disapproval in the south, and particularly in 1920 its impact was uneven and its direction sometimes faulty; southern protestants and northern catholics suffered as well as Ulster unionists’.54 When Seán MacEntee, TD for Monaghan South, proposed in Dáil Éireann in August 1920 ‘a commercial boycott of Belfast’ in response to the ‘pogrom’ perpetrated against Catholics in Belfast, another TD from Monaghan, Ernest Blythe, was ‘entirely opposed to a blockade against Belfast … If it were taken it would destroy for ever the possibility of any union’. Countess Constance Markievicz, the first woman elected to parliament for Britain or Ireland in 1918, agreed with Blythe that ‘a blockade would be playing into the hands of the enemy and giving them a good excuse for partition’.55 Despite the opposition, the Dáil and its cabinet approved the instigation of the boycott. It was also supported by county councils under Sinn Féin control, trade unions and members of the Catholic clergy.56 Nationalist firms in Belfast were also affected by the boycott. Ironically, Denis McCullough, one of the organisers of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) in Belfast and originally a supporter of the boycott, was forced to close his bagpipe factory as ‘the Irish public because of the Boycott, buy British-made pipes rather than support this purely republican firm’.57
It was in an atmosphere of war, sectarian hatred and boycotts that the Government of Ireland Bill became an act on 23 December 1920, and elections to the new parliaments were set for the following May, which was selected due to the ‘confidence of the British military that martial law could bring the IRA to heel within five months’.58 Many pondered on what the new political realities would bring. Bryan Follis in A State Under Siege remarked:
at the stage when the Act became law, Northern Ireland existed not as an entity but only in name and on paper. Not only had Northern Ireland no parliament and no government: it had no civil service to support and serve it, no police or defence force to enforce whatever laws it might make, protect its people, or defend its territory from possible (and indeed likely) attack, nor had it a judiciary to uphold its laws and administer justice.59
The main concern came from those who lived close to what would become the new border between northern and southern Ireland. In January 1921, the Lord Mayor of Derry, Hugh O’Doherty, claimed that partition ‘drew a barbed wire entanglement around six counties’.60 O’Doherty, as well as five of the nine county council chairmen of Ulster, sent a letter to the British government protesting against partition in late 1920.61 The Derry No. 2 Rural District was informed by the Local Government Board that it would be annexed to the relevant body in Letterkenny by 1 April, as it was located in County Donegal, which would form part of Southern Ireland, with Derry forming part of Northern Ireland. This was much to the chagrin of unionist Derry Council members.62 The Local Government Board ‘also intimated that … the portion of County Armagh that is situated in the Castleblayney [Co. Monaghan] Union will be transferred to the Newry [Co. Armagh] Union, and, similarly, Belleek district of Fermanagh will be transferred from the Ballyshannon [Co. Donegal] Union to the Enniskillen [Co. Fermanagh] Union’.63 This suggestion was rejected by Sinn Féin in Fermanagh, which advised that the letter from the Local Government Board be ‘thrown in the waste paper basket’ and that ‘Northern Sinn Feiners would never enter the Ulster Parliament’.64 One observer, Godfrey Fetherstonhaugh from Dublin, claimed that ‘by way of reductio ad absurdum that Donegal, the most northern county of Ireland, is to form part of “Southern” Ireland’ with ‘a narrow strip only a couple of miles wide, near Bundoran, being the connection’ between Donegal and the rest of ‘Southern’ Ireland.65
The Irish Times, in an article written in February 1921, revealed the level of confusion surrounding partition at the time. Partition, it contended, would ‘have old-established bodies to be broken up and destroyed, but, in most cases two new ones put in place of each old one. The heads of departments are called upon to decide what portion of their duties is concerned with Southern Ireland, and what with Northern they have to allocate their various staffs in the same way.’66
Many in the civil service, which was administered in Dublin, were reluctant to move to Belfast and uproot their families and homes, even in instances where their work solely related to the area that would become Northern Ireland.67 George Chester Duggan, a civil servant who did move to Belfast, claimed that everyone in the civil service in Dublin ‘seemed to believe that the Government of Ireland Act in its present form would never become law, that something would happen to prevent the partition of Ireland’.68 Martin Maguire also asserts:
For the civil service itself ‘the nightmare of transfer to Belfast’ as it was described in Red Tape, the civil service journal, seemed remote. Such was the conviction within the civil service associations that partition would not happen or, if it did, would not work, that they several times repeated their determination that they would remain as all-Ireland associations.69
Members of the old RIC from throughout Ireland did move to Northern Ireland in large numbers to join the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) when it was formed in 1922, perhaps not surprising considering their unpopularity in most parts of Ireland at the time.70 The leadership of the civil service trade unions worked to prevent the forced movement of civil servants to Belfast. They also secretly maintained contact with the revolutionary forces in Dáil Éireann, just in case Sinn Féin would be in power one day.71
The breaking up of the Department of Agriculture was particularly bemoaned, as it was seen as a great success since its formation twenty-one years earlier. However, two of its functions – namely, fisheries and the administration of the Diseases of Animals Acts, were reserved for the Council of Ireland.72 There was a sense of nostalgia at the last all-Ireland Council of Agriculture meeting on 15 March 1921. At the meeting, T.P. Gill, council secretary, made the following resolution:
That this Board, representative of all parts of Ireland, desire to place on record the fact that for twenty-one years they have worked together in unbroken harmony, in discharging the responsible duties entrusted to them, and they venture to express the hope that under some arrangement or other, this useful and gratifying co-operation will not be wholly dispensed with in the future.73
The Council of Agriculture had seen close cooperation between unionists and nationalists throughout its existence, as had other all-Ireland bodies, such as the Association of Municipal Authorities, where ‘Southern Sinn Feiners and Northern Unionists’ were known to work comfortably with each other.74 The Royal College of Science, the Albert Model Farm in Glasnevin, the Royal Veterinary College at Ballsbridge, the National Museum and the Metropolitan School of Art were all administered by the Department of Agriculture, all based in Dublin. It was unclear how those institutions could be split in two, it not being an option to move half of them, in situ, to Belfast.75 There was also confusion surrounding art treasures. Would the National Gallery in Dublin also be expected to be split in two, with half of its valuable contents shipped to Belfast and the other half remaining in Dublin?76
The Freeman’s Journal posed the question, ‘Will anyone even adduce a single fact to show that such breaking up is not ruinous from every point of view?’77 Teachers met in Belfast in March 1921 to prepare for the impending six-counties education bill, where it was advised that ‘individual representatives of the various organisations whose ramifications extend throughout all Ireland to keep in sympathy and close touch with the general ideals of those associations’ until a proper Department of Education for Northern Ireland was formed.78 As the body that controlled primary education in Ireland, the National Board, was not established through an act of parliament (the advisory committee members were nominated by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland instead) there were doubts about whether the Government of Ireland Act was capable of breaking it up and establishing two education departments.79 Insurance companies envisaged that they would be disastrously affected by partition. To illustrate the complications that ‘the sea of confusion’ of partition would bring, the Freeman’s Journal provided a breakdown of health insurance holders in Ireland in April 1921:
There are approximately 750,000 insured persons in Ireland who are members of Approved Societies. Of these about 474,000 reside in Southern Ireland and 276,000 in Northern
