The
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name and the state form of the
United Kingdom from 1 January 1801 until 12 April 1927. It was formed by the merger of the
Kingdom of Great Britain (itself having been a merger of the Kingdoms of
England and
Scotland) and the
Kingdom of Ireland, with Ireland being governed directly from
Westminster through its
Dublin Castle administration.
Following
Irish independence on 6 December 1922, when the 1921
Anglo-Irish Treaty came into effect, the name continued in official use until it was changed to the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland by the
Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act of 1927. The part of the island of
Ireland that remained seceded from the United Kingdom in 1922 was succeeded by the state of
Ireland in 1937.
Terms of the Union
George III, the first king of the new United Kingdom.
Under the terms of the
Act of Union, the separate
Parliament of Great Britain and the
Parliament of Ireland were abolished, and replaced by a united
Parliament of the United Kingdom.
[Act of Union 1800, Article 4.] The new
House of Commons consisted of all
Members of Great Britain's
18th Parliament and 100 Irish MPs
co-opted in a special
election in 1801.
The new
House of Lords consisted of all members of Great Britain's House of Lords, and four
Lords Spiritual and twenty-eight
Lords Temporal from the
Irish House of Lords.
The new Parliament met in the
Palace of Westminster, formerly the home of the Parliament of Great Britain and, until 1707, the
Parliament of England.
Part of the trade-off for Irish Roman Catholics, who since 1652 were barred from voting or attending Parliament altogether under the
Cromwellian Act of Settlement, was to be the granting of
Catholic Emancipation, which had been fiercely resisted by the all-
Anglican Irish Parliament. However, this was blocked by
King George III who argued that emancipating Roman Catholics would breach his
Coronation Oath to act as protector of
Protestantism.
The United Kingdom
The merger was initially seen favourably in
Ireland, given that the old Irish parliament was seen as hostile to the majority Catholic population, some of whose members had only been given the vote as late as 1794 and who were legally debarred from election to the body. The
Roman Catholic hierarchy endorsed the Union. However, King George III's decision to block Catholic Emancipation fatally undermined the appeal of the Union. Leaders like
Henry Grattan, who sat in the new parliament, having been leading members of the old one, were bitterly critical.
The eventual achievement of
Catholic Emancipation in 1829, following a campaign by
Daniel O'Connell,
MP for
County Clare, who had won election to
Westminster and who could not for religious beliefs take the
Oath of Supremacy, removed the main negative that had undermined the appeal of the old parliament, the exclusion of Catholics. From 1829 on a demand grew again for a native Irish parliament separate from Westminster. However, his campaign to repeal the Act of Union ultimately failed.
Aspects of the United Kingdom met with popularity in Ireland during the 122-year union. Hundreds of thousands flocked to
Dublin for the visits of
Queen Victoria in 1900,
King Edward VII and
Queen Alexandra in 1903 and 1907 and
King George V and
Queen Mary in 1911. About 210,000 Irishmen fought in
Irish regiments of the United Kingdom and
Allied armies in
World War I, at a time when Ireland was the only
home nation where conscription was not in force.
Irish Home Rule
Figures such as
Isaac Butt and
Charles Stewart Parnell, the first leader of the
Irish Parliamentary Party, campaigned for a version of all-Ireland self-government called
home rule within the United Kingdom, which was nearly achieved in the 1880s under the (British) ministry of
William Ewart Gladstone who introduced two
Irish Home Rule Bills. However, the measures were defeated in Parliament, and following the ascension of the
Conservatives to the majority, the issue was buried as long as that party was in power.
With the return to power of the
Liberals in
1910 general election supported by the Irish Party under
John Redmond who now held the balance of power in the Commons, the veto power of the
Lords was removed under the
Parliament Act 1911 and a Home Rule Bill introduced in 1912 passed Parliament as the
Third Home Rule Act in 1914, but was temporarily suspended for the duration of
World War I. However the constant delaying of Home Rule and the opposition of the
Orange Order in
Ulster created the frustration that eventually led to political violence and the 1916
Easter Rising. An attempt to introduce Irish self-government was made by PM
Lloyd George in 1917 when he called an
Irish Convention which after six months deliberating failed to agree on the inclusion or exclusion of Ulster. The
European situation with the
threat of conscription changed the political climate such that in the
1918 general election, the Irish Party lost most of its seats to the new
Sinn Féin party.
Breakdown of the Union
thumb|left|The area shaded red left the United Kingdom in 1922.In 1919,
Sinn Féin MPs elected to Westminster formed a unilaterally independent Irish parliament in
Dublin, the first
Dáil Éireann with an executive under the
President of Dáil Éireann,
Éamon de Valera. A
War of Independence was fought between 1919 and 1921. The island of Ireland was partitioned on 3 May 1921 under the
Government of Ireland Act 1920 into two distinct autonomous United Kingdom regions, the short-lived
Southern Ireland and
Northern Ireland. On 6 December 1922, a year after the
Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed, the entire island of Ireland seceded from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and formed a new
Dominion, the
Irish Free State. However, as was widely expected,
Northern Ireland almost immediately exercised its right under the
Anglo-Irish Treaty, to
opt out of the Irish Free State and back into the United Kingdom. With that, the
Irish border became an international frontier.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland continued in name until 1927 when it was renamed as the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland by the
Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act 1927.
Legacy
A passport from the Realm.
Despite increasing political independence from each other from 1922 and complete political independence since 1949, the union left the two countries intertwined with each other in many respects. Ireland used the
Irish pound from 1928 until 2001 when the
euro replaced it. Until it joined the
ERM in 1979, the Irish pound was
directly linked to the
pound sterling.
Decimalisation of both currencies occurred simultaneously on
Decimal Day in 1971. Coins of equivalent value had the same dimensions and size until the introduction of the
British twenty pence coin in 1982, the first new coin to be issued since the break with sterling. British coinage, therefore, although technically not legal tender in the
Republic of Ireland was in wide circulation and usually acceptable as payment, and vice versa. The new
British twenty pence coin and later
British one pound coin were the notable exceptions to this, as there was initially no equivalent Irish coin value, and when subsequently, Irish coins of these values were introduced, their designs differed significantly, thereby not allowing for 'stealth' passing of the coins in change.
Irish citizens in the UK have a status almost equivalent to
British citizens. They can vote in all elections and even stand for
Parliament. As well as this, some people born in the
Republic of Ireland before 1949, but after 3 March 1922, are
British subjects. British citizens have similar rights to Irish citizens in the Republic of Ireland and can vote in all elections apart from
presidential elections and
referendums. Under the
nationality law of the Republic of Ireland, people from Northern Ireland can have Irish, and therefore dual, nationality.
List of monarchs
George V, the last King to be styled as King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Until 1927, part of the monarch's royal title included the words
King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1927, the words
United Kingdom were dropped from the royal title so that the monarch was instead styled as
King of Great Britain, Ireland...[and other places]. The words
United Kingdom were restored to the monarch's title in 1953 with the reference to
Ireland replaced with a reference to
Northern Ireland.
- George V (1910–1922) (title used until 1927)
See also
Footnotes
