The first reading of th Home Rule Bill took place in the !. Louse of Commons in 1912. The Bill involved Britain withdrawing from all of Ireland and allowing the inhabitants of that country a limited degree of self-government.
The Bill was due to become law in 1914 but by 1913 it was becoming clear that Britain was preparing to back-track.
In the north of Ireland a minority of the population threatened an armed rebellion if Home Rule were enacted. They were supported by the Tory opposition at Westminster, whose leader, Bonar Law, declared: 'I can imagine no length of resistance to which Ulster will go in which I shall not be ready to support them.' James Connolly A compromise, involving the partition of Ireland, was suggested. The revolutionary Marxist, James Connolly, warned that such a scheme would mean a 'carnival of reaction' and that it would "destroy the oncoming unity of the Irish labour movement'.
The first hunger strike in modern Irish history was undertaken by James Connolly in the course of the 1913 Dublin lock-out. This involved tens of thousands of Dubliners being locked out, or on strike for trade union recognition.
Along with Jim Larkin, James Connolly was one of the leaders of the irish Transport and General Workers' Union. He had been in Dublin only two days when he was arrested after making a speech urging Dublin workers to defy a ban on a demonstration.
Connolly told the judge who sentenced him to three months imprisonment:
'I do not recognise English government in Ireland at all. I do not recognise the King.... The only manner in which progress can be made is by guaranteeing the right of the people to assemble and voice their views.
When in jail, Connolly was visited by a variety of labour leaders, including Kier Hardie, one of the founders of the British Labour Party. After a couple of days Connolly went on hunger strike. This protest, and the mass support it received in Dublin, quickly secured his release.
The lock-out itself eventually ended in a partial defeat for the workers, but out of it came Connolly's Citizen Army, described by Lenin as 'the first red army Socialist Challenge 13 November 1980 in history'. Connolly and that army were later to play their part in the 1916 Irish Rising.
The 1916 Rising was defeated, its leaders were executed and its sympathisers brutally repressed. The promise of Irish Home Rule began to fade, and the partition of Ireland now seemed likely.
But the Rising awakened a great wave of national consciousness in the Irish people and by 1917 Ireland was in a state of near-insurrection.
Thomas Ashe was a commandant in the 1916 Rising. He was arrested by the British government, sentenced to death, reprieved and subsequently released. In August 1917 he was again arrested, along with other Republicans, and charged with 'speeches calculated to cause disaffection'.
Thomas Ashe on hunger strike demanding to be days after an attempt by the British authorities to force-feed him.
Ashe's coffin through the streets of Dublin. counties.
surprise. governments death nature because IRELAND is on the edge of a massive ex plosion. The stubborn attitude shown by the Tory government our-. the H Block hunger strike jc e! ung to light a fire which could sweep through the entire 32 The passionate support for the hunger strikers which is now evident in Ireland, and in the North in particular, is reported to have caught the British government by That is a testament to that ignorance, for hunger strikes by political prisoners have always raised the temperature in Ireland.
This is not just because of the life or of such a protest, but hunger strikes are a dramatic symbol of the resistance to British occupation of Ireland. That resistance, and its justification, is highlighted by the history of hunger stikes.
In the 1918 general election, 70 per cent of the Irish population voted for Sinn Fein, which stood for complete Irish independence and unity.
The British government refused to ac. cept this expression of popular will and when the Irish Republic was proclaimed, Britain declared war on that Republic At the end of a campaign of British terror, and threats by the British government to wage 'total war' on the Irish majority, the partition of Ireland was imposed. No section of the Irish electorate voted for such partition.
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The hunger strike, 1913
The hunger strike, 1917