1912 Timeline
1912:
11 April: Introduction of a third Home Rule bill in House of Commons by Liberal Prime Minister Herbert Asquith.
Click here to listen to the History Ireland Hedge School: ‘Home Rule: lost opportunity or sell-out?’
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From Century Ireland: What was Home Rule?
14–15 April: White Star liner Titanic, constructed by the Belfast shipbuilders Harland & Wolff, sinks in the North Atlantic on its maiden voyage; 1,512 lives are lost in the disaster.
From History Ireland: The political backdrop to the Titanic disaster.
11 June: An amendment to the Home Rule bill is proposed by the Liberal MP T.C.R. Agar-Robartes. This would involve the exclusion of counties Antrim, Armagh, Down and Londonderry from the provisions of the Home Rule bill.
From History Ireland: The search for statutory Ulster.
From History Ireland: The partition of Ireland.
18 June: Agar-Robartes’s amendment is defeated in the House of Commons by 320 votes to 251.
28 June: The Irish Trade Union Congress (ITUC) changes its name to the ‘Irish Trade Union Congress and Labour Party’ at Clonmel, paving the way for the creation of the Labour Party.
29 June: A Protestant Sunday school outing is attacked by members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) at Castledawson, Co. Londonderry.
From History Ireland: Home Rule and Hibernians.
2 July: A number of Catholic workers are expelled from Belfast shipyards in retaliation for the attack the previous Sunday.
From History Ireland: Industrial Belfast at its zenith.
18–20 July: Irish and English suffragists, demanding the vote for women, protest in Dublin at the visit of PM Asquith, who narrowly escapes being injured by a hatchet thrown at him.
From History Ireland: The struggle for suffrage.
28 September: ‘Ulster Day’. In a massive and elaborately orchestrated show of strength, 237,368 men in Ulster sign a ‘solemn league and covenant’ to resist ‘the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule parliament in Ireland’; 234,046 women sign a declaration to the same effect.
From History Ireland: The Ulster covenant.
From History Ireland: Unionist propaganda against Home Rule.
Explore the Military Archives’ Timeline of the revolutionary decade