Curragh incident
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The Curragh incident July 20 1914 is also known as the Curragh Mutiny. The Curragh was then the main base for the British army in Ireland. Today it is the headquarters of the Irish army.
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 Act 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 Herbert 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.
A similar but much less-publicised event occurred in the late 1990's, when British army generals threatened to resign if British Prime Minister Tony Blair insisted on dismantling the army spy towers in republican areas of Northern Ireland, in order to fulfill the British government's committment to demilitarisation. Blair backed down to the generals.
See also
External links
- The story of the British Army in the Great War of 1914–1918: Field-Marshal Sir Henry Hughes Wilson (http://www.1914-1918.net/wilson_bio.htm)