Historical and Art Medals, Numismatic Books

Ireland, Proposed Home Rule in Ulster, 1914, a brass and enamel badge by H. Lewis, London, red hand of O’Neill, god helps those who help themselves but god help the home ruler who helps himself to ulster around, 42 x 39mm; Great Northern Railway Ireland, a brass and enamel badge, 22mm [2]. About very fine (£30-40)

The Home Rule movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries sought to bring Ireland a measure of political autonomy through constitutional means. In 1886, 1893, and again in 1912, Home Rule bills went before Parliament in London. On the third such occasion, the Liberal Asquith government, dependent on Irish nationalist support, sponsored a bill whereby the whole of Ireland would, with many restrictive conditions, be granted independence (Home Rule). This bill was passed on its third reading by the House of Commons, in May 1914, but it was never implemented, due to the outbreak of war later that summer. Politically, the most significant weakness of the various Home Rule schemes was their failure to address the specific interests of Protestant north-east Ulster, and it was from this quarter that the most strenuous opposition to Home Rule came in 1912. These ‘Ulster Unionists’ were led by Sir Edward Carson (1854-1935), a Dublin-born lawyer who in 1910 became head of the Irish Unionist bloc in the House of Commons. Carson was convinced that only drastic measures could prevent Home Rule; he did his best to obstruct the bill in the Commons, and with James Craig raised an 80,000-strong force, the Ulster Volunteers, to resist the measure forcibly if and when it was enacted. This militancy brought Ireland to the verge of civil war in July 1914 before the newly passed bill was suspended