Joseph Devlin - Home Rule Compromised

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.