The Curragh Incident of 20 March 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, which at the time formed part of the United Kingdom.
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In the spring of 1912, the Liberal coalition British government of H. H. Asquith had introduced the Third Home Rule Bill for Ireland, which proposed the creation of an autonomous Irish Parliament in Dublin. Unionists had objected to inclusion to potential rule by the proposed Dublin Parliament and had founded the Ulster Volunteers paramilitary group in 1912 to fight if necessary against the British government and/or against a future Irish Home Rule government proposed by the Bill. During 1913 a number of senior officers such as Lord French and Henry Hughes Wilson had expressed their concerns to the government that the British Army would find it difficult to act against the Ulster Volunteers, given that they shared the same basic aim of preserving and defending the British Empire and believed Home Rule would threaten it.[1]
To deal with the 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 move troops to Ulster to be able to deal with any violence that might break out there. The plan was to occupy government buildings and to repel any assaults by the Ulster Volunteers, putting the latter on the wrong foot, and to guard the armouries at Omagh, Enniskillen, Armagh, Dundalk and Carrickfergus to prevent thefts of weapons. Paget misinterpreted his orders for precautionary deployments as an immediate order to march against the Ulstermen.
Prior to the deployment, the Secretary of State for War Col. John Seely had told Paget that, regarding all army officers serving in Ireland -
Seely also promised Paget reinforcements "... to the last man .." to uphold the law in Ireland. In the event of a railway strike, or other obstacle, Winston Churchill offered transport of forces by the Royal Navy.
On 20 March Paget met with Generals Rolt, Cuthbert, Gough, Fergusson, and three staff officers, at his Parkgate Street H.Q. in Dublin, passing on Seely's "ultimatum". The deployment orders were headed "'Duty as ordered – Active Operations in Ulster", and Gough later suggested that "active operations" sounded as if it were more than a cautionary protective deployment. Gough then offered the officers under his command at nearby Marlborough Barracks (now McKee Barracks) the choice of resignation rather than fighting against the Ulster Volunteers. Out of the 70 British Army Officers based in the Curragh Camp, 57 accepted Paget's offer to resign their commissions in the British Army, or to accept being dismissed from it, rather than enforce the Home Rule Bill in Ulster whenever it passed into law. Led by Brigadier-General Hubert Gough,[2] the officers were not technically guilty of mutiny, as they had resigned before refusing to carry out a direct order.
Paget then sent a telegram to the War Office in London:
Officer Commanding 5th Lancers states that all officers, except two and one doubtful, are resigning their commissions today. I much fear same conditions in the 16th Lancers. Fear men will refuse to move. Regret to report Brigadier-General Gough and fifty-seven officers 3rd Cavalry Brigade prefer to accept dismissal if ordered North.
Asquith's Liberal government backed down, claiming an "honest misunderstanding", and the officers 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.
General Sir Charles Fergusson, then commanding the 5th division in Ireland, interviewed officers to ensure their future compliance with government policy. One of his officers said later that: "He [Fergusson] reminded us that although we must naturally hold private political views, officially we should not be on the side of any one political party. It was our duty to obey orders, to go wherever we were sent and to comply with instructions of any political party that happened to be in power. There was no sloppy sentiment, it was good stuff straight from the shoulder and just what we wanted."[3]
The matter was debated in the Commons at length on 23 and 25 March.[4][5]
About a month later, on 24 April the Ulster Volunteers covertly landed about 24,000 rifles at night in the "Larne gun-running" incident, without any of those involved being discovered or arrested.
The event contributed both to unionist confidence and to the growing Irish separatist movement, convincing nationalists that they could not expect support from the British army in Ireland. In turn, this naturally increased nationalist support for its paramilitary force, the Irish Volunteers. While the Home Rule Bill was approved by the House of Commons on 25 May, the growing fear of civil war in Ireland led on to the government considering some form of partition of Ireland in July 1914 by an amending Bill; further discussions at the Buckingham Palace Conference could not solve the arguments about partition. The main Bill received the Royal Assent on 18 September, but was also suspended for the duration of the First World War.
[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.]