|
|
in favour of Home Rule (a third Home Rule Bill was before parliament at the time). But such was the local Unionist opposition that Churchill never got to the planned venue and had to make his speech at a more Nationalist location in the west of the city. Like his father, however, Winston spoke of the security of the British empire and argued that, with Home Rule, Ireland, instead of being ‘a disruptive force’, would be transformed into a source of strength for the empire. The imperial dimension of both Churchills’ (and both Chamberlains’) attitudes is one of the things which Ian Chambers’ book usefully reminds us of. Too often the Irish-British relationship is viewed effectively as insular history, restricted to the archipelago of Ireland and Great Britain.
Ian Chambers’ work makes a distinctive contribution to our knowledge of British policy towards Ireland in general from the 1880s to the 1920s, and in particular to the role played by the four individual politicians studied. There is much originality in exploring the extent to which the political beliefs of the fathers, Randolph and Jo-seph, influenced their sons, Winston and Austen. Lord Randolph Churchill’s concern with British imperial security was taken up by Winston in the negotiations which led to the Anglo-Irish treaty of December 1921. At a session on naval defence, Churchill told Michael Collins that Queenstown (Cobh) in Cork was as important a naval base for Britain as Simonstown in South Africa, and, in time of war, Ireland ‘could not be neutral. She may be inactive, but England must have the right to defend Ireland as well as herself.’ A quarter of a century later, after independent Ireland had remained neutral during the Second World War, Churchill, now prime minister, famously excoriated the Dublin government and, and with a faint but telling echo of his father’s fears of 1886, he remarked on how the Irish had been left ‘to frolic with the Germans and later the Japanese representatives to their hearts’ content’. Thus, if not the sins, at least the opinions, of one father was visited upon one son. As Ian Chambers amply demonstrates, this was no isolated case.
Professor Keith Jeffery
University of Ulster at Jordanstown