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The Buckingham Palace Conference, sometimes referred to as the Buckingham Palace Conference on Ireland, was a conference called in Buckingham Palace in 1914 by King George V of the United Kingdom to which the leaders of Irish Nationalism and Irish Unionism were invited to discuss plans to introduce Home Rule to Ireland and avert a feared civil war on the issue. The King's initiative brought the leaders of Nationalism and Unionism together for the first time in a conference. ==Background== Since the 1870s, a concerted campaign had been made by Irish nationalist leaders at Westminster, in particular by Charles Stewart Parnell, to have Home Rule (regional self-government) introduced into Ireland. This demand, however, was opposed by the leaders of Irish Unionism, who feared being placed under a Catholic-Nationalist dominated Irish parliament in Dublin. For Unionists, the ultimate safeguard to prevent Home Rule had been the existence of the power of the House of Lords to veto legislation. The Lords, with an inbuilt pro-Unionist Conservative Party majority, exercised its veto, in 1893, to block the Second Home Rule Bill. As a result of a reduction of its powers under the Parliament Act 1911, the Lords lost the ability to veto Bills. In 1912 the government of H. H. Asquith introduced the Third Home Rule Bill. Under the Parliament Act, the Lords could block a Bill for only three sessions. As a result the Bill finally completed its passage and received the Royal Assent in mid-1914. The threat that the Bill would this time become law led to protests among Unionists. The leaders of the opposition Conservative Party opted to play the "Orange Card": in 1886, Lord Randolph Churchill had told a rally that ''"Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right"''. In 1912, leader Andrew Bonar Law threatened to give support for whatever actions Unionists took, whether legal or illegal, to prevent home rule. Illegal gun-running occurred among both unionists (at Larne) and nationalists (at Howth), and both sides openly organised mass militia movements (the Ulster Volunteers and the Irish Volunteers respectively). Faced with what seemed to be imminent civil war, King George - a strong Hibernophile since his days as a naval officer based in Cork - intervened to stop what be believed was the slide to civil war and took the unprecedented step of inviting the leaders of both communities, along with the British government, to the Palace for a conference. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Buckingham Palace Conference」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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