Parliamentary Politics and the Home Rule Crisis: The British House of Commons in 1886

In early August 1910 readers of Reynolds’s Newspaper, a radical weekly journal noted as much for its detailed coverage of divorce court proceedings as for its political radicalism (and in 1911 one of the ‘immoral’ English Sunday papers targeted by Irish ‘vigilance committees’), may have perused the weekly political column written by T.P. O’Connor. ‘T.P.’, the M.P. for Liverpool Scotland, was anything but a disinterested columnist, and with John Redmond, John Dillon and Joseph Devlin formed the inner leadership of the Irish Parliamentary Party and Ireland’s nationalist movement.Throughout the political crisis of early 1910 O’Connor had been the main London-based conduit for communications between the Irish Party and Asquith’s cabinet, and in particular Lloyd George and the Liberal chief whip, the Master of Elibank. The outcome of the January 1910 general election, which had given the balance of power in the House of Commons to the Irish nationalists, and John Redmond’s use of that power to force Asquith to act to end the veto powers of the House of Lords over parliamentary legislation, had enhanced both Redmond’s status in Ireland and the importance of home rule as an issue that had to be resolved.

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Home rule and the liberal party, 1899–1906

Irish Historical Studies ◽

10.1017/s0021121400008907 ◽

1963 ◽

Vol 13 (52) ◽

pp. 316-348 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

H.W. McCready

Keyword(s):

Party Politics ◽

Home Rule ◽

House Of Commons ◽

Liberal Party ◽

Financial Measures ◽

House Of Lords ◽

History Of ◽

Liberal Reform ◽

The Commons ◽

Pros And Cons

Gladstone’s dramatic commitment of the liberal party to a policy of home rule for Ireland in 1886 was followed by the Grand Old Man’s two attempts at turning his policy into legislation. The first home rule bill, that of 1886, was defeated in the house of commons and then in a general election: the second, that of 1893, was overwhelmed in the house of lords and then dropped by Gladstone’s fourth government. Though the Gladstonian commitment remained and the liberal party continued to be a home rule party — and though the pros and cons of the union of 1800 remained the major structural feature of British party politics — it was not until 1912 that the liberals did anything further about their major Irish policy. For most of the period 1893-1912 they were, of course, impotent in opposition and consequently in no position to take the initiative on home rule. In 1906, however, they won a landslide victory over their unionist opponents and it is striking that this electoral victory and the great impulse it gave to one of the most dynamic governments in the whole history of British liberalism was not followed, as had the last two liberal victories under Gladstone, by the introduction of a third home rule bill. Had the liberal landslide of 1906 been put behind another home rule measure the whole history of the matter would certainly have been radically different. The house of lords would have been easily overwhelmed; the great advance in constitutional reform for Ireland would have been carried in a spirit of liberal reform rather than of political surrender; the development of Sinn Fein would have been frustrated or at least diverted. But the liberal victory of 1906 was not so used. Home rule was postponed and sidetracked and was taken up again only when the liberal party once more desperately needed Irish votes in the budget election which followed the rejection of Lloyd George’s financial measures by the lords in November 1909. The home rule banner was hoisted afresh by Asquith, the prime minister, in his Albert Hall speechof 10 December 1909 and the third home rule bill appeared in due course in 1912 in direct — and significant — succession to the budget and the parliament act for both of which the Asquith government needed Irish support in the commons.

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Not All Experience is Created Equal: MP Career Typologies and Ministerial Appointments in the Canadian House of Commons, 1968–2015

Government and Opposition ◽

10.1017/gov.2019.29 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 1-19

Author(s):

Matthew Kerby ◽

Feodor Snagovsky

Keyword(s):

Cluster Analysis ◽

Data Driven ◽

House Of Commons ◽

Complete Understanding ◽

Political Careers ◽

Stepping Stone ◽

Widespread Agreement ◽

Government Experience ◽

And Cluster Analysis ◽

Parliamentary Politics

Abstract While there is widespread agreement in the ministerial promotion and resignation literature that experience matters, experience has typically been defined as the length of time a legislator has worked in politics or served in a legislature. This approach fails to account for the different kinds of experience legislators accumulate as they progress through their political careers prior to appointment to cabinet. We demonstrate how researchers can use sequence and cluster analysis to obtain a more complete understanding of ministerial appointment. We identify four data-driven archetypes of political careers in Canada for the period 1968–2015. We find that MPs with diverse political careers are more likely to be appointed to cabinet, while MPs with opposition experience are more successful than MPs with government experience. We also find that parliamentary secretary is not necessarily a stepping stone to a full cabinet position, calling into question traditional conceptions of parliamentary politics as a ‘ladder’.

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II. Irish Parliamentary Elections and the Influence of the Catholic Vote, 1801–20

The Historical Journal ◽

10.1017/s0018246x00027436 ◽

1967 ◽

Vol 10 (2) ◽

pp. 183-196 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

P. J. Jupp

Keyword(s):

Electoral Politics ◽

House Of Commons ◽

Parliamentary Elections ◽

Members Of Parliament ◽

Degree Of Certainty ◽

History Of ◽

The Government ◽

George Iii ◽

Parliamentary Politics ◽

Fair Degree

One generalization which can be made about politics in the reign of George III with a fair degree of certainty is that the vast majority of M.P.s did not consider their conduct in the House of Commons as predetermined by the wishes of their electors; they preferred to see themselves as elected as members of Parliament rather than as delegates to Parliament. Moreover, despite the recent concentration of some historians upon the history of Parliament, the discipline of psephology rarely engaged the attention of politicians after a general election. These two attitudes of mind, which together indicated a clear division between electoral and Parliamentary politics, were nowhere more prevalent than in constituencies where landed interests were predominant. These, which comprised the majority in Scotland and Wales, were, after 1801, also thought to predominate in Ireland. This, in fact, was part of the reason why the Whigs at Westminster so firmly opposed the Union during the debates in 1799 and 1800. They argued in effect that in Ireland, as in Scotland, there was little dependence upon electors and a great dependence upon patronage; that the union with Scotland had added a substantial proportion of the forty-five M.P.s to the ranks of the government of the day; and that the union with Ireland would add near a 100 more. In fact the traditional picture of Irish electoral politics between 1801–26 is that, notwithstanding the fact that in Ireland the economic and social position and above all the religious sentiments of the majority of the electors were nowhere more clearly opposed to those of their M.P.s, the constituencies remained firmly controlled by the leading landed, and therefore Protestant, interests, the majority of whom supported every administration. The purpose of this article, however, is to argue that the Catholic vote in Irish constituencies was an integral and important factor in elections before 1820; that it not only played its part at elections but that it also affected in some degree the conduct of Irish M.P.s in the House of Commons towards the question of Catholic emancipation.

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