Liberal policies and nationalist policies in Ireland 1905-10

Now that Cambell Bannerman' a compromise was exploded., life became more difficult for the Irish party, and. for the cabinet, SO far as Ireland was concerned. When it was decided (by Birreil) to override MacDonnell once more and. conciliate Trinity College, a satisfactory university settlement was achieved, with the consent of the bulk of the unionist party. But although the National University became within a few years the seed-bed. of revolutionary nationalism, its creation brought little immediate relief to the government or the Irish party. On the land, especially in the west, conditions had. grown worse than they had been at the time since the 1880g. This trouble was primarily the result of the breakdown of the 1903 land act, which had been too sanguine in its financial arrangements and had. raised. land prices to such an extent that in the poorest parts of the west the act had. scarcely worked at all. In addition, however, the agitation was the work of agrarian extremists within the Irish party. When the DudJey commission submitted a radical report, which was fashion& into a strong land bill, much of the steam was taken out of the agitation. The house of lords however, while maintaining that its m p in motive was to ensure that 'untenanted.' land was given over to the relief of congestion and not given over by the Irish party to its agrarian storm-troopers, the landless men, drastically revised. the land. bill (the question of price was probably the factor with most Irish landlords), and. it was only the intervention of Lord Lansdowne and the unionist leadership which prevented the con1ete loss of the bill. Lansdowne' s motives were not altruistic but tactical. The tory party had decided that the lords should. reject the government's 1909 budget, and did, not wish to blur the issue by rejecting the land bill at the same time. iv. As another general election approached, the government once more needed the support of the Irish party, on general grounds, and especially in the struggle with the lords. But with the land bill safely passed it was less easy for the Irish party to ac their followers to join in a campaign against the lords on the budget, because a number of the budget taxes (especially the liquor duties) were extremely unpopular in Ireland, partly as a result of the exaggerations of the O' Brienites. The Irish party had been unable to give the budget any support during 1909. In this situation Asquith had little alternative but to give a home rule pledge, on the eve of the election. When the parties returned to Westminster in 1910, situation was radically changed. Redmond held the balance of power, and was able to conceal his inability to vote for the budget behind a concori.at with the radical wing of the liberal party, by which they refused to pass the budget, on tactical grounds, until the government had extracted from the king a promise to swamp the house of lords by a vast creation of liberal peers. The liberal government were unable to retain the confidence of nationalists and. radicals during the first three months of 1910, because of splits within the cabinet over whether the house of lords should be reconstituted or simply shorn of its powers. When the backed down it was at last possible for Asquith to throw off his chains (or at least some of them): he won back the support of the nationalists by a strong declaration in favour of abolition of the veto, and. at the same time called their bluff by re-introducing his budget. Redmond and Dillon now felt safe enough to conour in this policy, but the death of the king intervened, bringing about a climate in which compromise talks between the government and. the unionist party were able to take place. By June 1910 it was clear that the hold. on the government which Redmond had exercised since January might prove a very brittle one.