Tory Radicalism and the Home Rule Crisis, 1910-1914

After he emerged from backwoods obscurity as a leader in the struggle of "diehard" peers against the Parliament Act of 1911, the nineteenth Baron Willoughby de Broke briefly became a leading figure on the far right wing of the Conservative Party. Deeply grounded in the traditions and values of the hereditary landing holding aristocracy, Willoughby genuinely believed that the introduction of an Irish Home Rule bill by the Liberal or "Radical" government in 1912 presented an imminent danger to the British nation and its empire. When Tory leader Andrew Bonar Law determined to use the struggle against home rule as a means of both uniting his divided party and driving the Liberal government from office, Willoughby de Broke took the lead in organizing militant resistance to the implementation of any Home Rule measure. Inspired by the Ulster Unionist's threat of armed resistance, Willoughby formed the British League for the Support of Ulster and Union (BLSUU) with the avowed purpose of defending Ulster, in arms if necessary. When the real threat of civil war in Ireland induced both Liberal and Conservative leaders to seek a compromise in the exclusion of Ulster from the operation of any Home Rule measure, Willoughby de Broke, unwilling to abandon his unbending principles, was disavowed by the party leaders who had encouraged his extremism and he slipped back into political obscurity

Compromise · Government (linguistics) · Home rule · Irish · League · Militant · Parliament · Political radicalism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Irish and British Studies · Law · Philosophy

• Troubled Tories

  Open Access•Thomas C Kennedy•Journal of British Studies•2007

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