Devolution was first proposed, for Ireland alone, by Gladstone in 1886. A view has grown up among some historians and members of the Liberal Democrats that Gladstone was in favour of a wider scheme of “Home Rule All Round”, which would have seen the establishment of devolved legislatures in other parts of the UK as well. It was in fact Joe Chamberlain who first proposed such a scheme after he had deserted Gladstone and become a Unionist ally of the Tories, as Alistair Lexden pointed out in a letter published in The Times Literary Supplement on October 2.
Sir,- A great Jove nods. My good friend Peter Hennessy errs in stating that Gladstone proposed “Home Rule All Round” (September 25). He did no more than acknowledge in 1886 the existence of “the desire for Federation, floating in the minds of many”. After defecting from the Liberals in the same year, Joe Chamberlain became the first to bring forward a definite scheme as the basis for a reformed Union between Great Britain and Ireland. The Liberals declared at the time of their third Irish Home Rule bill in 1912 that it was “only the first step in a larger and more comprehensive policy”, in Asquith’s words. The further steps were never attempted, not least because Winston Churchill told the Cabinet that several regional legislatures would be needed in England, a policy for which it had absolutely no appetite.
Yours faithfully
Alistair Lexden
House of Lords
London SW1