Augustine Birrell
Augustine Birrell KC was a British Liberal Party politician, who was Chief Secretary for Ireland from 1907 to 1916. In this post, he was praised for enabling tenant farmers to own their property and for extending university education for Catholics. He was criticised for failing to take action against Irish rebels before the Easter Rising, leading to his subsequent resignation. A barrister by training, he was also an author noted for humorous essays.
Early life
Birrell was born in Wavertree, Liverpool the son of The Rev. Charles Mitchell Birrell, a Scottish Baptist minister and Harriet Jane Grey daughter of Rev Henry Grey of Edinburgh.He was educated at Amersham Hall school and at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he was made an Honorary Fellow in 1879. He joined the Sylvan Debating Club in 1872. He started work in a solicitor's office in Liverpool but was called to the Bar in 1875, becoming a KC in 1893 and a Bencher of the Inner Temple in 1903. From 1896 to 1899 he was Professor of Comparative Law at University College, London. In 1911 Birrell served as Lord Rector of Glasgow University.
His first wife, Margaret Mirrielees, died in 1879, only a year after their marriage, and in 1888 he married Eleanor Tennyson, daughter of the poet Frederick Locker-Lampson and widow of Lionel Tennyson, son of the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson. They had two sons, one of whom, Frankie was later a journalist and critic and associated with the Bloomsbury Group. Birrell found success as a writer with the publication of a volume of essays entitled Obiter Dicta in 1884. This was followed by a second series of Obiter Dicta in 1887 and Res Judicatae in 1892. These, despite their titles, were not concerned with law, but he also wrote books on copyright and on trusts. Birrell wrote, and spoke, with a characteristic humour which became known as birrelling.
Entry into politics
After unsuccessfully contesting parliamentary seats in Liverpool, Walton in 1885 and Widnes in 1886, Birrell was elected to parliament for West Fife at a by-election in 1889, as a Liberal. He retained his seat in the general elections of 1892 and 1895, but in the general election of 1900 he stood in Manchester North East and was defeated. In 1903 he edited Eight Years of Tory Government, a "handbook for the use of Liberals", which attacked the incumbent Conservative administration's record on issues such as housing and worker's compensation.President of the Board of Education
In December 1905 Birrell was included in the cabinet of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman as President of the Board of Education, and that month he was sworn of the Privy Council. He was returned for Bristol North at the general election of January 1906, in which the Liberals won a large majority. Like Campbell-Bannerman, Birrell belonged to the Radical tradition of the party. Birrell also belonged to a group called the "New Radicals" or "New Liberals", which also included H. H. Asquith, R. B. Haldane and Sir Edward Grey.Birrell introduced the Education Bill 1906, intended to address nonconformist grievances arising from the Education Act 1902. The bill passed the Liberal-dominated House of Commons comfortably, but the House of Lords, with a Conservative majority, passed wrecking amendments which undermined its meaning, and the government dropped it. This use of dilatory parliamentary procedures and wrecking amendments over the education bill began a period of political tension between the Commons and Lords which ultimately concluded with the Lords' rejection of the People's Budget of 1909, sparking the Constitutional Crises of 1909–11.
Birrell had been seen as a poor advocate for the bill, although he complained privately that it was mainly Lloyd George's work, and that he himself had had little say over its contents. The defeat of the bill made it impossible for Birrell to continue in his post, and in January 1907 he was appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, to replace James Bryce who had been made Ambassador to the United States. While serving in government, Birrell supported a number of progressive measures and proposals such as expanded housing provisions, land reform, substantial increases in education spending at both primary and secondary level, and the provision of school meals.
Birrell and Women's Suffrage
Like many of his political colleagues and members of the general public, Birrell strongly disapproved of the militancy and violence of the Women's Social and Political Union. In November 1910, when walking alone from the House of Commons, he was set upon by a group of about twenty suffragettes who had recognised him. While he did not believe there was any serious attempt to injure him, in trying to escape he twisted his knee and "slipped the knee-cap". C. P. Scott wrote in his diary that Birrell feared he might require an operation to remove his kneecap and joked that, if he did, he would remain "a weak-kneed politician" to the end of his life. Birrell was, however, described by the paper Votes for Women as one of a number of "Suffragist members of the Cabinet" who met with a deputation from the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, led by Millicent Fawcett, on 8 August 1913, following a similar meeting by the NUWSS with Prime Minister Asquith on the same day. According to Votes for Women, The Times reported that the ministers asked the deputation what kind of bill the NUWSS was looking for. Other ministers present included Lloyd George, John Simon, Francis Dyke Acland and Thomas McKinnon Wood.Chief Secretary for Ireland
Council Bill, Universities Bill and Land Bill
Birrell's first Under-Secretary and head of Irish Civil Service at Dublin Castle administration was Sir Antony MacDonnell, who had worked successfully with a previous Chief Secretary, George Wyndham, on the Land Purchase Act 1903. MacDonnell was a well-known advocate for Home Rule. MacDonnell's proposals for what was called "devolution" – the transfer of local powers to Ireland under a central authority – adopted by the Irish Reform Association's - had encountered strong opposition from Unionists, leading eventually to Wyndham's resignation. This proposal ultimately passed from Sir James Bryce with Birrell inheriting the bill. Birrell modified MacDonnell's proposal and on 7 May 1907 introduced the Irish Council Bill. The bill was initially welcomed by Nationalist leaders John Redmond and John Dillon, and opposed, for different reasons, by unionists and by more radical nationalists who wanted nothing less than Home Rule for Ireland. At a convention of the United Irish League, opposition was so strong that Redmond changed his position; the convention rejected the bill and the government was unable to proceed with it. Birrell suffered further embarrassment when he sought to discontinue the use of the Irish Crimes Act 1887, a coercive measure introduced by Arthur Balfour to deal with agrarian crime, only to be faced with an increase in cattle-driving. Another affair, in which Birrell was not directly involved but for which he had to take part of the blame, was the theft of the Irish Crown Jewels from Dublin Castle in July 1907.Birrell had more success in areas such as Education and the Irish land question. His excellent relations with both Roman Catholic and Protestant church leaders such as the Archbishop of Dublin William Walsh ensured the successful passage of the Irish Universities Bill 1908, which established the National University of Ireland and Queen's University Belfast and dissolved the Royal University of Ireland. It solved the sectarian problem in higher education by dividing the Protestant and Catholic traditions into their own separate spheres and ensured Catholic, Nationalist scholars had access to university education. Contemporaries also praised his achievement in carrying the Land Purchase Act, which though falling far short in its financial provisions allowed for compulsory purchase by the Land Commission of large areas of land for the relief of congestion, through a hostile House of Lords.