Sectarianism, the Nonconformist Conscience, and ‘British Pluralism’: The Digital Humanities and the Language of Home Rule, c.1910–1914

Abstract

Abstract In recent years, historians have reassessed the political importance of the third Home Rule Bill. Important works by G. K. Peatling, Daniel Jackson, and David Thackeray have overturned the once-dominant view that the measure was a straightforward distraction from social reform. Yet, this scholarship has focused almost exclusively on the response of Unionists to Home Rule, and few works discuss the measure’s significance for Edwardian Liberals. This article rectifies this historiographical oversight by comparing the Liberal and Unionist response to the third Home Rule Bill in Devonshire and Lancashire. Using techniques from the digital humanities, I have shown that the measure dominated the grassroots political discourse of both parties before the First World War.