ABSTRACT
Possibly the Cabinet’s most blameworthy piece of optimistic shortsightedness concerned the Irish situation. At the beginning of 1912, though there had already been some loud warnings from Ulster, Ministers still preferred to regard the Ulster preparations against Home Rule as “bluff”. And, finally, the poorer working-man who had hitherto, it was claimed, found his way to the Voters’ Register barred by over-exigent Registration conditions would now find it made so much easier that, perhaps, two and a half million new voters might be enfranchised. Unfortunately the road to an Ulster compromise was not facilitated by the bitter party recriminations on the Land Enquiry Committee of Government supporters which Lloyd George had now set to work. The long-discussed opening of the “Land Campaign” came with two meetings addressed by Lloyd George in October 1913, the first at Bedford on October nth and the second at Swindon on October 22nd.
