What were the Home Rule bills about?
The Irish Home Rule bills intended to grant self-government and national autonomy to the whole of Ireland, reversing the Act of Union 1800. There were four such bills. Gladstone’s first bill, of 1886, fell in the Commons. His second, in 1893, passed in the Commons but fell in the Lords. The third bill, the Home Rule Act 1914, passed but was never implemented because of the Great War and the Easter Rising of 1916 in Dublin. The fourth bill, the Government of Ireland Act 1920, effectively partitioned Ireland. The North implemented the bill, but not the rest of the country. A new act in 1927 changed the name of the Union to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, its current official name. Southern Ireland had declared its independence in 1919, and in 1922 became the Irish Free State (renamed Eire in 1937 and formally the Republic of Ireland in 1949). Northern Ireland had its own parliament from 1922 to 1972, and the Northern Ireland Assembly was restored in May 2007.
