional problems relating to an early enactment of self-government for Ireland, to debate its wider future, discuss and come to an understanding on recommendations as to the best manner and means this goal could be achieved. It was a response to the dramatically altered Irish political climate after the 1916 rebellion and proposed by David Lloyd George, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in May 1917 to John Redmond, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, announcing that 'Ireland should try her hand at hammering out an instrument of government for her own people'.

The Convention was publicly called in June 1917, to be composed of representative Irishmen from different political parties and spheres of interest. After months of deliberations, the Convention's final report—which had been agreed upon in March 1918—was seriously undermined. 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. This "dual policy" of conscription and devolution heralded the end of a political era.

Self-government for Ireland had been the predominant political issue between Ireland and Britain during the 1880s, spearheaded by Charles Stewart Parnell. It was reflected in three Home Rule bills, all bitterly opposed by Ulster Unionists. The first two bills were rejected by parliament, culminating in the passing of the Third Irish Home Rule Act (properly, the Government of Ireland Act 1914) on the 25 May by the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. The government conceded to pressure by the Ulster leader Sir Edward Carson and introduced an Amending Bill proposed by the House of Lords, to give effect to the exclusion of Ulster constructed on the basis of county option and six-year exclusion, the same formula previously rejected by Unionists in March. On 18 September 1914 Home Rule was enacted and simultaneously postponed for the duration of the European War which erupted in August. The Ulster question was 'solved' in the same way: through the promise of amending legislation which was left undefined. Unionists were in disarray, wounded by the enactment of Home Rule and by the absence of any definite arrangement for the exclusion of Ulster.

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