Irish+Home+Rule

The **Irish Home Rule** was an attempt to allow the Irish to have their own parliment, but its foreign policy would remain under the control of the British. Ever since the Act of Union in 1801, Ireland had been joined under the rule of the rule of the British Parliment. After the act of Catholic Emancipation in 1829, the number of Irish Catholics in the House of Commons grew greatly. The main barrier to this was the strong opposition of the six dominant Protestant counties (Ulster) in northern Ireland and many in Great Britian as well. In 1886, William Gladstone (the prime minister at the time) proposed a home-rule bill, but it was shot down by a group of Conservatives and anti-home-rule Liberals. Another attempt was made in 1893 by Gladstone, but it was quickly shot down. In 1914, however, the Liberals finally pushed it through Parliment. It was not enforced because of the opposition in Ulster, where Protestants organized illegal militia. The Irish nationalists also organiszed their own force, and by that same summer, Ireland was nearing the edge for a civil war.

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