Developments in Ireland
During the Great War Irish politics moved decisively in a different direction. Several events - including the Easter Rising of 1916, and the conscription crisis of 1918 - and the subsequent reaction of the British Government, had utterly altered the state of Irish Politics, and made Sinn Féin the dominant voice of Irish Nationalism. Sinn Féin, standing for 'an independent sovereign Ireland', had won seventy-three of the one hundred and five parliamentary seats on the island in the 1918 General Election and established its own unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) state, the Irish Republic with its own parliament, Dáil Éireann.
Also for a variety of reasons all the Ulster Unionist MPs at Westminster voted against the Act. They preferred that all or most of Ulster would remain fully within the United Kingdom, and only accepted the proposed northern Home Rule state as the second best option.
Thus, when the Act was passed on 23 December 1920 it was already out of touch with realities in Ireland. The long-standing demand for home rule had been replaced among Nationalists by a demand for complete independence. The Republic's army was waging the Irish War of Independence against British rule, which had reached a nadir in late 1920.
Read more about this topic: Government Of Ireland Act 1920
Famous quotes containing the words developments in, developments and/or ireland:
“The developments in the North were those loosely embraced in the term modernization and included urbanization, industrialization, and mechanization. While those changes went forward apace, the antebellum South changed comparatively little, clinging to its rural, agricultural, labor-intensive economy and its traditional folk culture.”
—C. Vann Woodward (b. 1908)
“I don’t wanna live in a city where the only cultural advantage is that you can make a right turn on a red light.
Freedom from labor itself is not new; it once belonged among the most firmly established privileges of the few. In this instance, it seems as though scientific progress and technical developments had been only taken advantage of to achieve something about which all former ages dreamed but which none had been able to realize.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“Life springs from death and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations.... They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything, think they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools, they have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.”
—Patrick Henry Pearse (1879–1916)