vote for it. In his famous Irish Home Rule speech, Gladstone beseeched Parliament to pass it and grant Home Rule to Ireland in honour rather than being compelled to one day in humiliation. Unionists and the Orange Order were fierce in their resistance; for them, any measure of Home Rule was denounced as nothing other than Rome Rule. In the staunchly loyalist town of Portadown, the so-called 'Orange Citadel' where the Orange Order was founded in 1795, Orangemen and their supporters celebrated the Bill's defeat by 'Storming the Tunnel'. This was the headline in the local paper where it was reported that a mob attacked the small Catholic/Nationalist ghetto of Obins Street. The vote on the Bill took place after two months of debate and, on 8 June 1886, 341 voted against it (including 93 Liberals) while 311 voted for it. Parliament was dissolved on 26 June and the UK general election, 1886 was called. Historians have suggested that the 1886 Home Rule Bill was fatally flawed by the secretive manner of its drafting, with Gladstone alienating Liberal figures like Joseph Chamberlain who, along with a colleague, resigned in protest from the ministry, while producing a Bill viewed privately by the Irish as badly drafted and deeply flawed. The Liberal Unionist Party was formed, and was generally allied to, or in coalition with, the Conservative Party until the parties merged in 1912. The 1886 United Kingdom general election was held in July, and led to Conservative and Liberal-Unionist coalition governments for most of the following two decades. See also 1886 Belfast riots Government of Ireland Bill 1893 (Second Irish Home Rule Bill) Government of Ireland Act 1914 (Third Irish Home Rule Bill) Government of Ireland Act 1920 (Fourth Irish Home Rule Bill) History of Ireland (1801–1923) References Further reading University College Cork, History Faculty: Home Rule, The Elections of 1885, 1886 MacDonagh, Michael: The Home Rule Movement, Talbot Press, Dublin (1920) Kee, Robert: The Green Flag: A History of Irish Nationalism (2000 edition, first published 1972), . Hennessey, Thomas: Dividing Ireland: World War I and Partition (1998), . External links Full text of the Home Rule bill of 1886 Appendix A of What home rule means now. (1893, Dublin), The Liberal Union of Ireland; from the Internet Archive. Full text without schedules. "Government of Ireland Bill" matches from Hansard; matches 1886–92 relate to the 1886 bill. Speech by Charles Stewart