From Partition to Brexit

The Irish Government and Northern Ireland

Donnacha Ó Beacháin

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781526122797
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Irish History
• Index: History

From Partition to Brexit is the first book to chart the political and ideological evolution of Irish government policy towards Northern Ireland from the partition of the country in 1921 to the present day. Based on extensive original research, this groundbreaking and timely study challenges the idea that Irish governments have pursued a consistent set of objectives and policies towards Northern Ireland to reveal a dynamic story of changing priorities. The book demonstrates how in its relations with the British Government, Dublin has been transformed from spurned supplicant to vital partner in determining Northern Ireland's future, a partnership jeopardised by Britain's decision to leave the European Union. Informed, robust and innovative, From Partition to Brexit is essential reading for anyone interested in Irish or British history and politics, and will appeal to students of diplomacy, international relations and conflict studies.

1
The politics of partition, 1920–1932

Westminster's passing of the Government of Ireland Act in March 1920, which partitioned the country, resulted from the inability, or unwillingness, of the British political elite to reconcile the conflicting demands of their loyal supporters, who constituted 18 per cent of the Irish population, and the majority wish for complete separation from the United Kingdom. The exclusion from Dublin's jurisdiction and the size of the new six-county ‘Northern Ireland’ very much catered for the demands of Ulster Unionists and their supporters at Westminster. Partition's major victims were that section of the nationalist majority that found themselves a minority, constituting just over a third of Northern Ireland's population. The nationalist majorities in counties Fermanagh and Tyrone were greater than the unionist majorities in Derry and Armagh, and Northern Ireland would contain cities like Derry and Newry that had large nationalist majorities. In fact, in not one of the six counties was the unionist majority greater than the nationalist majority in Ireland as a whole. Rather than separating two peoples that could not live peaceably together, partition brought them closer together. Its aim was clearly to produce Protestant rule in perpetuity even in areas with Catholic majorities.

Having placated six-county unionists with their own administration, opened by King George V on 22 June 1921, the British Government set about seeing what could be done to mollify ‘disloyal’ nationalist Ireland. Emboldened by the landslide victory for Sinn Féin at the 1918 general election and embittered by the British military's suppression of the independence movement, Irish republicanism had moved from the periphery to the mainstream. Hunger strikes, executions and atrocities such as those committed on Bloody Sunday punctuated what was in retrospect a mercifully short war for independence. Almost 2,000 people were killed between January 1919 and July 1921, of whom about a quarter resided in the six counties of what became Northern Ireland. In Belfast, where most of the northern fatalities occurred, British state forces combined with loyalist irregulars to target the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and minority Catholic community.

A truce between British forces and the IRA, operative from midnight, 11 July 1921, was generally observed but failed to take hold in Belfast. Eamon de Valera, the Sinn Féin leader and President of the unrecognised Irish Republic, met with British Prime Minister David Lloyd George shortly after the suspension of military hostilities. Controversially, de Valera chose to stay in Dublin while his hand-picked team of plenipotentiaries led by Arthur Griffith, a moderate within the Sinn Féin party, and IRA leader Michael Collins negotiated with Lloyd George and his cabinet colleagues between October and December.

The two issues central to the talks were the status of Ireland and the position of Ulster. Both teams believed that if negotiations broke down on Ulster, the British would be blamed for violating Ireland's territorial integrity, against the wishes of the vast majority of Irish people. The fact that the republicans were willing to concede a local parliament for Belfast with wide-ranging powers but subject to Dublin's jurisdiction reinforced the apparent reasonableness of the nationalist position. Conversely, all sides realised that if it could be demonstrated that the breakdown had occurred solely because the Irish refused the offer of dominion status, similar to that enjoyed by Canada and Australia, and stuck rigidly to complex constitutional formulae, then the British Government would have few qualms in renewing war to protect its vital interests. Taking cognisance of these realities, the two opposing strategies emerged. Which would prevail depended largely on the competence and diplomatic skill of the respective negotiating teams.

Lloyd George's administration had entered negotiations under considerable international pressure. They would not tolerate an independent republic off their shores and were confident they could carry world opinion on this. On Ulster, however, the British negotiating team had shown a significant degree of manoeuvrability and were vulnerable to pressure. Lloyd George admitted to his cabinet that in Ulster they had ‘a very weak case’. The strong sentiments that the Conservatives had been able to exploit between 1912 and 1914 had been replaced by a feeling that the unionists were ‘unreasonable’ and ‘narrow’.¹ Queries on Ulster evoked an embarrassed and evasive response from London's negotiators. When Michael Collins enquired why the British would not concede local plebiscites, Austen Chamberlain, a veteran cabinet member who had ardently resisted Irish home rule, could only reply meekly that ‘you could not put a more difficult question to us in the light of the history of recent years’.² Despite the fragility of the British case on Ulster, however, the Irish delegation came away from London with a Treaty that failed to secure London's recognition of an Irish republic and entrusted the destiny of the six counties of Northern Ireland to a nebulous Boundary Commission. Prime Minister Lloyd George had threatened ‘immediate and terrible war’ should the Sinn Féin plenipotentiaries refuse to agree to this final offer, which included the creation of a twenty-six-county Irish Free State with circumscribed powers, enforced membership of the British Commonwealth and a compulsory oath of fidelity to the British King to be taken by all Irish parliamentarians.

Partition was not emphasised during the subsequent Treaty debates in Dáil Éireann as many accepted Collins's argument that the new north-eastern state would be unable to survive mutilation by the proposed Boundary Commission outlined in Article 12 of the accord. The narrow passing of the Treaty – by 64 votes to 57 – paralysed Ireland's political elite. Division on this issue would constitute the fault-line on which the brief but bloody civil war of 1922–1923 was fought. It would also form the basis of the Irish party system. A majority of the Irish electorate today still vote for parties whose formation and identity are tied to the Treaty divisions and subsequent civil war.

The Northern policy of Michael Collins

Collins viewed the Treaty as providing a breathing space during which a national army could be trained and equipped ready to renew a war with Britain should the new agreement prove unsatisfactory. Within a month of the Treaty being signed, Seán Hales was telling doubters that Collins ‘says the British broke the Treaty of Limerick, and we'll break this Treaty when it suits us, when we have our own army’. Similarly, General Eoin O’Duffy informed a gathering of senior IRA officers in Clones that the Treaty ‘was only a trick’ in order to procure arms with a view to continuing the fight. IRA members were further impress...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Glossary
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Parties and policy making in Ireland
• 1 The politics of partition, 1920–1932
• 2 De Valera’s Northern Ireland policy, 1932–1948
• 3 Failed campaigns, 1948–1969
• 4 War, 1969–1974
• 5 In fear of Armageddon, 1974–1979
• 6 Totality of relationships, 1980–1992
• 7 The age of consent, 1992–2018
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1: A century of government in Ireland, 1919–2018
• Appendix 2: Key personalities
• Bibliography
• Index