Home rule refers to a demand that constituent parts of a state be given greater self-government within the greater administrative purview of the central government.

In the United Kingdom, it has traditionally referred to self-government, or devolution, for constituent nations (namely Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland). Home rule also refers analogously to the process and mechanisms of self-government by municipalities in many countries with respect to their immediately superior level of government (e.g., U.S. states, in which context see special legislation). It can also refer to the similar system by which Greenland and the Faroe Islands are associated to Denmark.

In the British Empire, there were vigorous demands for Home Rule by activists in Ireland and India.

Home Rule is not however comparable with federalism. Whereas states in a federal system of government (e.g., Federal Republic of Germany, Switzerland, and the United States of America) have a guaranteed constitutional existence, a devolved home rule system of government is created by ordinary legislation and can be reformed, or even abolished, by mere repeal or amendment of that ordinary legislation.

Irish home rule

The issue of Irish home rule was the dominant political question of British and Irish politics at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.

From the late nineteenth century, Irish leaders of the Home Rule League, the predecessor of the Irish Parliamentary Party, under Isaac Butt, William Shaw, and Charles Stewart Parnell demanded a form of home rule, with the creation of an Irish parliament within the British government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. This demand led to the eventual introduction of four Home Rule Bills, of which two were passed, the Third Home Rule Act won by John Redmond and most notably the Government of Ireland Act 1920 (which created the home rule parliaments of Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland -- the latter state did not in reality function and was replaced by the Irish Free State), which was enacted.

The home rule demands of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century differed from earlier demands for Repeal by Daniel O'Connell in the first half of the nineteenth century. Whereas home rule meant a constitutional movement towards a national All-Ireland parliament in part under Westminster, repeal meant the repeal of the 1801 Act of Union if need be by physical force and the creation of an entirely independent Irish state, separated from the United Kingdom, with only a shared monarch joining them both.

• 1886: First Irish Home Rule Bill was defeated in the House of Commons.
• 1894: Second Irish Home Rule Bill passed by the House of Commons, vetoed in the House of Lords.
• 1914: Third Irish Home Rule Bill passed to the statute books, temporarily suspended by intervention of World War I (1914–1918), finally following the Easter Rising in Dublin (1916).
• 1920: Fourth Irish Home Rule Act (Government of Ireland Act 1920) passed to the statute books, but only implemented in Northern Ireland

Indian home rule

Several nationalist leaders banded together in 1916 under the leadership of Annie Besant to voice a demand for self-government, and to obtain the status of a Dominion within the British Empire as enjoyed by Australia, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand and Newfoundland at the time.

While enjoying considerable popularity for some years, its growth and activity were stalled by the rise of Mohandas Gandhi and his Satyagraha art of revolution: non-violent, but mass-based civil disobedience, aimed at complete independence.

District of Columbia home rule

See also

• Devolution, the practice of a national power granting specific powers to a region, state, or province

• Municipal Home Rule, the legal ability in most American states where voters can adopt a home rule charter granting the municipal government greater local control

Further reading

• Against Home Rule; the case for the Union (1912) by Arthur Balfour.

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