Bluff, Bluster and brinkmanship: Andrew Bonar Law and the Third Home Rule Bill

ABSTRACTThe article attempts to show that Bonar Law had an effective and coherent strategy towards home rule. Previous interpretations have stressed his weakness and inexperience, either his ‘pandering’ to the extremists in the Tory party or his readiness to seek a compromise, when civil war began to loom large, in the autumn of 1913. Much of the blame for the political stalemate from 1912 until 1914 is directly, or implicitly, laid upon Bonar Law. Yet the tory leader was a more consummate politician. He sought to use the home rule crisis not only to reinforce his own fragile leadership but to return the Conservatives to office. This he proposed to do by allowing the political system to reach an impasse over home rule, by not helping the Liberals reach a compromise and yet inciting Ulster to resist the bill on its implementation. This left Asquith, the Liberal prime minister, with the impossible choice of imposing the bill onto Ulster (so provoking civil war) or of holding a general election when his government was perceived as unpopular. Bonar Law counted on Asquith preferring to hold an election though Asquith was saved from such a decision by the outbreak of war. It was, then, a ‘high-risk’ strategy to win office for the party he led.