Irish Liberty, British Democracy

The crisis over the third Irish Home Rule Bill of 1913-14 is remembered as a dramatic political controversy that brought Ireland to the brink of civil war. What might have happened if the outbreak of the First World War had not stopped the clock on Home Rule? That is one of the intriguing questions explored in a new study of this fascinating episode in history, Irish Liberty, British Democracy: the third Irish Home Rule crisis, 1909-14. More than any previous author, James Doherty demonstrates that the British Liberal Cabinet was out-of-step with the impulses of popular Liberalism. Offering a fresh clue to the demise of the Liberal Party, Doherty reveals a progressive groundswell that demanded Irish Home Rule as a means of democratising a British constitution still heavily weighted in the aristocracy's favour. Home Rule, he argues, was not just a solution to the Irish problem, but the crucial instrument for the advance of British democracy. Irish Liberty, British Democracy challenges some entrenched beliefs about the role of the crisis in cementing the partition of Ireland, arguing that despite, or perhaps because of the perils swirling in Ireland in the summer of 1914, the possibilities of a Unionist capitulation were not exhausted when the unexpected outbreak of the First World War altered the course of Irish and world history.