History Glossary

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Parliament Act
Legislation put through Westminster in 1911 by Asquith’s Liberal government to curb the power of the House of Lords. Under the Act, the Lords could not debate money bills (budgets) and they could reject Bills from the Commons only three times (about two years) before they became law.

Partition
The division of a territory. The 1920 Government of Ireland Act divided Ireland into Northern Ireland (the six north-eastern counties) and Southern Ireland (the remaining 26 counties). Southern Ireland became the Irish Free State in 1922. Those opposed to the political division of Ireland are often called antipartitionists.

Pearse, Patrick
Born in Dublin in 1879, he became involved in the Gaelic League as a teenager and edited its journal. He founded St Enda’s in Dublin to teach boys through both English and Irish. He became Director of Operations of the Irish Volunteers in 1913, joined the IRB and was commander-in-chief of the Volunteers during the Easter Rising of 1916. He was court-martialled and executed.

Plenipotentiary
A representative, literally someone who has full power of representation. The representatives of Dáil Éireann, led by Arthur Griffith, who negotiated the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty in London with Lloyd George and his ministers, were described as ‘plenipotentiaries’.

Proclamation
An announcement, usually by a government or by those who want to set up a new government. Pearse read the Proclamation of the Irish Republic at the GPO in Dublin on Easter Monday 1916. When this rebellion was crushed, the British government issued a proclamation which imposed martial law (rule by the army).

Propaganda
Information, sometimes false information, issued to give one point of view only. Examples include: stories given out by the British government during the First World War that German soldiers raped nuns in Belgium; stories given out by the German government that the U boat campaign had reduced Britain to starvation; and pamphlets, postcards, cartoons and poems issued by unionists and nationalists during the Home Rule crisis of 1912-1914.

Provisional Government
A government set up before there has been an opportunity to elect a proper one. The Unionists made plans to set up a provisional government in Ulster in 1914; the insurgents in Dublin at Easter 1916 issued their proclamation as a Provisional Government of the Irish Republic; and the first government of the Irish Free State was a Provisional Government until after the elections of June 1922.