The nation was split, Parliament was divided, and there were fears of a new civil war. For contemporary audiences, this description may, quite rightly, be seen as an accurate portrayal of Britain's Brexit crisis. However, it is a description of another episode in the saga that is British political history, namely, the Third Home Rule Crisis. Traditionally seen as the prelude to the violence of the Irish Revolution and later, the Troubles, the crisis is most often viewed as the dramatic confrontation between the supporters and opponents of Home Rule which, in 1914, “stood Ireland on the Brink of civil war between the Protestant north and the Catholic south” (1–2). James Doherty's powerful new work, Irish Liberty, British Democracy: The Third Home Rule Crisis, 1909–1914, challenges this presentation, presenting a more complex and nuanced conceptualization of the period, in which “the possibilities of a Unionist capitulation, under a flag of compromise, were not exhausted when the unexpected outbreak of the First World War altered the course of Irish and world history” (10).

Building upon Eugenio Biagini's impressive revisionist work, British Democracy and Irish Nationalism, 1876–1906 (2007), Doherty highlights the symbiotic connection between Irish nationalism and the British Liberal Party during the Third Home Rule Crisis. In the first two chapters, Doherty traces the relationship between the two forces at the cornerstone of British politics tracing the ways in which Liberal commentators and the Liberal government mediated the issues of Irish self-government, focusing on both the arguments utilized within its support and the personal relationships formed with John Redmond and the Irish Parliamentary Party. Notably, Doherty illuminates the emerging schism between the Liberal Party's leadership and its supporters. He argues that while home rule was viewed by supporters as an issue that was fundamental to the advancement of British democracy, it was viewed by the leadership as an issue that required unaccustomed political collaborations, to limit the pace of social and political change. Hence, “Home Rule tended to be characterised as much by collusion in private as it was by conflict in public” (40). This conclusion significantly contributes to the historiographical debate on the decline of the Liberal Party by reframing the narrative within the national context of its production, a notion obscured within the current dominance of local studies.

The central chapters of Doherty's work are focused upon the issue at the center of the Third Home Rule debate, namely, the concerns and demands of Ulster Unionists. Chapter 3 supports the notion that the Liberal Party failed to articulate an effective response to Unionist accusations that home rule would deprive Ulster of its settled and consensual form of government. Chapter 4 challenges the dominant narrative, overturning Patricia Julland's The Liberals and Ireland: The Ulster Question in British Politics to 1914 (1980) by arguing that this issue of Ulster was a dispute between British parties and Irish nationalists rather than Liberal-Conservative quarrel—a notion that, as chapter 5 highlights through a survey of liberal publications, electrified the existing schism between Liberal leadership and supporters who were opposed to the pursuit of collusive inclinations.

Doherty's final chapters are centered on reviewing the darkening nature of the Third Home Rule Crisis in 1914. They trace both Redmond's attempts at comprising with the Unionists and the subsequent radicalization of popular Irish nationalist thought through the growing popularity given to the notion that Irish nationhood could be achieved through an alternative revolutionary path of revolt against the British, foreshadowing the actions of the 1916 Easter Rising. Finally, Doherty discusses how all parties came to reckon with the consequences of the home rule debate, showing how deeply rooted the issue had become within prewar British politics. Most importantly, drawing upon evidence of Unionist reservations and Conservative doubt, Doherty argues that rather than a “near-ubiquitous narrative of imminent civil war . . . the possibilities of compromise were not exhausted when the First World War broke out” (188).

Although frequently overshadowed by the proceeding events of the Irish Revolution, Doherty's first major work brings the Third Home Rule Crisis back into historical focus in a dramatic fashion by effectively challenging the outdated notions of its presentation. In doing so, it draws upon an impressively extensive source base ranging from the high politics of Cabinet Papers to the popular politics of pamphlets, a source base that Doherty deploys with commanding effect to outline his bold new arguments. Furthermore, largely written in a clear and comprehensive manner, Doherty presents an easy to follow chronological narrative that is tastefully interwoven with the penetrative analysis upon which his argument rests. At their core, Doherty's bold revisionist conclusions complicate our understanding of the Third Home Rule Crisis. They also send powerful vibrations throughout the historiography of British and Irish politics, which have the potential to further reshape our understanding of this transformative period of history. Overall, Doherty's Irish Liberty, British Democracy is a much needed, exceptionally executed, transformative study of the Third Home Rule Crisis that should be essential reading for anyone with an interest in Irish or British political history.