Rise of SNP has echoes of Irish nationalism

John Redmond may be the least celebrated man in the iconography of Irish nationalism. Names such as Patrick Pearse and Eamon de Valera resonate more loudly, for their roles in the Easter Rising of 1916, which ultimately led to the creation of the republic of Ireland, and for de Valera's later rise to the presidency.

Yet between 1900 and 1918, when he led the Irish Parliamentary party in dogged and ultimately futile pursuit of home rule for Ireland, Redmond was a political figure to be reckoned with in Dublin and London. After the UK general election of January 1910, his party held the balance of power in the House of Commons and brought the voice of Irish constitutional nationalism to the heart of Westminster.

He was the Nicola Sturgeon or, more accurately, the Alex Salmond of his day.

Opinion polls suggest that, 105 years later, the Scottish National party is poised to do something similar in next month's UK general election. As the SNP leadership and that of the other main UK parties consider how to react, the similarities between the position of Irish nationalists in 1910 and Scottish nationalists today are striking. And so are the differences.

This is one reason the UK election is generating unusually close scrutiny in Ireland. As the political commentator Stephen Collins wrote at the weekend, the election "has uncanny echoes" of January 1910. The fact that the Irish held the balance of power generated considerable hostility in England, just as the rise of the SNP does today, he noted.

The Irish historian Ronan Fanning has written: "The general election of January 1910 catapulted Ireland to the top of the cabinet agenda." If the SNP does as well on May 7 as the opinion polls suggest, the future of Scotland in the union will once again be thrown open to doubt, just a few months after a referendum on independence was defeated without resolving the issue.

As is the case with Scottish nationalism at Westminster today, the issue of Irish home rule had few friends in London before 1910. The problem for Redmond was that Herbert Henry Asquith, the prime minister, was at best indifferent, viewing the issue through an imperialist lens. David Lloyd George, his chancellor of the exchequer, was openly hostile, despite being Welsh (or because of it, as Prof Fanning has argued).

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After that, the Liberals had no choice but to devise a form of home rule that was acceptable not just to Redmond and his moderate Irish nationalist MPs, but to the Ulster Unionist wing of the Conservative (and Unionist) party and the imperialist wing of the Liberals. Home rule eventually made it almost to the statute book, but it was suspended after the outbreak of the first world war. This changed everything.

Redmond and the IPP were not seeking full-blown independence, but rather home rule within the British empire. Ms Sturgeon, the SNP leader, and Mr Salmond, who turned the party into a force in UK politics, want an independent Scotland. Just as in 1910, the established parties at Westminster are hostile to the idea, fearful for the future of the UK.

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