Abstract
In August 1912, four months after the introduction of the Third Home Rule Bill for Ireland and in the aftermath of ferocious sectarian rioting in the Belfast shipyards, Commissioner Smith the head of the Royal Irish Constabulary in Belfast, and a future Inspector-General, submitted a report of the political situation in the city to his Inspector-General, Sir Neville Chamberlain, and the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Augustine Birrell.In the course of his report Smith included the comment:'The month of June opened in Belfast upon a condition of great excitement and high party feeling. The Home Rule Bill was then before Parliament and the measure evoked strong party feeling in Belfast. The Catholics as a whole supported the Bill. The Protestants as a body regarded it with hostility. The result was that this apparently political question evoked the spirit of sectarian animosity.'
Intriguingly this comment was not Smith's and the year to which it referred was not 1912. It came from the official report on the Belfast Riots of 1886 which Smith had been reading. These riots occurred during the crisis over the First Home Rule Bill and he had been impressed by the similarities between the emotions which that Bill had aroused and those being evoked by Asquith's Bill. He was also struck by the way in which the events and consequences of the 1886 crisis had had a substantial impact on the thinking and actions of many of the participants in the politics of the period 1912-14. No study of that period then can be complete without a knowledge of the first and also the Second Home crisis - and in particular their impact on the Unionist population in Ireland.
| Date of Award | 1986 |
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| Original language | English |
| Awarding Institution |
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| Supervisor | David Harkness (Supervisor) |