Government of Ireland Act 1914 - An Act Overtaken By Events

An Act Overtaken By Events

With the outbreak of what was expected to be a short World War I in August 1914, looming civil war in Ireland was averted. Both mainstream nationalists and unionists, keen to ensure the implementation of the Act on the one hand and to influence the issue of how temporary was partition to be on the other, rallied in support of Britain's war commitment to the Allies under the Triple Entente (See: Ireland and World War I).

The Irish Volunteers split into the larger National Volunteers and a rump who kept the original title. The NV and many other Irishmen, convinced at the time that Ireland had won freedom and self-government under the Act, joined Irish regiments of the 10th (Irish) Division or the 16th (Irish) Division of the New British Army to "defend the freedom of other small nations" and to fight in France and Belgium for a Europe free from oppression. The men of the Ulster Volunteers went on to join the 36th (Ulster) Division, and unlike their nationalist counterparts who apart from Irish Generals William Hickie and Bryan Mahon, lacked prior military training to act as officers, were allowed their own local reserve militia officers.

However, a fringe element of nationalism, represented by the remaining Irish Volunteers, opposed Irish support for the war effort, believing Irishmen who wanted to "defend the freedom of small nations" should focus on one closer to hand. In Easter 1916 a rebellion, the Easter Rising, took place in Dublin. Initially widely condemned in view of the heavy Irish war losses on the Western Front and in the disastrous Gallipoli V beach landing at Cape Helles (the main nationalist newspaper, the Irish Independent, demanded the execution of the rebels), the British government's mishandling of the aftermath of the Rising, including the protracted executions of the Rising's leaders by General Maxwell, led to the rise of an Irish republican movement in Sinn Féin, a small previously separatist monarchist party taken over by the rebellion's survivors, after it had been wrongly blamed for the rebellion by the British.

This marked a crucial turning on the path to attaining self-government. The rising put an end to the democratic constitutional and conciliatory parliamentary movement and replaced it with a radical physical-force approach. Unionists became even more trenchant in their views on All-Ireland self-government, ultimately leading to a perpetuation of partition.