ABSTRACT
Conflict over Ireland reconfigured the political landscape of the United Kingdom during the 1880s and brought the UK close to civil conflict at the outbreak of the First World War. From the Famine of the mid-1840s onwards, affairs in Ireland had been casting a very long, and very dark, shadow. The natural reaction of both survivors in, and emigrants from, Ireland was to blame Britain for the conditions which brought the Famine about and for its partial and inefficient response. For a quarter of a century, relations between Ireland and Britain revolved around the conscience, the indefatigable energy and the sheer stubbornness of William Gladstone. Gladstone's Act was designed to give Irish tenants greater protection against both eviction and sudden rent rises. Gladstone's Irish Universities Bill of 1873 added fuel to Irish fires. Its aim was to secure mixed education for Protestants and Catholics in a new federal university.
