After the 1918 general election, Lloyd George appointed him first Lord of the Admiralty. Suffering from ill-health for prolonged periods of his life due to spinal arthritis, he was forced to delegate much of his work to his parliamentary secretary, James Craig, the leading Ulster unionist.7 Long wanted to resign from the Ulster Unionist Council but was convinced to stay on, and ‘thus remained an important linchpin between the cabinet and both the northern Unionists and the executive in Dublin’.8
Long was a staunch unionist and rabidly anti-Sinn Féin. As republican violence escalated in Ireland throughout 1919, it was Long who proposed the hiring of ex-servicemen to assist the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), a measure that would be adopted in 1920 with the recruitment of the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries to serve in Ireland. ‘Ruthless men, he contended, could be countered only by ruthless policies, and by September [1919] he was prepared to recommend that Ireland be governed as a crown colony until such time as home rule became feasible.’9 Unsurprisingly, the make-up of Long’s committee was unionist in outlook. There was no nationalist representation whatsoever, nor were nationalists even consulted about the Government of Ireland Bill. James Craig and his associates were the only Irishmen consulted during the drafting of the bill.10 The first meeting of Long’s committee ‘was held on 15 October when a decision was made to create distinct legislatures for Ulster and the southern provinces linked by a common council, comprising representatives from both’.11 According to Nicholas Mansergh, ‘the starting point for a settlement was no longer unity, but division. This was to be the new departure.’12 This was the first time that a separate parliament was proposed for Ulster, as unionists to date had shown nothing but unyielding advocacy for remaining within Westminster. The reason given by Long’s committee for abandoning Ulster to remain fully integrated with the rest of the United Kingdom was that ‘Exclusion, whether of the entire province of Ulster or of the six north-eastern counties, would leave large nationalist majorities under British rule, which would clearly infringe the principle of self determination … British rule in the domestic affairs of Ireland has been the root of the Home Rule movement from start to finish.’13 The committee believed that the creation of two parliaments in Ireland
would meet ‘the fundamental demand of the overwhelming majority of Irishmen ever since the days of [Daniel] O’Connell’; it was ‘entirely consistent’ with majority resistance in Ulster to rule from Dublin and nationalist resistance in the rest of Ireland to British rule; it was also consistent with the government pledges to Ulster; it would ‘enormously minimise’ the partition issue, the division of Ireland being a far less serious matter if Home Rule were established in both parts of it and ‘all Irishmen’ therefore self-governing with ‘far the most convenient dividing line’ between the two parts being the historic frontiers of Ulster, which, with its comparatively even balance, would minimise the division of Ireland on purely religious lines. To complete the catalogue of merit, there would be a Council of Ireland with members from North and South to keep open the road to unity.14
Before the end of the war, the exclusion of Ulster, or at least some of Ulster, was the only option being considered in terms of the province’s special treatment. It is difficult to ascertain when exactly the option of providing a Home Rule parliament for Ulster was contemplated. The peace treaties after the war would certainly have been a factor. The treaties of ‘Versailles, Trianon and Saint Germain set new borders throughout central and southern Europe in the wake of the defeat of Germany, the collapse of Czarist Russia, and the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires’.15 The creation of a border in Ireland was unusual, as it involved the division of one of the victorious countries of the war. It was, however, an early ‘example of imperial fragmentation and nation-state building’ that occurred in the twentieth century.16 The partition of Ireland was ‘the first major partition in which a British cabinet participated in territory which it had formerly controlled, but it provided a precedent for later partitions’, including of India and Palestine.17 According to John Kendle, Long was approached by John Atkinson on 6 June 1919:
who argued that neither the 1914 Home Rule Act nor home rule all round would work. He favoured a scheme that would place Ulster on a par with other provinces within a federal system that ‘would be government [sic] by her own Provincial Government plus the Imperial Parliament and Executive, not plus an Irish Central Parliament and an Irish Executive dependent upon it’. ‘It is this Central Irish Government’, Atkinson reminded Long, ‘that Irish Protestants fear’.18
Atkinson was a unionist politician, lawyer and judge from Drogheda in County Louth.19 On 24 July, The Times publicly advocated the two-parliament option for Ireland for the first time. It proposed two provincial or state legislatures, one for the three southern provinces and one for the nine counties of Ulster, with the ultimate aim of the ‘establishment of an All-Ireland Parliament’.20 Whilst acknowledging The Times’s proposal as ‘a whiff of freshness to the stale atmosphere of our ancient controversy’, the Irish Times feared ‘the scheme would end in that very calamity of permanent Partition which The Times properly denounces as the worst of all possible solutions’.21 At a meeting days later in Trowbridge in Wiltshire, Long claimed that The Times’s ‘carefully-thought-out scheme’ was worthy of close examination.22 Throughout the summer of 1919, Long made a number of visits to Ireland to consult on the Irish question with Lord Lieutenant John French and Chief Secretary Ian MacPherson. Long tended not to disembark from his yacht, the Enchantress, which was docked in Kingstown (present-day Dún Laoghaire) harbour. Instead, both French and MacPherson joined him on the boat to discuss Irish affairs. Based on those meetings, Long sent a memorandum to Lloyd George on 24 September recommending two parliaments for Ireland.23 This memorandum formed the basis of the subsequent Government of Ireland Bill.
The leading nationalist MP left in Westminster, Joseph Devlin, believed the creation of a parliament for Ulster would result in the ‘worst form of partition and, of course, permanent partition. Once they have their own parliament with all the machinery of government and administration, I am afraid anything like subsequent union will be impossible.’24 Carson, who ideally wished for no Home Rule anywhere in Ireland, saw some attractions of an Ulster parliament, stating ‘Once it is granted … [it] cannot be interfered with. You cannot knock Parliaments up and down as you do a ball, and once you have planted them there, you cannot get rid of them.’25
The common council proposed in the Government of Ireland Bill was a Council of Ireland, which would be composed ‘of twenty members from each Parliament. In the first year it would look after transport, health, agriculture and similar matters, afterwards working towards [the] unity of the country.’26 It was envisaged that the council would lead to ‘the peaceful evolution of a single parliament for all Ireland’.27 A degree of unity within the central Irish administration headquartered in Dublin would be maintained through a common supreme court, railway policy and other all-Ireland functions.28 Postal services were also reserved, to be administered by Westminster ‘until they could be transferred to an all-Ireland assembly’ if Irish unity was realised.29 It was hoped that further common services could also be handed over to the council.30 Eamon Phoenix contends that the stated aim of the Council of Ireland to unify Ireland was disingenuous, ‘since the details of the Bill were drawn up by a largely Conservative Cabinet in close collaboration with Craig and the Ulster Unionists’.31 It was an attempt to settle the Ulster question, not the Irish question.
Long’s committee also advocated that all nine counties of Ulster be included in the northern parliament. Long knew the proposals would not placate Sinn Féin, ‘But nothing short of the setting up of a Republic would satisfy Sinn Fein. Therefore, why not recognise the fact and say so frankly?’32 It was never the intention of the Government of Ireland Bill to do so. Another committee member, Lord Birkenhead, admitted something similar when he said, ‘I assent to this proposed Bill as affording an ingenious strengthening of our tactical position before the world. I am absolutely satisfied that the Sinn Féiners will refuse it. Otherwise in the present state of Ireland I could not even be a party to making the offer.’33 The British government was only interested in securing the support of Ulster unionists, but initially, there were numerous objections from Ulster. The main objections were the admission of Home Rule, something they had never sought before; the reduction
