The Irish Question

1913: The Year Before

The one hundredth anniversary of the start of the First World war looms on the horizon. 1914 is a date forged into the British consciousness, just as it's carved into monuments the length and breadth of the UK and many places beyond. With that awareness comes an understanding that it was the war to end all wars, shocking the culture, politics, and societies of Europe, but particularly Britain, out of their comfortable progress and reshaping everything. But in this series Michael Portillo challenges that notion. Looking at a series of themes, the suffrage movement, the Irish question, the decline of the liberal party and the arts, he argues that to a large extent Britain was already in a state of flux by 1913 and many of the developments we think of as emanating from or being catalysed by the war, were actually in full flow.

In the third programme Michael tackles the familiar idea of the Irish uprising being a story with its origins in Dublin's Easter rising of 1916. In fact, in the pre-war years, the all-consuming concentration of politicians, the military and believers in the importance of the British Empire, was Ulster. The historian William Blair helps explain the scale of animosity and the vivid fear of civil war being launched from Belfast.

Producer: Tom Alban.