Birth of the Border. Cormac Moore
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The original cabinet consisted only of men. In the history of the northern parliament (1921 to 1972), Dehra Parker became the first and only female cabinet member in 1949, when she was appointed Minister for Health and Local Government.11 In 1918, Irish women who were over the age of thirty with certain property rights were granted the vote. In 1922, ‘the Free State had extended the franchise to all those over twenty-one, while women in the North, along with their British counterparts, had to wait until 1928’.12 The northern cabinet unanimously decided not to extend the franchise to women over twenty-one in 1924.13 Shortly after the northern government was established, the executive committee of the Ulster Women’s Unionist Council sent a letter to Craig, asking for ‘the inclusion of women in the different departments of the Northern Parliament’. A resolution was passed
to bring before the Government the importance of the services women can and are anxious to render to their country, especially in such matters as Education, Care of Children, Local Government, Agriculture and Labour. We ask, therefore, that our desire to be included in the above named Departments be seriously considered, either as Advisory Committees, or Women to consult with Ministers and Officials, or as Women Officials.14
Craig replied that they could ‘rest fully assured that when opportunity presents itself, the fullest co-operation and assistance will be requisitioned from your Council’. He was unable to make many female appointments to the civil service at that time, as services had not yet been transferred. However, he promised that ‘when the Services are transferred we will not be neglectful of the claims of the remainder on our list to such appointments as may be available’.15
Women on the nationalist side, although supporting their political representatives, had fewer opportunities to participate; this was exacerbated by the policy of abstentionism. Cumann na mBan, the Irish republican women’s paramilitary wing, suffered low morale in the north, being outlawed by the northern government in 1922. The Ladies’ Auxiliary of the Ancient Order of Hibernians was probably the most popular female nationalist organisation in the north during the inter-war years.16 For the six counties, between 1898 and 1940, female representation on local councils was, on average, around 1.4 per cent. Within local government, they were able to exercise more influence as poor law guardians than anywhere else. Instead of dealing with gender issues, women activists tended to focus on support for, or opposition to, the northern jurisdiction. In a sectarian society, gender was ‘relegated to the margins of discourse and policy’, in many ways illustrated by Dehra Parker.17 Her ‘political leitmotif was unionism: in thirty-five years in parliament she never voted against the government, and in the early years of Stormont, she consistently voted for measures that would strengthen the majority at the expense of the nationalist minority’.18 She was one of the first to call for the abolition of PR in local elections, condemning the tyranny with which nationalist councils ‘ground the minority under their heel … We have had to sit there and listen to our King being insulted, to our Government being derided. We have been told that killing was no murder unless committed by the foreign invader.’19
The local elections of 1920 had been deeply embarrassing for the unionists, who lost many local authorities and seats to nationalists and the labour movement (see Chapter Two). Most nationalist-controlled local authorities within Northern Ireland chose a policy of non-recognition of the new jurisdiction, some more vociferously than others. On the day of King George V’s state opening of the Belfast parliament on 22 June 1921, Thomas Corrigan, secretary of Fermanagh County Council, pulled down a Union Jack flag from Enniskillen courthouse.20 A delegation from Fermanagh County Council who met the Dáil cabinet in August informed them that ‘Fermanagh, by a large majority … resolved that it would not submit to the partition parliament in Ulster’.21 Tyrone County Council dithered on non-recognition and ‘shuffled pragmatically between the Dáil and Belfast’.22 Derry City renounced the Belfast parliament on 25 August 1921 but did not ‘declare definitive allegiance to the Dáil’.23 Both Tyrone and Fermanagh declared allegiance to the Dáil on 28 November. Five days later, Tyrone County Council justified its actions and rejected the ‘arbitrary, new-fangled, and universally unnatural boundary’, pledging ‘to oppose it steadfastly and to make the fullest use of our rights to mollify it’.24
The northern government, recently emboldened with the transfer of security powers, decided to act against the ‘recalcitrant County Councils’, Tyrone and Fermanagh. It considered withholding grants, selecting specific members to act as the ‘whole County Council’ or appointing ‘a special Commissioner to take over the responsibilities’.25 It chose the latter option and suspended both councils, with the police taking over the headquarters in Omagh and Enniskillen and impounding their records.26 Faced with suspension, the ‘ever pragmatic nationalist politicians’ from Tyrone County Council, ‘temporarily and under protest, accepted the northern government’. When W.T. Cosgrave, the Dáil local government minister, queried the council’s U-turn, it replied that ‘in view of the altered political situation, and with a desire to promote a peaceful settlement’, all communication would ‘for the present’, be sent ‘to the Northern Minister of Local Government’.27 Fermanagh County Council, on the other hand, remained defiant and suspended for a year.28 The suspensions coincided with the signing of the treaty on 6 December. A day later, a northern nationalist delegation met Eoin MacNeill, the Dáil speaker and Sinn Féin MP for Derry, in Dublin’s Mansion House to discuss the implications of the treaty for the nationalists in the north.29 MacNeill assured ‘his fellow Ulstermen that although the danger they faced “is a real danger, it is an artificial one. It has not got the strength of permanency”. He expanded on this by asking them to pursue a fully-fledged policy of non-engagement with the northern parliament to include non-payment of taxes and non-recognition of the courts.’30
This stance saw a public split for the first time between the Nationalist Party and Sinn Féin ‘during their time in control of Londonderry Corporation’. The Sinn Féin councillors put forward a motion in January 1922 to pledge allegiance to the Dáil. Opposing the motion, the mayor, Hugh O’Doherty, ‘held the view that declared allegiance to the Dáil was counterproductive while the constitutional situation remained in a state of flux. To do so now would alienate unionist opinion, split the nationalist bloc in Derry and bring the full force of the Northern Ireland government down on the corporation.’31 He used his right as chairman to bypass the motion by not aligning with the Dáil whilst still repudiating the Belfast parliament. This pleased neither Sinn Féin nor the northern government. In total, twenty-one nationalist-controlled authorities, including those of Newry, Armagh, Strabane, Cookstown, Downpatrick, Magherafelt and Keady were suspended by April 1922.32
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