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This year saw the break up of the old United Kingdom. The reason for the break up was Ireland and disputes about who should rule there had been going on for some time. The Irish Parliament had been abolished in 1800 with the Act of Union. Since then Ireland had been ruled from Westminster.
In very simple terms, there were two groups in Ireland. The Unionists, who were mainly of protestant religion and again mainly in the north of the country and the Irish Nationalists who wanted home rule and were Catholics living mainly in the south. Please note this is a very basic explanation.
Various attempts were made to sort things out. If you remember, The Liberals had won the 1910 elections but needed the support of the Irish Parliamentary Party to govern. This party wanted home rule. In 1912, the government introduced a Home Rule Bill but it took some time to be passed and, in any case, WWI came along and the government got distracted.
However, at Easter 1916, they got their focus back as an armed uprising started in Dublin led by Irish Nationalists. The British Army moved in and the uprising was put down within six days. It is estimated that nearly 500 people were killed, more than half of them civilians, about 40 were under 17 years old. Nearly 2,500 people were wounded, almost 90% of these civilians.
The British Army then arrested most of the leaders of the rebellion. Trials took place in secret and 15 people were sentenced to death by a firing squad. In our modern times, this would seem barbaric but 14 of the executions were carried out between 3 May 1916 and 12 May 1916, In one case, involving a man called James Connolly, he was tied to a chair before being shot as he was unable to stand because his ankle had been shattered in the fighting. The British Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, began to worry, correctly, that the executions would “sow the seeds of lasting trouble in Ireland”. How right he was. As a result the British Army commander, General Maxwell, decided that after the executions on May 12, further sentences would be changed to a prison term.
The behaviour of the British Army and the way in which they dealt with the rebellion almost certainly turned many ordinary people, who up till then hadn't really worried about who ruled them, against British rule.
After the war it all started again and the war of Irish Independence began in 1920. The end result was an official division of Ireland into two parts, North and South, which took place in May 1921. The intention was for both parts to stay in the United Kingdom but in 1922 the south took the decision to leave and become an independent country, known as the Republic of Ireland.
This has been the cause, as foreseen by Asquith, of so many problems over the last 100 years as you will see later and, apart from anything else, is a major problem in regard to Brexit.
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