Home Rule Compromised
With the involvement of Ireland on the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Devlin sided with Redmond’s decision in supporting recruiting for Britain’s and the Allied war effort and voluntary enlistment of National Volunteers in Irish regiments of the New Service Army. Redmond’s plan was that, post-war, an intended ‘Irish Brigade’ and the National Volunteers would provide the basis for an Irish army, capable of enforcing Home Rule on reluctant Ulster Unionists.
After the 1916 Easter Rising Devlin compromised with Northern Nationalists on a temporary six-county exclusion to assist Lloyd George’s abortive home rule negotiations, organising a convention which endorsed exclusion by a vote of 475 to 265. On the other hand during the Irish Convention he sided with the bishops in blocking Redmond’s compromise with Southern Unionists on Home Rule. In April 1918 Devlin was signatory to the anti- Conscription Crisis of 1918 pledge. At the end of the war he was elected Nationalist MP for Belfast Falls in the 1918 general election (in which he defeated Éamon de Valera of Sinn Féin), one of the very few Irish Parliamentary Party MPs to retain their seats against the Sinn Féin landslide.
Read more about this topic: Joseph Devlin
Famous quotes containing the words home, rule and/or compromised:
“But the creative person is subject to a different, higher law than mere national law. Whoever has to create a work, whoever has to bring about a discovery or deed which will further the cause of all of humanity, no longer has his home in his native land but rather in his work.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“The rule for every man is, not to depend on the education which other men have prepared for him,—not even to consent to it; but to strive to see things as they are, and to be himself as he is. Defeat lies in self-surrender.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“He had kind eyes and hands
and was a friend of sorrow.
Thus they were married.
After all he had compromised her.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)