Irish History

The People Endorse the Republic

The Irish Republic was endorsed by the Irish people in 1918. In the British general election held in December, Sinn Féin won 73 out the 105 Irish seats. Sinn Féin candidates were pledged not to participate in the Westminster parliament but to convene an Irish Parliament in Dublin. On January 21st, 1919, Dial Eireann was established. This parliament of the democratically elected representatives of the Irish people ratified the establishment of the Irish Republic and declared the independence of the nation. They also adopted a democratic program in which they declared to have Ireland "ruled in accordance with the principles of liberty, equality and justice for all." A cabinet was appointed, courts established and the Irish Republican Army brought under the control of the Minister of Defense.

In September 1919, a British military proclamation declared Dial Eireann "illegal". All Irish republican papers were suppressed and the British unleased a reign of terror which continued until the signing of a truce in July of 1921. A British Labour Party commission reported in December 1920 that "the atmosphere of terrorism which has been created and the provocative behavior of the armed servants of the Crown, quite apart from specific 'reprisals', are sufficient in themselves to arouse in our hearts feelings of the deepest horror and shame."

The IRA fought back against British army/police terror using guerrilla tactics which were later adopted by other liberation movements.

In the general election of 1920, Sinn Féin obtained 80% of the seats, winning a majority in 28 of the 32 counties. It was to be the last national election that the Irish people as a whole were to participate in.

Partition and the "Government of Ireland Act"

Britain's answer to the risen people of Ireland was the Government of Ireland Act passed in Westminster in December 1920. This set up two subordinate parliaments in Ireland: one for six counties, another for twenty-six counties. The six counties remained under direct British rule with 80% of the powers of government reserved to Westminster. The twenty-two counties received dominion status.

No Irishman from any part of Ireland voted for this statute, for even the unionists -- the 22% of the population who approved of union with Britain and most of whom lived within 35 miles of Belfast -- did not want their country to be divided. Edward Carson, the unionist leader, said: "I know Ulster does not want this parliament." But when the six-county parliament and government were set up they accepted partition.

The scheme for partition government was also put to Dial Eireann representatives in London in December 1921, and under threat from the British prime minister, Lloyd George, of "immediate and terrible war" they signed a "treaty" incorporating these terms. The 26 county dominion state was imposed upon the Irish people by British arms. The 26 county state was established by a bloody civil war against Irish republican who never accepted the partition of their country.

Two Neo-Colonial and Artificial States

The 26 County state, later to become established internationally as the Republic of Ireland, has also fared badly under the partition system. The men who advocated the treaty in 1921 looked on it as a "stepping stone" to the real 32 County, Irish Republic. But either portion of t divided and partitioned nation have little chance to thrive or achieve more than nominal independence. The twenty-six county statelet's economy continued to be dominated by Britain. Unemployment and emigration persisted, and the state was, and is, dominated politically by British interests.

The six-county area [incorrectly called "Northern Ireland"] cut off from the other twenty-six counties had never existed before as an entity in history, politics or economics. Containing six of the nine counties of Ulster, it was a completely artificial area, made by drawing an arbitrary boundary and carving an artificial unionist majority out of a majority nationalist country. Even Lloyd George, the British prime minister politically responsible for partition, called it "a frontier based neither upon natural features nor broad geographical considerations." In 4 1/2 counties out of the 6 there was and still is a majority of people fro independence! The numerical strength of the unionists in the other 1 1/2 counties enabled them to permanently out-vote the nationalists majority in the rest of the northern statelet.

The other three counties of Ulster contained 70,000 unionists who were not included in the new statelet because they also contained 260,000 republicans and nationalists. This was the only reason Britain would not keep the entire province of Ulster in the "UK". The inclusion of Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan would "reduce our majority to such a level that no sane man would undertake to carry on parliament with it," said Sir James Craig, the first prime minister of the six counties.

As for whether things have changed between Britain and Ireland, one of the interesting things about the film is it will prompt people to ask that question: Have things changed? Maybe that's one of the reasons the film is worthy of debate."
-- Neil Jordan, director of the film "Michael Collins" While the British government was squandering the peace process to a point where it didn't exist in the closing months of 1995, several significant anniversaries occurred in the depressing relations between Britain and Ireland: the 75th and 70th anniversaries of the Government of Ireland Act and the Boundary Commission. They partitioned Ireland and created the present undemocratic state and the constitutional disaster at the root of today's continuation of the conflict.

A few days after the last of the leaders of the Easter Rising in Dublin had been executed, Lloyd George, soon to be Prime Minister, wrote to Edward Carson, leader of thy Ulster Unionist: "We must make it clear that at the end of the provisional period Ulster does not, whether it wants to or not, merge in the rest of Ireland."

Why? George determined his solution to the "Irish Question" was to be the partition of the country. It was a new concept which was never a unionist demand, who had always demanded that all of Ireland should remain in the U.K. "We never asked for partition and we never wanted it," said Lord Glentroan, a unionist leader, many years later in the Stormont Parliament. The point being that Ireland was partition in order to satisfy Britain's needs and Britain's needs only; the people of Ireland of both traditions were dead against it.

The British government's aim was to retain the whole country by dividing it and thereby making it an untenable entity.

The Government of Ireland Bill

The Government of Ireland Bill was introduced in Parliament in December of 1919. It was rejected by all sides in Ireland. The pro-Unionist Irish Times commented, "The Bill had not a single friend in either hemisphere, outside Downing Street."

Not a single member of any Irish party voted for it. Despite the overwhelming electoral success of Sinn Féin in 1919, in which the vast majority of the Irish people voted for full independence from Britain and actually set up its own government -- Dail Eireann, the Government of Ireland Act was pushed through parliament and became the basis of 77 years of war, political unrest and conflict in almost every aspect of Irish society.

While the Government of Ireland Bill was passing through Westminster in 1920, the Black and Tan War was escalating throughout Ireland and in the north-east of the country, the unionist forces set about preparing to establish the 6-county fifedom handed to them by the Bill. The Ulster Volunteer Force had up to 30,000 men under arms by October.

Terror in the North-east
With the British diligently preparing the legal ground for partition, the unionist forces set about preparing to rule the 6-Counties. Between June 1920 and June 1922, in a bout of ethnic cleansing that would repeat itself in the north-east on the average of once every 12 years since partition, 428 people were killed in political conflict there; 8,750 Catholics were driven from their jobs; 23,000 Catholics were driven from their homes.

"Northern Ireland"/"Ulster"

To show the artificial nature of the 6-County statelet which was inflicted upon the Irish people, it should not be called "Northern" because County Donegal, in the "South", is the northern-most part of the island. And the Province of Ulster is has been a nine county entity since antiquity. The unionists had already recognized that they would not have a sufficient majority to control the historic province, as was spelled out by Carson: "We should like to have the very largest area possible, naturally. That is a system of land grabbing that prevails in all countries for widening the jurisdiction of the various governments that are set up; but there is no use in our undertaking a government which we know would be a failure if we were saddled with these three counties." Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan are the three counties of Ulster not included in the gerrymandered "Northern Ireland"

Democracy Had Nothing To Do With It

Lloyd George frankly admitted that if the Irish people were asked what form of government they wanted, they would choose an Irish Republic "by an emphatic majority." But the British government made sure that that did not happen. Throughout the rest of 1920, the British waged war on nationalist Ireland in order, according to the Irish Times, "to scourge the Irish into obedience, leaving as sole alternative to resistance, the acceptance of the present Bill." That was November 1920, the bloodiest month of the war.

In that month 18 year-old Kevin Barry was hanged; in India, Corporal James Daly was executed for leading a mutiny in protest of Black and Tan atrocities; 14 British agents were executed by the IRA in Dublin; 13 Irish sports fans were shot dead by Black and Tans at Crooke Park; two IRA officers and a civilian, Conor Clune, were tortured and shot dead in the guardroom of Dublin Castle; at Kilmichael in Cork, the IRA, taking on a force many times its size in personnel and arms, inflicted the worst military defeat on the British army to date.

It was against this background that the Government of Ireland Bill passed its third reading on 11 November 1920. It defined the area of the two "states" as they were to remain to this day. Winston Churchill, in a comment that reflects upon today's arguments about self-determination and consent, said that as the Six Counties had been given all the trappings of a state, "every argument of self-determination ranged itself hence forward upon their side." In other words, once the 6-Counties was undemocratically gerrymandered to make a national minority into a majority, they could always point to "self-determination" to keep the unionists in power. The Government of Ireland Act became law on 23 December 1920.

With Partition now law, Lloyd George tightened his repressive regime in Ireland. At the same time he extended Martial Law, he offered to talk to republican representatives -- if they would surrender arms. Acting Sinn Fein President Arthur Griffith replied: "This was not a Truce but surrender, and there would be be no surrender, no matter what frightfulness was used." As the war intensified into 1921, with no let up in republican resistance, Lloyd George was forced to forget that precondition to talks. Sound familiar? But Lloyd George stuck to his partition plan rigidly in the complicated negotiations to come.

The Partition Trick:
"The Treaty" and "The Boundary Commission"

The trick was how to sell the Government of Ireland Act to both unionists and nationalists with a little modification as possible. To do this he had to assure unions that there would be no change in the size of their new "Northern Ireland" state and at the same time he had to persuade nationalists that in return for staying in the British Empire they would be able to reduce the Northern Ireland state to a size that made it unworkable and made Irish unity inevitable. Lloyd George managed to do both.

He achieved it during the negotiations that leg to the Treaty of December 1921. Only by persuading Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins that Article 12 of the Treaty would effectively mean the end of the Northern Ireland state did he succeed in winning their agreement. Article 12 provided for a Boundary Commission which would "determine in accordance with the wishes of the inhabitants, so far as may be compatible with economic and geographic conditions, the boundaries between Northern Ireland and the rest of Ireland." Collins and Griffith were well aware that the Counties of Tyrone, Fermanagh, the southern portions of County Armagh, Down and Derry had Catholic/nationalist majorities.

On this basis the Treaty was signed and supported by just over half of Dial Eireann. A bloody Civil War ensued in the 26 Counties, turning former comrades in arms into bitter enemies, which has affected Irish politics to this day. The Six-Counties became a sectarian prison for the Catholic/Irish nationalist people with all power consolidated under the slim, artificial unionist majority.

The Boundary Commission: the final piece of treachery

The final part of Lloyd George's plan fell into place in November of 1925, 71 years ago. The last hope of nationalists in the Six-Counties rested on the Boundary Commission. The most hopeful, or most naive, interpreted Article 12 of the Treaty to mean that areas with a nationalist majority would revert to the "Free State" or the 26-Counties. Thus Counties Fermanagh and Tyrone, South Down and South Armagh, and Derry City and Newry would be outside the Orange state. But the unionists had warned from early on that they would have none of the Boundary Commission.

In 1922 Craig declared, "I will never give in to any rearrangement of the boundary that leaves our Ulster area less than it is under the Government of Ireland Act." The threatened "bloodshed and chaos of the worst description." At the same time, Michael Collins believed that under the Boundary Commission "we secure immense anti-Partition areas."

In 1924, meetings between Free State premier W.T. Cosgrave and Unionist premier James Craig failed to reach agreement and in April Cosgrave requested that the British government, under the terms of the Treaty, set up the Boundary Commission. The unionist refused to participate. The British then appointed a South African [!] Justice Feetham to chair the Commission. The unionists then nominated J.R. Fisher to the Commission and the Free State's appointee was Eoin Mac Neill.

British Lies As Usual

In the public controversy that followed the full duplicity of Lloyd George two years earlier was exposed. Eamon De Valera published the letter written to him by Arthur Griffith during the Treaty negotiations conveying the promise by Lloyd George that if the unionists refuse to allow a Boundary Commission to delimit the area of the Northern government "he would fight, summon parliament, appeal to it against Ulster, dissolve, or pass an Act establishing an All-Ireland parliament."

Leading Tories then revealed what they had told the unionists. Walter Long said he had pledged on behalf of the Cabinet to Carson and Craig in 1920 that the Six-Counties "should be theirs for good and all and there should be no interference with the boundaries or anything else..."

Lord Birkinhead, a signatory to the Treaty in 1922, stated in a letter to Lord Balfour that Michael Collins' reassurances to Northern nationalists were groundless. Collins had told nationalists that Article 12 of the Treaty would protect them. Birkinhead said that the main purpose of Article 12 was to "preserve Northern Ireland" as it was.

All this happened before the Boundary Commission had its first meeting. To make doubly sure the cards were marked the House of Lords passed a motion saying that the Treaty's Article 12 contemplated nothing more than a "readjustment". Even the anti-republican Irish Independent commented: "If article 12 were capable of bearing any other meaning but that placed upon it by Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith and the Irish people it would never have received five minutes consideration in this country."

Little was heard of the Boundary Commission as it deliberated through 1925. Then on 7 November 1925 Ireland was shocked by a leak of the Commission's report. None of the nationalist areas were to revert to the Free State. The most substantial change was for a part of East Donegal to go into "Northern Ireland"! The majority nationalist counties of Tyrone and Fermanagh and the nationalist towns of Newry and Derry, as well as South Armagh and South Down, were to stay in the Orange nightmare state.

Eoin Mac Neill resigned from the Commission and then from the Free State government. Cosgrave and two of his ministers went to London and signed an agreement on 3 December 1925 that marked the final abandonment of Northern nationalists and effectively sealed partition.

Undemocratic By Nature

Irish republicans condemned the agreement and proclaimed their "unalterable opposition to the partitioning of our country." The Irish Labour Party described the London Agreement as "unmitigated betrayal."

The biggest losers were Irish Nationalists trapped in the Northern statelet. They had expressed their desire for Irish independence and unity in election after election. Without the consent of any of them, they had been incorporated into a sectarian state, established under a British act of parliament for which not one Irish vote was cast. So much for democracy and the consent of the people of "Northern Ireland." They were trapped in a state without their consent and they remain there today.