Dividing Ireland: World War I and Partition

100 THE GREAT WAR AND NATIONAL IDENTITY
Stephen Gwynn, reflecting upon the movement in nationalist
opinion, recalled that during the early stages of the war nationalist
Ireland had been enthusiastic for the Allies’ cause, with a belief
that the war would be short and Ireland’s part in it would secure
home rule. At this time, according to Gwynn, MacNeill’s Sinn
Feiners were simply ‘snowed under’, and dumbfounded by what
they saw around them. However, the first chance for critics to
attack the Irish Party arose in the early summer of 1915 with Lloyd
George’s taxation proposals; when the proposals were withdrawn
the advanced Nationalists claimed that it was they who had
secured the victory.82
The limited financial provisions of the 1914 Home Rule Act
provided the focus of this discontent. Many Nationalists were
alarmed at the increasing financial burden of the war. Discontent
with the burden of taxation became a source of public debate, and
an agitation began for a revision of the Act’s financial powers
along the lines of the Dominion parliaments, which could set their
own levels of taxation and erect custom barriers, even against
British goods. The first soundings of unease with the Act’s
financial provisions became apparent after Lloyd George’s war
budget of November 1914, which saw income and super tax
doubled, and duties imposed upon beer and tea. The fact that the
beer duty was payable on the standard barrel, and the lighter the
beer the bigger the margin retained by the brewer, meant that
because stronger beer was no longer drunk by the public, except
in Ireland, the Irish consumer would be paying proportionately a
higher share of the duty than British consumers. The Irish
Independent warned that if the extra taxes continued for a
generation or two this would inter fere substantially with the
livelihood of Irish farmers and the financing of home rule. 83
Lloyd George’s drink proposals, in late April 1915, advocated
that the duty on spirits be doubled and a supertax imposed of
36/- a barrel on beer above a specific gravity of fifty-three, which
affected practically all Irish beer. This new taxation, claimed the
Independent, seemed to be deliberately graduated so that Irish
breweries would be compelled to shut down, while English
concerns would be left practically untouched. The Independent
warned that the demand for Irish barley would be seriously
reduced, badly hitting the Irish farmer and the whiskey distilling
industry, one of Ireland’s few that were left, whereas the doubling
of the spirit tax would make scarcely any difference to England.
The whole scheme of home rule finance would be affected, argued
the Independent, for if one of the principal sources of Irish
revenue were to be closed the loss would have to be made up in