On 8 April 1886, in a momentous three-and-a-half-hour speech, the prime minister William Ewart Gladstone introduced the first Irish Home Rule Bill to the House of Commons. The proposed legislation, which sought to grant Ireland a measure of self-government and national autonomy within the British Empire, precipitated a permanent Liberal schism.

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The First Home Rule Bill proposed the creation of a devolved Irish assembly in Dublin with powers to legislate on most domestic matters, while reserving issues such as defence, foreign policy, and international trade for the imperial parliament at Westminster.

In part, the move was a political response to the rise of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), which had begun campaigning for home rule in the 1870s as the Irish Home Government Association under the leadership of Isaac Butt.

The Third Reform Act 1884, passed during Gladstone’s second ministry, extended the household and lodger franchises in boroughs (urban constituencies) to the counties (historically rural constituencies). It added approximately two million voters to the electoral roll, increasing the total electorate from three million to over five million. The landmark legislation greatly strengthened the rural Irish nationalist vote.

At the 1885 general election, the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), led by Charles Stewart Parnell, increased its representation from 63 seats to 85 seats. The IPP held the balance of power in the hung parliament that followed; the Liberals held 319 seats, with the Conservatives on 247.

Upon leaving office as prime minister in June 1885, Gladstone had become convinced that granting home rule would be necessary to pacify Ireland and strengthen the union. News of the Grand Old Man’s conversion, circulated courtesy of the famous Hawarden Kite, precipitated his return as prime minister. The IPP swung behind Gladstone.

Gladstone drafted the First Home Rule Bill in secret, excluding his own ministry, the Liberal Party and Irish MPs.

The bill split the Liberal Party.

A powerful faction, led by Joseph Chamberlain and the Marquess of Hartington, broke away to form the Liberal Unionists. This new grouping feared home rule would destabilise the British Empire by injecting the possibility of self-determination; Chamberlain had resigned from Gladstone’s cabinet on these terms.

The Liberal Unionists thereafter began to act as a unified bloc with the Conservative Party.

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Introducing the Government of Ireland Bill on 8 April 1886, Gladstone argued that Britain had reached a decisive moment in its long struggle with Irish governance. The questions of land and government, he explained, were “closely and inseparably connected”, because both ultimately related to the deeper challenge of establishing “social order in Ireland”.

He called on parliament to no longer “fence and skirmish with this question”, but to “get if we can at the root”.

Gladstone pointed to international examples where political unity had coexisted with legislative diversity. In Scandinavia, Sweden and Norway had preserved a durable union despite maintaining “strict legislative independence and co-equality”. Similarly, the Austro-Hungarian settlement had stabilised relations by recognising a “complete duality of power”.

These examples suggested that the key challenge for Britain was to reconcile “Imperial unity with diversity of legislation”.

The essence of the Anglo-Irish union, Gladstone insisted, would remain intact under his proposals. The Act of Union had created a “supreme statutory authority of the Imperial Parliament”, which would be preserved by the proposed legislation.

Nevertheless, the prime minister argued that Ireland required a new constitutional settlement. The government therefore proposed “a legislative body sitting in Dublin, for the conduct of both legislation and administration under the conditions which may be prescribed by the Act defining Irish, as distinct from Imperial, affairs.”

Gladstone turned to the conditions he believed his bill satisfied. He argued that the “unity of the Empire” and the “political equality of the three countries” would be maintained under the proposed settlement.

He also vowed to introduce safeguards for the protection of the Protestant population of Ulster. While Gladstone refused to accept that this minority could “rule the question at large for Ireland”, he nonetheless insisted that its concerns should be respected “to the utmost practicable extent”.

The prime minister argued that future Irish legislation needed to come from “a congenial and native source, and besides being good laws should be their own laws.”

Gladstone was insistent that parliament could no longer deny the existence of Irish national sentiment. Moreover, he rejected the idea that Irish nationality was inherently dangerous and argued that patriotism existed throughout the United Kingdom.

He declared: “I hold that there is such a thing as local patriotism, which, in itself, is not bad, but good. The Welshman is full of local patriotism – the Scotchman is full of local patriotism…

“The Irishman is more profoundly Irish; but it does not follow that, because his local patriotism is keen, he is incapable of Imperial patriotism.”

The prime minister concluded: “I ask that in our own case we should practise, with firm and fearless hand, what we have so often preached – the doctrine which we have so often inculcated upon others – namely, that the concession of local self-government is not the way to sap or impair, but the way to strengthen and consolidate unity.”

Home rule, Gladstone stated, would “secure at once the social peace, the fame, the power, and the permanence of the Empire.”

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When the debate resumed on 7 June, Gladstone confronted critics who described the bill as a measure of separation. This charge, he insisted, was nothing more than “the merest slang of vulgar controversy”.

He added: “ Now, I must make a large demand on your patience and your indulgence – we conscientiously believe that there are unionists and disunionists; but that it is our policy that leads to union and yours to separation. This involves a very large and deep historical question.”

Gladstone dismissed the suggestion that Britain had steadily corrected Irish grievances since the Act of Union. In reality, reforms had frequently been granted only under pressure. Even Catholic Emancipation in 1829 had been conceded “to avoid civil war”.

The prime minister warned: “This, if I understand it, is one of the golden moments of our history one of those opportunities which may come and may go, but which rarely return, or, if they return, return at long intervals, and under circumstances which no man can forecast.”

In his peroration, the Grand Old Man famously beseeched his opponents to “think well, think wisely, think not for the moment, but for the years that are to come, before you reject this bill.”

The commons divided.

The First Home Rule Bill was defeated by 341 votes to 311 – a majority of 30.

In total, 93 Liberal MPs voted with 248 Conservatives against the proposed legislation and their government.

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Gladstone’s response to the defeat of his 1886 Home Rule Bill was to dissolve parliament.

The subsequent general election produced a transformed political landscape. A new Conservative–Liberal Unionist alliance returned 393 MPs (316 Conservatives and 78 Liberal Unionists), an increase of 146 seats. Gladstone’s Liberals were reduced from 319 seats to 192.

The Liberal Party, which had held power for 18 of the 27 years since 1859, was consigned to opposition for most of the next two decades. It would only be in power for three of the next 19 years.

The Liberals returned to government in 1892.

Gladstone, prime minister for a fourth time, again attempted to legislate for Irish home rule. The Second Irish Home Rule Bill (1893) provided for continued Irish representation in the UK parliament – a measure that set it apart from the vision of home rule offered in 1886. The bill passed the commons by 34 votes. But the proposals met their end in the unionist-dominated Lords. Peers rejected the bill overwhelmingly by 419 votes to 41.

Gladstone had his last audience with Queen Victoria on 28 February 1894. The palace sent for the Earl of Rosebery, the foreign secretary, who assumed office on 5 March.

Liberalism struggled to recover from Gladstone’s retirement in 1894. The party lost the 1895 general election, and the Conservatives returned to power for the following decade.

The Conservative and Unionist governments under the Marquess of Salisbury and Arthur Balfour pursued a policy of “killing home rule with kindness”.

The 1906 general election returned the Liberals to government after an extended period in the wilderness. The January 1910 and December 1910 general elections, which resulted in hung parliaments, placed home rule firmly on the political agenda. The Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), now led by John Redmond, once again held the balance of power

The Liberal Unionists, having allied with Lord Salisbury’s Conservatives on the issue of home rule, fused with the party in 1912. This official coalescence produced the Conservative and Unionist Party as it stands today.

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The Third Irish Home Rule Bill was introduced in the 1912-1914 parliamentary session by Liberal prime minister H. H. Asquith. It provided for limited Irish self-government by way of a Dublin-based bicameral parliament, consisting of a 164-member House of Commons and a 40-member senate. The proposed legislature would be invested with powers to deal with most national affairs, but the UK parliament would also retain authority “over all persons, matters, and things in Ireland”.

Under the Suspensory Act, however, the Third Home Rule Bill was successively deferred in a series of six month periods until 1920, when it was repealed by new home rule legislation.

Irish self-government was delivered, in part, via a fourth bill, the Government of Ireland Act 1920 – but not according to Gladstone’s original vision. Crisis and revolution in Ireland had seen to that.

The Government of Ireland Act 1920, or Fourth Home Rule Bill, recognised what would become Northern Ireland (six north-eastern counties in Ulster) and the south of Ireland (the 32 counties that would later constitute the Irish free state). The act envisioned that both polities would exercise self-government in the United Kingdom as “Northern Ireland” and “Southern Ireland”.

The subsequent Irish War of Independence (1919-1921) resulted in the Anglo-Irish Treaty 1921 and the Irish Free State Constitution Act 1922. Northern Ireland had the option to opt in or out of the Irish Free State. The unionist government, led by James Craig as prime minister, chose the latter option.