The Context of 20th Century Ireland
- Statistics presented above three- quarters (76.9%) of the Irish population belonged to the Catholic Church, 12.34% were Anglican, and 9.2% were Presbyterian. However, the most significant of the alternative religious were Methodists at 8% and the remaining ‘others’ like Baptists, Brethren, Quakers, etc- resulted less than 1%.
- The Ne Temere decree issued by the papacy in 1908 insisted that the children of mixed marriages should be brought up in the Catholic religion. This ensured that Protestant-Catholic relations continued to be tense in this area.
- The idea of Home Rule dates from 1870 but it should be viewed as part of a longer tradition which aimed at revising the Anglo-Irish relationship by constitutional methods.
- The Home Rule Act was passed in 1914 but it was delayed by the outbreak of World War 1.
- Home rule comprises the authority of a local government to avoid state government intervention with its operations. The extent of its power, however, is subject to limitations arranged by state constitutions and statutes.
- Home Rule was an exceedingly important notion in the British Empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.. Before the occurrence of WWI, the nature of government in the British Empire was shifting. Greater independence and forms of domestic governance were granted to Canada, Australia, and South Africa in 1867, 1900, and 1909 respectively. Thus, Britain can be seen to have been gradually opening its system of imperial governance, at least for ‘civilised’ components of the empire. This contrasts starkly with the disorderly and chaotic nature of de-colonisation that was experienced by Britain, France, and other European powers following the Second World