The peace process really started with William Ewart Gladstone, who died 100 years ago today. In December 1868, when he received a summons to form his first government, Gladstone was felling a tree at Hawarden, his north Wales estate. After a few minutes he rested on the handle of his axe, looked up and declared: "My mission is to pacify Ireland."
He went on to disestablish the Anglican Church in Ireland. Through a series of Land Acts he facilitated what Michael Davitt called the fall of feudalism in Ireland. By 1886, convinced of the justice of the Irish demand for self-government, he introduced the first Home Rule Bill. On a pilgrimage to Canterbury last year this diarist reflected that, like St Thomas Beckett, Gladstone was an Englishman of towering moral authority. Appropriately, he was born on December 29th, 1809, the anniversary of Beckett's martyrdom.
Gladstone intended originally to take orders in the Church of England, but his father dissuaded him. The "Grand Old Man" of Liberalism began his parliamentary career as a Conservative member. In 1845, while travelling on the Continent, he wrote to his wife: "Ireland, Ireland! that cloud in the west, that coming storm, the minister of God's retribution upon cruel and inveterate and but half-atoned injustice."
Income tax
For the next 20 years, however, Gladstone took little interest in the Irish question - apart from extending the income tax to Ireland as Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1853. He was absorbed in European affairs, his career at the Treasury and religious controversy.
While moving far from the Evangelicalism of his youth, Gladstone retained a morbidity and religiosity which could produce neurotic tension. With a Christ-like lack of guile he sought out prostitutes in the West End of London - in the hope of redeeming them.
Although lacking robust health, he had phenomenal energy, both mental and physical. He walked several miles daily, in the country and in London, and trekked frequently from Chester station to Hawarden. On a Welsh tour in September 1855, he walked 40 miles one day and on another added 15 road miles to the ascent and descent of Snowdon.
Gladstone's diaries, published in 14 volumes, record a lifetime's reading and how he spent "the most precious gift of time". Part of each day was reserved for reading even when serving as chancellor or prime minister. He listed about 17,500 book and pamphlet titles. In addition to Greek and Latin, he could read works in French, Italian, German and Spanish. In Hawarden Castle he built a library - known as the Temple of Peace - one of the most evocative political shrines in the world, according to his biographer, Roy Jenkins.
Fenian lesson
Fenianism taught Gladstone the intensity of Irish disaffection. He told the British people, shocked by Fenian violence in 1867, that Ireland had grievances. When they were removed, "instead of hearing in every corner of Europe the most painful commentaries on the policy of England towards Ireland, we may be able to look our fellow Europeans in the face".
To bring out his full power, a task or cause had to engage his imagination. Gladstone's eclectic mind lacked what his friend and biographer, John Morley, called "the little civilities and hypocrisies of political society". Lord Palmerston feared he combined "all the elements calculated to produce a most dangerous character for this country . . . Enthusiasm, passion, sympathy, simplicity - these are the qualities which moved the masses". Queen Victoria detested him. The success of the franchise extension movement brought a new force into British public life, however, and Gladstone was looked upon as the natural leader of democracy.
On his only visit to Ireland, in 1877, he noted after an outing to Glendalough: "I have never seen anything equal to or like it. The harmony of the scenery with the remains is perfect."
Moral imperative
His conversion to Home Rule cannot be explained simply by the pressure of Parnell's 86 MPs. There was a moral imperative involved in this decision. Gladstone arrived at it, as he had arrived at other important decisions, by asking himself what was the right, ultimately the Christian, solution.
Having lived for years close to the heart of the Irish problem and observed the rise of a disciplined party under Parnell, he no longer believed what so many of his fellow-countrymen still believed - that the Irish were a backward people unfit for self-government.
Gladstone's journey to Damascus cost him the unity of his party. His modest Home Rule proposals were rejected in parliament by a secession of Whigs and in the country at a subsequent general election.
At a time when the Union was sacrosanct to British establishment opinion, Lord Randolph Churchill exploited sectarian bigotry with his slogan: "Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right". Gladstone was held up as "a conspirator with the Pope to hand over Ireland to the rule of the Catholic majority, and thereby bring about the extermination of the Protestant population".
The Loyal and Patriotic Union, financed through the Primrose League, galvanised Tory opposition. Branches of the "Primose Dames" spread all over England. Those titled ladies visited working-class homes to enlist support. Labourers were invited to picnics held in the parks of noblemen and harangued about the disaster which Home Rule would bring upon the Empire.
Home Rule Bill
Gladstone spent the next six years persuading the British electorate that to grant self-government to the Irish people would be an act of justice and wisdom. On forming his fourth (and last) cabinet, he piloted a new Home Rule Bill through 85 sittings of the House of Commons; the Lords vetoed it by a record majority, 419-41. But Davitt wrote that Gladstone would be remembered for this service, together with his 1881 Land Act, by a grateful Irish nation.
The significance of Gladstone's espousal of Home Rule was that, although his party split on the issue, henceforth the Liberals were committed in principle to Irish self-government. This commitment, which survived the Parnell split, changed the basis of the Anglo-Irish relationship.
Humanitarian to the end, in his last great speech, at his native Liverpool in 1896, Gladstone denounced Turkish atrocities in Armenia.
Elizabeth Mathew Dillon, wife of the Irish parliamentary leader, recorded his death on May 19th, 1898 - Ascension Day - in her diary: "An end full of faith and calm and dignity."
During a long career, Gladstone illustrated his own precept: "Be inspired with the belief that life is a great and noble calling; not a mean and grovelling thing, that we are to shuffle through as we can, but an elevated and lofty destiny". Reconciliation between Britain and Ireland dominated his later years. Tony Blair said he felt the hand of history on his shoulder before signing the Belfast Agreement. The Grand Old Man must surely be smiling at this triumph of political imagination.