"Royal Ascent is the final rubber stamp. It would have had to be enacted."
From A History of Ireland Edmund Curtis 1950
An amendment by Carson to the Bill proposed the exclusion from its scope of the province of Ulster. The Irish leader could only reject such an amendment, as he was bound to do, because 'for us Ireland is one entity'.
In January 1913 the Bill passed the Commons but it was rejected by the House of Lords, so that under the Parlia¬ment Bill it could not pass automatically till 1914. The Ulster Covenanters were already arming and drilling openly under a provisional government, and a British soldier, General Richardson, was found to command their army of 100,000 men. On the other side in October 1913 a National Volunteer force was organized in Dublin under Eoin MacNeill, Pearse and others. So was a 'Citizen army' of the Irish Labour party, led by James Connolly. The condition of the poor, and the low wages paid in the Irish capital, shocked all fair-minded men, but a General strike organized in 1912 by James Larkin had been defeated by the employers, a disastrous victory it was to prove. Though at first dummy rifles, in North and South, made the marchings of the respective Volunteers a little ridiculous, there was no doubt of their determination. The Unionists got real arms from abroad, and it looked as if Home Rule would bring about a civil war which would involve Great Britain, the first since 1642. In March 1914, the refusal of General Gough and other officers in command of the British forces at the Curragh to obey government orders to move against Ulster showed how high up the resistance to an Act of Parliament might go. Reluctantly Redmond advised his supporters to join the National Volunteers, but it was clear that between his moderate wing and the extreme one led by Pearse and others of the Irish Republican Army co-operation would not last long.

IRELAND AND THE GREAT WAR
The outbreak of the Great War in August 1914 altered the whole face of things. The unexpected event in world politics did happen. The Home Rule Bill received the royal assent but it was not to be put into force till the war was over; and Ireland remained under the Union till the world conflict ended. Some 100,000 Irishmen altogether served in the British ranks, though Conscription was not, and indeed could not be, enforced due to opposition. To outward seeming Ireland was for the Allies, but as often before in her history, the apparent stream of things hardly represented the secret stream beneath
A European war in which Great Britain is engaged has always made Ireland a danger-spot, for its people, whatever they feel for the Monarchy, have little enthusiasm for Imperial expansion, and there were always those wishful to seize the opportunity to 'fight the old fight again'. The menace of conscription created great excitement, and Redmond's efforts to enlist Ireland's manhood as a separate unit under the Irish flag by their failure showed how little he could do with the Coalition government. .A rising was planned by the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and on Easter Monday 1916 the Post Office and other buildings in Dublin were seized by about 1,000 men, and Pearse for the Volunteers and Connolly for the Citizen army proclaimed the Irish Republic. A large British force was landed and after a bombardment of four days the main body of the rebels surrendered. General Maxwell under martial law executed Pearse and fourteen others of the leaders; among the commanders who escaped the death penalty Eamon De Valera was to be the most prominent. The Rebellion, though a small affair and soon over, served its purpose as a blood sacrifice in a country which had become apathetic about Nationalism, and Pearse and the others took their place on the accepted roll of 'the dead who died for Ireland'.
While thousands of suspects were interned and popular opinion rapidly became Sinn Féin, the Coalition government could not give Redmond that firm offer of Home Rule for the whole country which he needed to maintain his hold on Ireland, and Sinn Féin came out as a political force by winning an election in Roscommon in February 1917.

THE TRIUMPH OF SINN FÉIN
When the Great War ended in October 1918 it was certain that Sinn Féin would claim the rights of a nation for Ireland at a time when the Allies were setting so many free. The initial step was to act as one. In January 1919 the deputies elected to Dáil Éireann ('the Assembly of Ireland') met as a parliament and proclaimed Saorstát Éireann (the 'Republic' or, more correctly, the 'Free State' of Ireland). Neither Nationalists nor Unionists attended, and it was left for Sinn Féin to win and to command the victory.
A General Election in England following the close of the War returned again a Coalition government of which Mr. Lloyd George became Premier, and in so far as Home Rule for the majority was achievable all British parties were now in agreement. The English Conservatives abandoned their resistance of before the War, for too many promises had been made to go back upon, and the shock of the world-conflict had brought old-fashioned Conservatism to an end. But, while to deny Home Rule as it was on the Statute book was impossible, to force it on Ulster was no longer to be thought of.
There - let that be an end to this dishonest nonsense.
"Good heavens Raggy are you really that dense?"
Still talking down to people from the hole youi have dug for yourself?
Jim Carroll