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Contents 1 Introduction 2 Reading 3 Suggested structure 4 Gladstone's Irish policy shows 4.1 Evidence For 4.2 Evidence against 5 Comments

Introduction

What inspired Gladstone to get involved with Ireland in the first place? Was his interest genuine, or was he using Ireland as a means through which to attain other (non-Irish) ends, be they Italian, party political, personal or economic?

What do Gladstone’s actual achievements in terms of Ireland tell us about his motives? Are the limitations of his reforms evidence that he was just using the issue for other ends, or do they simply reveal both the intractability of the Irish Question and Gladstone’s own naivety about this?

Reading

B H Abbot, Gladstone and Disraeli, p121-131 M Scott-Bauman, Years of Expansion, p257-262 P Tweedie, Gladstone, p96-101 P Feuchtwanger, Democracy and Empire, p59-62 As ever, you can also profitably dip into Jenkins. Find me a quote or three! Lett’s Revise might also be of some assistance, though I haven’t got my copy here at home, so I can’t be sure.

Suggested structure

1. Contextualised introduction
2. Gladstone wasn’'t cynical… Look at his legislative record. He tries, and any failures that he has are just down to naivety… And his motives for getting involved were honourable
3. Gladstone was cynical… His legislative record was poor, and it was poor because his motives were impure…(explain)
4. Evaluative conclusion

Gladstone's Irish policy shows

Gladstone's Irish policy shows that his main concern was to keep the Liberal Party together and to remain its leader.

Evidence For

• Look at how he arrives at his main election pledge in 1868 (the Disestablishment of the Church of Ireland); he chooses this because the Liberal Party was split. It had been since Robert Lowe’s Adullamite rebellion of 1866, against Gladstone’s Reform Bill.
• Gladstone chooses Ireland because he knew that all the factions of the Liberal Party could rally behind it; the Whigs liked the whiff of religious liberty (a traditional Whig theme), the Nonconformists liked the promise this offered for the Disestablishment of the Church of England at a later date, the Irish liked it for obvious reasons
• The reforms that he does oversee don’t really do much; you could argue that they were purely cosmetic, and that they were cosmetic because he was just using the issue for his own ends, not in order to achieve significant improvements in the Ireland.
• Look at his return to Irish affairs late on in his first ministry (in 1873, when he put together the Irish University Bill) He was trying to do the same! He knew that, after 5 years in office, the Liberal coalition was falling apart; the Whigs hated the army reforms, the Nonconformists hated the Education Act, labour hated the Criminal Law Amendment Act, everyone hated the Licensing Act? He hoped that again, Ireland would draw the ministry together.
• By the late 70s, Gladstone was increasingly bothered by the so-called Radical challenge” growing within the Liberal Party; Joseph Chamberlain was leading a faction who wanted to implement a far more interventionist style of Liberalism, a style which would offer the working classes substantive assistance, and not just the promise of a laissez-faire, meritocratic society; some argue that Gladstone used Ireland to keep discussion of domestic, social policy off the agenda; in other words, he used it to stop Chamberlain from challenging for the leadership of the party!

Evidence against

• Gladstone had lots of reasons for getting involved in Ireland - they weren'’t all party political
• If you agree that the reforms were limited, maybe it’s just because Gladstone underestimated the scale of the problem and not that he was cynically using the issue.
• Recent history had suggested that, if you wanted to keep a party together, you didn’'t go anywhere near Ireland… This issue had split the Tories twice, in 1830 (Catholic Emancipation) and 1846 (Corn Law repeal). Indeed, it’s often said that one of Lord Liverpool’s greatest achievements (Tory Prime Minister, 1812-27) was to keep well away from the issue. Disraeli tended to avoid speaking about it because he knew just how dangerous it could be. Gladstone himself would split the Liberals over the issue in 1885 (Home Rule).
• Now, G. was a far-sighted and intelligent politician. Surely he wouldn'’t be mad enough to choose this issue as a way of healing party rifts, not when it had a history of doing exactly the opposite.
• Gladstone’s later interest in Ireland (from the late 70s) had nothing to do with the Radical challenge and his desire to keep the leadership, and everything to do with the fact that, by then, it was obvious that his pacification” measures had failed and that, if no further action was taken, the Union would be threatened. If leadership meant so much to Gladstone, why had he so easily resigned it in 1874, after his electoral defeat?

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