jurisdiction.34 There also was a problem with the area to be included in the Ulster parliament. Ulster unionists sought the six counties of Antrim, Armagh, Derry, Down, Fermanagh and Tyrone, not the nine counties of Ulster, as this was the maximum area they felt they could dominate without being ‘outbred’ by Catholics.35
This decision of the Ulster Unionist Council was deeply unpopular amongst the 70,000 Protestants of Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan, who were sacrificed to the southern administration.36 At a meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council on 10 March 1920:
Lord Farnham of Cavan moved, and Michael E. Knight of Monaghan seconded, a resolution that the UUC would not accept anything other than the exclusion of the ‘whole geographical province of Ulster’. The resolution was rejected. Monaghan unionists condemned the ‘selfish policy’ of the UUC, worse still, in their eyes the Covenant had been shown to have been nothing more than ‘a mere scrap of paper’, brushed aside by the UUC so as ‘not to endanger their precious six-county safety’.37
Others believed there would be no threat to the unionist majority with nine counties, believing six counties would present a ‘ridiculous boundary … Donegal would be cut off from its harbours and rivers and there would be no access to it except through the six counties’.38 Thomas Moles, Westminster MP, explained that the three counties had to be abandoned in order to save the six counties: ‘In a sinking ship, with life-boats sufficient for only two-thirds of the ship’s company, were all to condemn themselves to death because all could not be saved?’39 Another meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council on 27 May decided by a margin of 310 to 80 to support a six-county Northern Ireland parliament instead of a nine-county one.40 Ulster unionists from outside of the six counties resigned from the Ulster Unionist Council.41 Many members of the Ulster Women’s Unionist Council from Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan also resigned.42 Outside of Ulster, southern unionists left the Irish Unionist Alliance and formed the Unionist Anti-Partition League, in opposition to the impending partition of Ireland.43 Led by William St John Fremantle Brodrick, Earl of Midleton, amongst its membership were people from the ‘largest commercial interests in Dublin, including Lord Iveagh, Sir John Arnott, Andrew Jameson, and Marcus Goodbody’.44
The British government only agreed to accede to the Ulster unionists’ wishes to confine the northern parliament to six counties in the spring of 1920, just as the bill was being brought before the House of Commons.45 The Long committee’s original argument, that the nine-county proposal ‘will enormously minimise the partition issue … it minimises the division of Ireland on purely religious lines. The two religions would be not unevenly balanced in the Parliament of Northern Ireland’, was exactly the reason why Ulster unionist leaders preferred six counties.46 They had no intention of minimising partition. To avoid a nine-county parliament, Craig had even
suggested the establishment of a Boundary Commission to examine the distribution of population along the borders of the whole of the six Counties, and to take a vote in those districts on either side of and immediately adjoining that boundary in which there was a doubt as to whether they would prefer to be included in the Northern or the Southern Parliamentary area.47
By conceding to the demands of the unionists, the British government showed that its commitment to Irish unity was somewhat flexible.
Even though the Ulster Unionist Council reluctantly endorsed the Government of Ireland Bill, many Ulster unionists eventually ‘concluded that the scheme proposed in the Government of Ireland Act would cause the least diminution of their Britishness’.48 Some, such as James Craig’s brother Charles, began to see the benefits Ulster unionists would garner from having their own parliament:
The Bill practically gives us everything that we fought for, everything we armed ourselves for, and to attain which we raised our Volunteers in 1913 and 1914 … We would much prefer to remain part and parcel of the United Kingdom … but we have many enemies in this country, and we feel that an Ulster without a Parliament of its own would not be in nearly as strong a position as one in which a Parliament had been set up, where the Executive had been appointed and where, above all, the paraphernalia of Government was already in existence … We should fear no one and … would then be in a position of absolute security.49
He also claimed that ‘I would not be fair to the House … if I lent the slightest hope of that union [of Ireland] arising within the lifetime of any man in this House’.50 Once it was realised that partition was being attempted through the creation of two parliaments, many commentated on the practical implications of such a massive undertaking.
A great deal of confusion surrounded the Government of Ireland Bill. The Freeman’s Journal described it as a complex problem, especially when one considered that ‘The whole scheme of Irish administration is based on recognition of Ireland as a national entity with its centre in Dublin’. There would be a need to have the ‘Local Government Board, the Department of Agriculture, the Insurance Commission, the Department of Education, the Estates Commissioners and Congested Districts Board and the Board of Works’ to be divided between ‘Ulster’ and the rest of Ireland.51 The newspaper deridingly named the bill ‘The Dismemberment of Ireland Bill’.52 The Irish News proposed some names for the new jurisdiction, including Carsonia and Craigdom, after the two most prominent unionists, Edward Carson and James Craig.53 The unionist-leaning Dublin Chamber of Commerce also condemned the bill, saying partition would negatively affect banking by restricting the free flow of business and making it more difficult and expensive to collect debt; dual government would mean increased taxation; political differences would be accentuated; the development of the country would be impeded whilst the creation of a second judiciary would be utterly unfavourable. It concluded by claiming that ‘one of the most regrettable effects of partition would be that it would deprive the Southern Parliament of the steadying influence and business training of the men of Ulster’.54 The Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin and Provost of Trinity College Dublin, Dr John Henry Bernard, speaking in his capacity as provost, insisted that Trinity College Dublin was ‘an Irish institution, that they stood for the whole of Ireland, that their men came from all parts of Ireland, and that, so far as they were concerned, they would resist by all lawful means any partition of Ireland’.55 One lawyer believed the withdrawal of legal business from the majority of Ulster counties would greatly diminish the standing of the Four Courts in Dublin.56 Staff members in the Four Courts agreed, with over a dozen based in Dublin applying for better-paid jobs in the future Northern Ireland.57
It has often been cited that the Government of Ireland Bill was allowed to pass relatively unchallenged due to the lack of nationalist representation in Westminster. Instead of eighty Irish nationalist MPs, there were just seven remaining in Westminster (six from Ireland and T.P. O’Connor from Liverpool) after the 1918 general election.58 It could be argued that even eighty nationalist MPs would have made little difference when one considers the make-up of the House of Commons after the election. The Conservative Party, Lloyd George’s Coalition Liberals and Irish unionists won over 500 seats, an overwhelming majority. The British Labour Party, with fifty-seven seats, opposed the Government of Ireland Bill with little effect.59 Former Prime Minister Herbert Asquith and his vastly reduced Liberal Party (of just thirty-six seats), also opposed the ‘cumbrous, costly, unworkable scheme’.60 His opposition also failed to make an imprint on the final act. It is doubtful that Sinn Féin’s presence would have made a difference either. What little voice the seven nationalist MPs remaining in Westminster had was further diminished by the Catholic Church’s belief that they should not participate in the committee stages of the Government of Ireland Bill or suggest amendments to the bill.61 The Catholic Church was virulently opposed to partition and believed that participating in the framing of the ‘Partition Bill’ would be seen as a sign of its acceptance. The leading nationalist MP in Westminster, Joseph Devlin, condemned the bill as ‘conceived in Bedlam’, ‘ridiculous’ and ‘fantastic’. He voted against it but did not in any way contribute to its final form.62
Sinn Féin, the leading nationalist movement after the 1918 general election, abstained from Westminster. It formed its own constituent assembly, Dáil Éireann,
