to contend themselves with three legal systems instead of one, which had been the case for centuries.62
Samuel Watt, Permanent Secretary to the northern Ministry of Home Affairs, contended that by delaying the transfer of services, ‘the whole of the northern government will prove to be a farce, and that the northern parliament will be nothing more than a debating society, as it will not have the power to legislate on or discuss any matter arising out of the services to be transferred’.63 The northern House of Commons was adjourned for a lengthy period, from 24 June until 20 September 1921. A cabinet meeting beforehand believed ‘the Government would be in a very unsatisfactory position when Parliament met on September 20th, without any Financial powers, and with no Departments for the Ministers which had been set up’.64 On resuming in September, Craig and his government were inundated with questions regarding the delay in the transfer of services, particularly in relation to policing. At one session on 27 September, the Minister of Home Affairs, Dawson-Bates, was unable to satisfactorily answer questions relating to issues such as non-compliant county councils (Tyrone and Fermanagh), state grants, road maintenance and motor licenses due to the northern government still waiting to have control over the local government for the area.65 Craig stated:
my chief reason for asking for so prolonged an interval was that I hoped we would have been in a position to secure the transfer of various services under the Government of Ireland Act, that my Ministers would have their departments in thorough-going order, and that we could report, at all events, to the House, not necessarily the possibility of immediate legislation but at all events that the full machinery of Government was now in your hands, and that you would be able to proceed, as we have all been looking forward to, with the carrying out of the Act passed by the Imperial Parliament.66
One of the main reasons for the delay in the transfer of services was the changed situation in Ireland due to the truce with Sinn Féin. This led to a change in the prioritising of the Irish question for the British government. According to John McColgan, ‘in the summer of 1921 a new phase emerged in which the task of transferring full powers to the government of Northern Ireland was subordinated to the requirements of the larger Irish policy – the need to reach agreement with the South’.67 This was reflected in Dublin Castle’s tardiness in assisting Ernest Clark in establishing a civil service for Northern Ireland. Craig complained to Hamar Greenwood about the delay in the transfer of services and staff from Dublin Castle. There was also bad blood between Dublin Castle and Belfast, where ‘stories were circulating Dublin departments to the effect that the better posts in the prospective Northern administration were being reserved for certain officials in London and Dublin departments with influence in the North’. Clark countered by stating ‘that the various departments in Dublin are selecting their “duds” for submission to the civil service committee as suitable for transfer’.68 The northern government also expressed dissatisfaction with the civil service examinations being only held in Dublin and wanted a centre established in Belfast for the ‘forthcoming Typists’ Examination in September’.69
The role for Catholics in the northern civil service was uncertain from the start. At a cabinet meeting, the Ulster Ex-Service Association objected to the appointment of J.V. Coyle to the Department of Agriculture. Archdale, the Minister of Agriculture and Commerce, stated that ‘Mr. Coyle was a Roman Catholic, a loyalist he had known for 20 years and he proposed to appoint him as his Head of one of his branches.’ At the same meeting, the government committed to ‘enrol members of all creeds in their Staff provided their loyalty was unquestioned’.70 However, when the British Treasury recommended H.P. Boland for appointment to a senior post in the new Northern Ireland civil service as an official with ‘a wide and varied experience of civil service administration … intimately concerned with the reorganisation of several large departments’, and who had ‘an exceptionable knowledge of the various problems of civil service organisation’, Boland, a Catholic, was turned down. The northern government responded with ‘Thank you very much, but no. I believe you know the reason why.’71 It was clear that very few Catholics would find a place in the new civil service.
By June 1921, Craig and his colleagues had achieved a number of key milestones that safeguarded their future by not being subservient to a Dublin parliament. The Government of Ireland Act was passed into law, elections were held in the six counties and a parliament had been convened. The machinery of government was taking shape without the transfer of services required to give it further structure. Despite these victories, the future of Northern Ireland as an entity in its original form was still uncertain. This became clear once the British government began its negotiations with Sinn Féin following the truce in July 1921.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Treaty
Sinn Féin secured a clear mandate from three provinces of Ireland at the 1918 and 1921 general elections. In Ulster, it did not achieve such a mandate and battled with the Irish Parliamentary Party/United Irish League for hegemony within the nationalist community, with both of them significantly below the level of political support for Ulster unionism in the province. With the electoral destruction of the Irish Parliamentary Party in 1918, Sinn Féin became the effective voice of Irish nationalism. At this juncture, the partition of Ireland was being enforced, yet Sinn Féin had no coherent policy on the issue. Other than the counter-productive Belfast Boycott, the party was devoid of any clear strategy to end partition or deal with it. With the birth of the northern jurisdiction and the truce of July 1921, it had to finally confront the issue head-on.
In the preceding years, Sinn Féin leaders tended to over emphasise the blame attributed to Britain for causing partition and to downplay the real hostility of Ulster unionists to being governed by a Dublin parliament. There seemed a genuine, albeit wholly naïve belief that if Britain withdrew from Ireland, Ulster unionists would be open to a united Ireland. De Valera felt that the troubles in Ulster were ‘due to British guile and nothing else’.1 Sinn Féin founder Arthur Griffith claimed the division of Ireland was ‘unnatural’, maintaining that if the Ulster unionists did not have the backing of the British government, ‘we could settle the Ulster question’.2 Likewise, another Sinn Féin leader, Michael Collins, maintained that ‘the tendency of sentiment in the North East, when not interfered with … was national, and in favour of freedom and unity’.3 Whilst not holding a monopoly on threatening rhetoric, some of the comments made by Sinn Féin representatives were not conducive to creating a favourable impression amongst the unionist community. De Valera often described Ulster unionists as a ‘foreign garrison’ and ‘not Irish people’. If they rejected Sinn Féin solutions, ‘they would have to go under’, and if they stood ‘in our way to freedom we will clear you out of it’.4 Griffith stated that Ulster unionists ‘must make up their minds either to throw in their lot with the Irish nation or stand out as the English garrison. If they did the latter the Irish nation must deal with them.’5 Cahir Healy, writing as Sinn Féin MP for Fermanagh and Tyrone in 1925, attacked the party’s policy towards the north in the years since 1916:
The truth is that none of the Irish leaders understood the northern situation or the northern mind. Griffith, the sanest and best informed of them all, nursed a delusion for years – that the (solution) of the problem lay in London. Not even de Valera’s non-recognition of it nor the rather jumpy efforts which, with Collins, passed for statecraft, could possibly bring us one day nearer peace.6
De Valera modified his views, becoming open to accommodating unionists in a federal Ireland externally associated within the British Commonwealth.7 He moved from a stance of ‘Ulster must be coerced if she stood in the way’ to one of ruling out the use of force against Ulster by 1921.8
This more conciliatory approach was evident in his willingness to meet Craig in May 1921. Alfred Cope from Dublin Castle ‘arranged a “theatrically clandestine” but essentially pointless meeting on 5 May between de Valera and James Craig’.9 Craig courageously agreed to ‘be conducted by a number of IRA men to meet de Valera. The party changed cars before arriving at a house on Howth Road protected by a number of guards disguised as workmen.’10
