Irish Home Rule Movement

The Irish Home Rule movement was a movement that agitated for self-government for Ireland within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It was the dominant political movement of Irish nationalism from 1870 to the end of World War I.

Isaac Butt founded the Home Government Association in 1870. This was succeeded in 1873 by the Home Rule League, and in 1882 by the Irish Parliamentary Party. These organisations campaigned for home rule in the British House of Commons. Under the leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell, the movement came close to success when the Liberal government under William Ewart Gladstone introduced the First Home Rule Bill in 1886, but the bill was defeated in the House of Commons after a split in the Liberal Party. After Parnell's death, Gladstone introduced the Second Home Rule Bill in 1893; it passed the Commons but was defeated in the House of Lords. After the removal of the Lords' veto in 1911, the Third Home Rule Bill was introduced in 1912, leading to the Home Rule Crisis. On the outbreak of World War I it was enacted, but suspended until the conclusion of the war. Following the Easter Rising of 1916, public support shifted from the Home Rule movement to the more radical Sinn Féin party. In the 1918 General Election the Irish Parliamentary Party suffered a crushing defeat, only a handful of MP's surviving. This was effectively the death of the Home Rule movement. The elected Sinn Féin MPs had no interest in home rule, instead setting up their own legislature, Dáil Éireann, and declaring the independence of Ireland as a republic. Britain passed a Fourth Home Rule Bill, the Government of Ireland Act 1920, aimed at creating separate parliaments for Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland. The former was established in 1921, and the state continues to this day, but the latter never functioned. Following the Treaty that ended the Anglo-Irish War, the 26 southern counties of Ireland gained independence as the Irish Free State.

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