National Volunteers - Origins

Origins

The National Volunteers were the product of the Irish political crisis over the implementation of Home Rule in 1912–14. The Third Home Rule Bill had been proposed in 1912 (and was subsequently passed in 1914) under the British Liberal government, after a campaign by John Redmond and the Irish Parliamentary Party. However, its implementation was delayed in the face of mass resistance by Irish Unionists. This had begun with the introduction of the bill into Parliament, when thousands of unionists signed the "Ulster Covenant", pledging to resist Home Rule. In 1913 they formed the Ulster Volunteers (UVF), an armed wing of Ulster Unionism and organised locally by the Orange Order; the Ulster Volunteers stated that they would resist Home Rule by force.

In response, Nationalists formed their own paramilitary group, the Irish Volunteers, at a meeting held in Dublin on 25 November 1913; the purpose of this new organisation was to safeguard the granting and implementation of Home Rule. It looked for several months in 1914 as if civil war was imminent between the two armed factions, with the British Army known to be reluctant to intervene against Ulster armed opposition to Home Rule's coming into operation. While Redmond took no role in the creation of the Irish Volunteers, when he saw how influential they had become he realized an independent body of such magnitude was a threat to his authority as leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, and therefore sought control of the organization.

Eoin MacNeill, along with Sir Roger Casement and other leaders of the Irish Volunteers, had indeed sought Redmond's approval of and input in the organization, but did not want to hand control over to him. In June 1914, the Volunteer leadership reluctantly agreed, in the interest of harmony, to permit Redmond to nominate half of the membership of the Volunteer Executive; as some of the standing members were already Redmond supporters, this would have given him control over the Volunteers. The motion was bitterly opposed by the radical members of the committee (mostly members of the secret Irish Republican Brotherhood), notably Patrick Pearse, Sean MacDermott, and Eamonn Ceannt, but was carried nevertheless in order to prevent a split. With the support of the Irish Party the Volunteer organization grew dramatically.