Editing Home rule (section)

== Ireland ==
{{Main|Irish Home Rule movement}}

The issue of Irish home rule was the dominant political question of British and Irish politics at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/home_rule_movement_01.shtml |title=Irish Home Rule: An imagined future |last=McConnel | first=James |publisher=BBC History |date=17 February 2011 |access-date=30 June 2014}}</ref>

From the late 19th century, Irish leaders of the [[Home Rule League]], the predecessor of the [[Irish Parliamentary Party]], under [[Isaac Butt]], [[William Shaw (Irish politician)|William Shaw]], and [[Charles Stewart Parnell]] demanded a form of home rule, with the creation of an Irish parliament within the [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland]]. This demand led to the eventual introduction of four Home Rule Bills, of which two were passed, the [[Government of Ireland Act 1914]] won by [[John Redmond]] and most notably the [[Government of Ireland Act 1920]] (which created the home rule parliaments of [[Northern Ireland]] and [[Southern Ireland (1921–1922)|Southern Ireland]] – the latter state did not in reality function and was replaced by the [[Irish Free State]]).

The home rule demands of the late 19th and early 20th century differed from earlier demands for [[(Irish) Repeal|Repeal]] by [[Daniel O'Connell]] in the first half of the 19th century. Whereas home rule meant a constitutional movement towards an Irish parliament under the ultimate sovereignty of [[Palace of Westminster|Westminster]], in much the same manner as [[Constitution Act, 1867|Canada]], [[New Zealand Constitution Act 1852|New Zealand]], or the much later [[Scottish Parliament|Scottish devolution process]], ''repeal'' meant the repeal of the [[1801 Act of Union]] (if need be, by physical force) and the creation of an entirely independent Irish state, separated from the United Kingdom, with only a shared monarch joining them; in essence, Home Rule would see Ireland become an [[Autonomous administrative division|autonomous region]] within the United Kingdom, while repeal would give the island a status more akin to a [[Dominion]], an independent nation tied to Britain by a shared monarch.

* 1886: [[First Irish Home Rule Bill]] was defeated in the [[House of Commons of the United Kingdom|House of Commons]].
* 1893: [[Second Irish Home Rule Bill]] passed by the House of Commons, vetoed in the [[House of Lords]].
* 1914: [[Third Irish Home Rule Bill]] passed to the statute books, temporarily suspended by intervention of [[World War I]] (1914–1918), finally following the [[Easter Rising]] in Dublin (1916).
* 1920: [[Government of Ireland Act 1920]] (Government of Ireland Act 1920) fully implemented in [[Northern Ireland]] and partially implemented in [[Southern Ireland (1921–22)|Southern Ireland]].

Senior Liberals [[Spencer Cavendish, 8th Duke of Devonshire|Lord Hartington]] and [[Joseph Chamberlain]] led the battle against Home Rule in Parliament. They broke with the Liberal leader [[William Ewart Gladstone]] who insisted on Home Rule, and in 1886 formed a new party, the [[Liberal Unionist Party]]. It helped defeat Home Rule and eventually merged with the Conservative party. Chamberlain used anti-Catholicism to build a base for the new party among "Orange" Nonconformist Protestant elements in Britain and Ireland.<ref>{{cite book|author=D. W. Bebbington|title=The Nonconformist Conscience|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KUNpAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA93|year=2014|publisher=Routledge|page=93|isbn=9781317796558}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=Travis L. Crosby|title=Joseph Chamberlain: A Most Radical Imperialist|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HAKPcVqFqQsC&pg=PA74|year=2011|publisher=I.B.Tauris|pages=74–76|isbn=9781848857537}}</ref> Liberal Unionist [[John Bright]] coined the party's slogan, "Home rule means Rome rule."<ref>{{cite book|author=Hugh Cunningham|title=The Challenge of Democracy: Britain 1832-1918|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KyIiBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA134|year=2014|pages=134–|publisher=Routledge |isbn=9781317883289}}</ref> Ultimately, the [[Irish Free State]] was established in 1922 as an independent [[Dominion]] sharing the British monarch as head of state, though [[Northern Ireland]] was separated from the new state and gained its own [[Parliament of Northern Ireland|Home Rule Parliament]] which existed until 1972 (The current [[Northern Ireland Assembly]] was created in 1998; between 1972 and 1998, Northern Ireland was under [[Direct rule (Northern Ireland)|direct rule from Westminster]]).{{Citation needed|date=May 2024}}