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devotion to the cause of Irish Home Rule … was not very profound’.27 Fourthly, Muldoon considers that Churchill attempted to argue for Ulster exclusion as a way to expedite the Home Rule Bill, without considering the sympathy Churchill had always had for the Ulster cause. Last but not least, Muldoon fails to consider Churchill’s ‘flair for exploiting each major political issue as it arose and matching his ambition to the hour’.28
The difficulty with analysing Churchill’s actions during the course of the Third Home Rule Bill is that although he was a leading protagonist in the debates, and naturally had to give reasons for the benefits of Home Rule, he had other reasons than the ones he was forced to put forward by the exigencies of debate. As R.A.C. Parker pointed out in another context, ‘It is not true that [Churchill’s] … “passionate concern for Empire” prevented rational calculation in practice, whatever the rhetorical requirements of the moment might demand’.29
Patricia Jalland in her book The Liberals and Ireland,30 and her article co-authored with John Stubbs, ‘The Irish Question after the Outbreak of War in 1914: Some Unfinished Party Business’, covers Churchill’s involvement in Irish Home Rule in the period 1911–1914.31 But as Jalland has pointed out, ‘the Home Rule campaign in Britain was divided between several leading ministers, including Asquith, Lloyd George, Churchill, Herbert Samuel, and Birrell’,32 and as a consequence attention could not be devoted entirely to Churchill. My book will deal with Churchill’s Irish involvements and will offer additional evidence to support Jalland’s belief that Churchill ‘was never a wholehearted Home Ruler’.33 However, my explanation of Churchill’s reasons for supporting Home Rule will differ from hers. She considered that Churchill supported Home Rule because ‘it was a long-standing party commitment, which must be honoured as quickly as possible’,34 whereas my interpretation will stress the extent to which the Irish question was used by Churchill in a much more opportunistic and unprincipled way. This book argues that, rather than seeing Irish Home Rule as a benefit to the Empire (as argued by Muldoon), Churchill entered the Home Rule controversy mainly to advance his ambitions. In contrast to Muldoon and Jalland, I will