In the subsequent debate the Government was severely criticised for its vacillation and ineffective action; other speakers dealt with the maltreatment of ponies employed in mines, street accidents in London, and police pay. The debate was adjourned.
While Mr. McKenna was concluding his speech, about 5.30 P.M., a bomb exploded under the Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey, but fortunately did only slight damage to the Chair and the famous Coronation Stone. It had probably been deposited by some member of a large party which was being conducted over the Abbey by a verger; and two innocent foreign lady tourists were detained for a short time by the police, and protected from the crowd. The bomb was made of two domes of a large double cycle bell, wrapped round by wire, containing a chlorate explosive and iron nuts; and it was hung over the back of the Coronation Chair. The criminal was not discovered.
It must be added that a joint protest against militancy was issued on June 12 by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and the Conservative and Liberal Unionist Women's Franchise Association, declaring militant methods to be "a negation of the very principles for which we stand," as making physical force the ultimate basis of government. This view was emphasised next day by Mrs. Fawcett at a suffrage meeting; and a similar manifesto had been issued on June 11 by the Women's Liberal Federation. But a bomb, which did little damage, exploded on June 14 in St. George's Church, Hanover Square; and a solicitor's clerk (June 13) was fined for conveying to a suffragist prisoner an emetic drug intended to nullify the effects of forcible feeding; thus so weakening the patient as to secure her immediate release.
Meanwhile the gun-running in Ulster, and the efforts of the British "Covenanters" to avert the coercion of the Unionists, had temporarily transferred the Home Rule controversy to the platform. A group of Liberals, among whom Sir William Byles (Salford, N.) and Mr. Neil Primrose (Cambs, Wisbech) were conspicuous, were holding meetings in the great towns to strengthen the hands of the Government against incipient rebellion; and the Covenanters undertook a campaign against "the coercion of Ulster" in Scotland, of which the chief features were Mr. Bonar Law's speeches at Inverness (June 11), to an audience of 6,000 drawn from all parts of the Highlands, and at Glasgow next day at St. Andrew's Hall. There was little new to be said, but in the Inverness speech, described by the Spectator as one of the best fighting speeches that Mr. Law had ever made, he appealed from the House of Commons to the people, and reiterated the charge that Ministers had "torn open the old wounds" of Ireland to secure themselves a majority. He charged the Government with provoking the prevalent spirit of lawlessness by acting as dictators in the name of the King; he elaborately attacked their contention that Home Rule was before the electorate at the last general election; and even had they had a mandate for it, he said, the projected resistance of Ulster had completely changed the situation. Moreover, they had not redeemed their pledge to give the country a reformed Second Chamber, which would certainly have forced an appeal to the people. In spite of the Prime Minister's declaration of 1906, he was dealing with Home Rule without an independent majority. The Government would not appeal to the country either because they knew they would be defeated or because of a bargain with the Nationalists. There were two sections of them—the drifters and the gamblers; the latter had been let loose by Mr. Churchill's speech at Bradford, followed by a concentration of force against Ulster greater than any made by Great Britain since the Crimean War. They were saved by the accident of the resistance of the Army. The cry of "the Army against the People" was started by the Labour members, who had been bought by the Government through their salaries. The Unionists had appealed, not to the Army, but to the nation. He dwelt at length on the results of the thirty-eight bye-elections, in which the Unionists had gained eleven seats, and the Coalition majority had fallen off 40 to 50 per cent. It was a conflict between the Government and the nation, and the nation was bound to win. As at the siege of Derry, the Ulstermen had been shut off from British help by the Parliament Act. He appealed to the people of Great Britain to break the boom.
Next day at Glasgow Mr. Bonar Law amplified his speech, especially in regard to the Ulster situation. He repeated his charges against Ministers of subservience to the Nationalists, and described the proposal of exclusion by counties as insane. It meant that Ulster, which then was strong, should lay down its arms and come in when weak.
An incident of this campaign was an Irish Nationalist attempt to break up a Unionist demonstration, 25,000 strong, on Woodhouse Moor, near Leeds (June 13), at which the Duke of Norfolk and Lord Milner were among the speakers; but the attempt was a failure. Efforts were made—notably at a meeting two days later at Oxford—to advocate a search for a "Federal solution." But the campaign did not affect the attitude of the Government.
The Plural Voting Bill finally passed the Commons on June 15, Mr. Sanders (U., Somerset, Bridgwater) moving the rejection. Little remained to be said; Mr. Sanders mentioned that when Mr. Gladstone was Premier a proposal to abolish plural voting found only forty supporters; the President of the Board of Education replied that the plural vote had been abused since 1885 through increased facilities of transport. Ministers were quite ready to negotiate with the Opposition to secure "one vote, one value." Later, Lord Hugh Cecil revived the charge of dishonourable behaviour against the Government in connexion with the Franchise Bill fiasco (A.R., 1913, pp. 20-24). Their honour was "post-Impressionist" and smudged. Eventually the rejection was negatived by 320 to 242.
This subject was now worn out; but Home Rule was entering a new phase. A Provisional Committee, mainly self-elected, was about to devise a constitution and appoint leaders for the Irish Volunteers (A.R., 1913, p. 267). The Nationalist leaders felt, like Sir Edward Carson in Ulster, that the force must not continue uncontrolled; and Mr. Redmond (June 9) issued a statement announcing that his party, which had thought the movement premature, had been converted by the events at the Curragh and the gun-running in Ulster, and for the past six weeks had given it their support. Since then it had "spread like a prairie fire"; and he suggested that the existing Provisional Committee should be immediately strengthened by the addition of twenty-five representatives nominated by the Nationalist party and in sympathy with its policy and aims. The reorganisation might then be completed, and a Conference might elect the permanent governing body. This proposal was not at once accepted by the Provisional Committee; and on June 12 Mr. Redmond issued a further manifesto, urging the Nationalists—who were 95 per cent of the force, though only a minority of the Provisional Committee—to organise county committees independent of that body. The Nationalist party, he warned the Committee, would not submit to dictation on questions of policy. The members of "Sinn Fein" and other advanced Irish patriots resented this interference, and Unionist spectators did their best to promote a breach. But the local leaders generally saw that the union was necessary, and therefore favoured Mr. Redmond's intervention. The combination of the Volunteer and the Nationalist forces tended necessarily to strengthen the influences at work in Ireland, both against the exclusion of Ulster and for the revocation of the prohibition of the import of arms (p. [66]), of which the validity had been upheld (June 15) on appeal by the Dublin Court of King's Bench, though only by two Judges to one.
The new development was discussed in both Houses on June 16. A day earlier the House of Lords had been told that the Amending Bill would be introduced in the following week and the second reading of the Government of Ireland Bill put down for June 30. Complaint was made by the Opposition that the conversations between leaders, on which the Amending Bill was to be based, had not taken place; and on June 16 the Marquess of Lansdowne called attention to the position and to the delay in producing the Amending Bill. After saying that he distrusted "triangular" conversations, in which Ministers had to submit the proposals made them to the Irish Nationalists, he ascribed the Amending Bill to fright on the part of the Government. They were drifting towards an overwhelming catastrophe. The Amending Bill ought to have been introduced long ago in the Commons, and the House of Lords, the constituencies, and the House of Commons—through the suppression of the suggestion stage—had all been defrauded. The two Bills were to be carried, one by Nationalist votes, the other by those of the Ulster members. The Amending Bill, if limited to the terms offered on March 9 (p. [39]), would not be acceptable. The Unionists in that House would accept an Amending Bill to avoid civil war, but would take no responsibility for it.
The Marquess of Crewe said that the delay in the Amending Bill was caused by the desire that it should represent an agreement. The conversations would be quadrangular rather than triangular, as the views of British and Ulster Unionists did not agree. The delay might have been avoided had that House given the Home Rule Bill a second reading and amended it, for under the Parliament Act the second reading in that House did not imply assent to the principle. The Lords could amend the Amending Bill into any shape they pleased, and he hoped the measure would pass in a form which, though perhaps in some respects acceptable to no one, would receive general acquiescence. He thought no body in Ireland wanted to engage in conflict, so that the Government was still wise in refraining from interference. Viscount Milner complained that no conversations had yet taken place; this was partly contradicted by the Marquess of Crewe, but it eventually appeared that there had only been "communications," and after Lord Macdonnell had declared that the Volunteer forces did not desire to fight each other, and several Unionists had spoken in the same strain as their leader, the subject dropped.