Curragh Incident

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The Curragh Incident of July 20, 1914, also known as the Curragh Mutiny, occurred in the Curragh, County Kildare, Ireland. The Curragh Camp was then the main base for the British army in Ireland. Today it is the headquarters of the Irish army.

In the spring of 1912, the British government of Herbert Asquith had introduced the Third Home Rule Bill for Ireland, which proposed the creation of an autonomous Irish Parliament in Dublin. A large section of the Protestant Unionists had objected to inclusion to potential rule by the proposed Dublin Parliament and had founded the Ulster Volunteers paramilitary group to fight if necessary against the British government. By the spring of 1914, the Ulster Volunteers possessed three million rounds of ammunition and 25,000 rifles purchased in Germany plus 12,000-15,000 rifles already acquired.

To deal with the potential threat of violence from the Ulster Volunteers should the Home Rule Bill be passed in the British Parliament, the commander of the Curragh base, Sir Arthur Paget, was ordered by the War Office in London in March 1914 to start preparations to march to Ulster should violence break out there. Paget misinterpreted his orders for precautionary deployements as an immediate order to march against Ulster and, acting on his own initiative, he offered the officers under his command the choice of resignation rather than fighting against the Ulster Volunteers.

57 out of the 70 British Army Officers based in the Curragh Camp, many of them Irish unionists, threatened to resign their commissions in the British Army rather than enforce the Home Rule Act 1914 in Ulster. This followed the British government's decision to send 800 soldiers to Ulster to enforce the Bill and to resupply depots in the province, which was thought necessary since the illegal importation of thousands of rifles from Imperial Germany by the Ulster Volunteer Force. The men were led by Brigadier-General Hubert Gough. The men were not technically guilty of mutiny as they had not yet refused to carry out a direct order.

Asquith's Liberal government backed down, claiming an "honest misunderstanding," and the men were reinstated. The War Office in London declared that the army would not be used to enforce the Home Rule Act, but the men who issued this statement were later forced to resign. The event contributed to unionist confidence and the growing Irish separatist movement, convincing nationalists that they could not expect impartiality from the British army in Ireland.

[edit] Further reading

Beckett, Ian F. W. The Army and the Curragh Incident 1914 Bodley Head for the ARS, 1986
Fergusson, Sir James The Curragh Incident, London, 1964.
Ryan, A.P. Mutiny at the Curragh, London, 1956.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

The story of the British Army in the Great War of 1914–1918: Field-Marshal Sir Henry Hughes Wilson

[Note: Many Internet sources refer to a "Herbert Gough" when they actually mean Hubert Gough. It is unclear to this writer whether this page is correct or not.]