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400 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
change and shown its readiness to favour partition as a possible solution. As a matter of fact partition as a solution came in 1914 six years before Mr. Lloyd George’s Act when the Asquith Government, a purely Liberal Government, was in office. The real cause which led to the partition of Ireland can be understood only by examining the factors which made the Liberal Government of Mr. Asquith change its mind. I feel certain that the factor which brought about this change in the viewpoint of the Liberal Government was the Military crisis which took place in March 1914 and which is generally referred to as the “Curragh Incident”. A few facts will be sufficient to explain what the “Curragh Incident” was and how decisive it was in bringing about a change in the policy of the Asquith Government.
To begin at a convenient point the Irish Home Rule Bill had gone through all its stages by the end of 1913. Mr. Asquith who had been challenged that he was proceeding without a mandate from the electorate had however given an undertaking that the Act would not be given effect to until another general election had been held. In the ordinary course there would have been a general election in 1915 if the War had not supervened. But the Ulstermen were not prepared to take their chance in a general election and started taking active steps to oppose Home Rule. They were not always very scrupulous in choosing their means and their methods and under the seductive pose that they were fighting against the Government which was preventing them from remaining loyal subjects of the King they resorted to means which nobody would hesitate to call shameless and nefarious. There was one Maginot Line on which the Ulstermen always depended for defeating Home Rule. That was the House of Lords. But by the Parliament Act of 1911 the House of Lords had become a Wailing Wall neither strong nor high. It had ceased to be a line of defence to rely upon. Knowing that the Bill might pass notwithstanding its rejection by the House of Lords, feeling that in the next election Asquith might win, the Ulstermen had become desperate and were searching for another line of defence. They found it in the Army. The plan was twofold. It included the project of getting the House of Lords to hold up the Annual Army Act so as to ensure that there would be no Army in existence to be used