This is a magisterial narrative of the most turbulent decade in Anglo-Irish history: a decade of unleashed passions that came close to destroying the parliamentary system and to causing civil war in the United Kingdom. It was also the decade of the cataclysmic Great War, of an officers' mutiny in an elite cavalry regiment of the British Army and of Irish armed rebellion. It was a time, argues Ronan Fanning, when violence and the threat of violence trumped democratic politics. This is a contentious view. Historians have wished to see the events of that decade as an aberration, as an eruption of irrational bloodletting. And they have have been reluctant to write about the triumph of physical force. Fanning argues that in fact violence worked, however much this offends our contemporary moral instincts. Without resistance from the Ulster Unionists and its very real threat of violence the state of Northern Ireland would never have come into being. The Home Rule party of constitutionalist nationalists failed, and were pushed aside by the revolutionary nationalists Sinn Fein. Bleakly realistic, ruthlessly analytical of the vacillation and indecision displayed by democratic politicians at Westminster faced with such revolutionary intransigence, Fatal Path is history as it was, not as we would wish it to be.
Ronan Fanning is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy, and Professor Emeritus of Modern History at University College Dublin. Among his books are the definitive history of the Irish Department of Finance and a remarkable biography (co-written with Michael Lillis) of Eliza Lynch, lover of the nineteenth-century Paraguayan dictator Francisco Solano López. More recently, he has been one of the chief editors of the Dictionary of Irish Biography.
Fanning
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| Liberals win overall majority in general election. |
| | Augustine Birrell appointed chief secretary for Ireland. |
| | Inaugural meeting of Sinn Féin. |
| | Collapse of Irish Council Bill in House of Commons. |
| Herbert Henry Asquith appointed prime minister. |
| House of Lords rejects David Lloyd George’s budget. |
| Asquith’s Albert Hall speech promising Irish home rule. |
| – | General election: nationalists hold balance |
| Edward Carson elected leader of Irish Unionist MPs. |
| Death of Edward VII; accession of George V. |
| Constitutional Conference on powers of House of Lords. |
| Collapse of Constitutional Conference. |
| General election: nationalists retain balance in Commons. |
| Parliament Act: Lords’ power to reject bills cut to two years. |
| Carson reveals plans for a provisional Ulster government. |
| Andrew Bonar Law succeeds Arthur Balfour as leader of Conservative and Unionist Party. |
| Lloyd George and Winston Churchill propose Ulster’s exclusion from Home Rule Bill at cabinet. |
| Bonar Law pledges British unionists’ support for resistance of Ulster unionists to Home Rule Bill at mass rally in Belfast. |
| Asquith introduces Home Rule Bill in House of Commons. |
| Liberal rebel MP moves amendment (defeated 18 June) excluding four north-eastern counties from Home Rule Bill. |
| Bonar Law’s inflammatory speech at Blenheim Palace. |
| ‘Ulster Day’: unionists sign Covenant to resist home rule. |
| Third reading of Home Rule Bill carried in Commons. |
| Formation of Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). |
| Home Rule Bill again passes Commons. |
| Home Rule Bill again rejected by Lords. |
| George V urges Asquith to exclude Ulster. |
| r | Ulster Unionist Council (UUC) approves plan for seizure of power by provisional government if Home Rule Bill enacted. |
| Asquith’s and Bonar Law’s secret meetings on exclusion. |
| Inaugural meeting of Irish Citizen Army in Dublin. |
| Inaugural meeting of Irish Volunteers in Dublin. |
| Proclamation prohibiting arms importation into Ireland. |
| Asquith’s secret meetings on exclusion with Carson. |
| Asquith informs cabinet of secret meetings. |
| Asquith tells Redmond that he must offer exclusion. |
| Cabinet defers decision on when offer will be made public. |
| Asquith offers exclusion of Ulster for six years on moving second reading of Home Rule Bill for third time; Carson rejects. |
| Curragh ‘mutiny’: 57 of 70 officers in 3rd Cavalry Brigade prefer dismissal to moving north to enforce home rule. |
| Ulster gun-running: 25,000 rifles for UVF landed without hindrance at Larne, Bangor and Donaghdee. |
| Asquith announces amending bill to Home Rule Bill. |
| John Redmond secures leadership of Irish Volunteers. |
| Government of Ireland (Amendment) Bill providing for temporary exclusion by county option introduced in Lords. |
| Archduke Franz Ferdinand assassinated at Sarajevo. |
| Amendment Bill amended in Lords to provide for permanent exclusion of all Ulster. |
| Ulster provisional government meets in Belfast. |
| Buckingham Palace conference fails to agree on terms of Ulster’s exclusion. |
| Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia. |
| Irish Volunteers land rifles at Howth, Co. Dublin; British troops fire on crowd in Dublin: 4 killed, 30 wounded. |
| Irish Volunteers land rifles at Kilcoole, Co. Wicklow. |
| Germany declares war on France. Redmond pledges Irish support if UK enters war. |
| Germany invades Belgium; UK declares war on Germany. |
| Bill to suspend operation of home rule passes all three readings. |
| Third Home Rule Bill and suspensory bill enacted; Government of Ireland (Amendment Bill) abandoned. |
| Redmond calls on Irish Volunteers to join British army. |
| torpedoed off south-west coast of Ireland. |
| Asquith forms coalition government that includes Carson. |
| Easter rebellion in Dublin: proclamation of ‘Irish Republic’. |
| Unconditional surrender ends rebellion: 450 dead. |
| Birrell resigns as chief secretary. |
| Thirteen leading rebels court-martialled and executed. |
| Asquith asks Lloyd George to negotiate Irish settlement. |
| Ulster Unionist Council accepts Lloyd George’s proposal for immediate implementation of home rule with temporary exclusion of six counties. |
| Somme offensive begins: 20,000 British deaths. |
| Failure of Lloyd George’s negotiations evident. |
| Roger Casement hanged in Pentonville gaol. Henry Duke becomes chief secretary for Ireland. |
| Lloyd George appointed coalition prime minister. |
