Deceiving the Irish?
Geoffrey Bell reviews The Root of All Evil: The Irish Boundary Commission, by Cormac Moore, published by Irish Academic Press.
This is a narrative of why Ireland remains an issue.
The Irish Boundary Commission was part of the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty that concluded the War of Irish Independence fought between the British state and the Irish Volunteers from 1919 to 1921. The Treaty was negotiated by Sinn Féin, who had won over 70 per cent of the Irish vote in the British general election of 1918, and the Tory-dominated coalition led by the Liberal Lloyd George.
The Treaty gave the 26 counties in the south and west of Ireland a semi-independence from Britain. It allowed the six northeastern counties the right to opt out of a united state but also promised a 32-county Council of Ireland and, crucially for the Sinn Féin leadership, the Boundary Commission. This would review the boundaries of the north/south division laid down in the 1920 Government of Ireland Act that had partitioned Ireland and established in the six northeastern counties a devolved parliament and government, subservient to those in the UK.
There is a general consensus among historians that British negotiators told their Irish nationalist counterparts that once the Commission reported the northern semi-state would be untenable, and reunification would follow. “For four years,” Lord Longford (Thomas Pakenham) wrote in his classic Peace By Ordeal, “they were misled.” ‘They’ were the Sinn Féin negotiators and the first government of what became the Irish Free State. Those misleading were Lloyd George who led the UK government in the Treaty negotiations, his post-Treaty government, then Britain’s first Labour administration, led by Ramsay MacDonald, and then Baldwin’s Conservative government.
Moore begins by citing Article 12 of the Treaty, saying the Commission would “determine in accordance with the wishes of the inhabitants, so far as may be compatible with economic and geographic conditions, the boundaries between Northern Ireland and the rest of Ireland.” With hindsight, the Sinn Féin negotiators needed to pursue what weight was to be given to the inhabitants’ wishes as opposed to the economic and geographic conditions. But such concerns were not prominent in the Treaty negotiations, nor in its immediate aftermath. This was partly because the Irish nationalists were assured by Lloyd George and his colleagues that the Commission would find in their favour: that the six counties would become four, losing Fermanagh and Tyrone and the cities of Derry and Newry; all areas with nationalist majorities. The northern state would consequently be too small to have a long-term viability. Accordingly, while Irish unity would be delayed it was the most likely prospect once the Commission had done its work.
This assumption was not just logical, it was what Lloyd George promised in private to Michael Collins, the most perceptive of the Sinn Féin negotiators. Yet, the day after he gave these assurances, Lloyd George told his Cabinet that all the six counties would stay British. The mixed messaging was, says Moore, an example of the Lloyd George’s “notorious duplicity.”
Similar contradictions came a few days later when he told the House of Commons that Fermanagh and Tyrone would indeed ‘prefer’ to join the south, but that ‘Ulster’ would end up with increased territory due to the economic and geographical criteria. Sinn Féin did not appear to be listening. They split and fought a southern civil war over the Treaty, but partition was not a central issue because most Irish nationalists remained confident that the Commission would prioritise the wishes of the inhabitants in the disputed counties and cities. There was an exception to this optimism. “England has robbed you of your territory,” claimed Belfast’s Volunteer leader Sean MacEntee in the Irish Dáil (parliament). Replying, Collins maintained that the northeast would rejoin the rest of Ireland “very rapidly”.
Moore’s judgment is that the Sinn Féin plenipotentiaries who signed the Treaty did so “partly due to Lloyd George’s deceitfulness, but mostly due to their own foolishness.” They were foolish – although some might say naive is more appropriate – in not exploring the wording of the brief for the Commission. They were certainly foolish when they agreed that its membership would be one nominee from the southern Irish government, one from the northern unionists and a UK-appointed chairman, an arrangement always likely to give unionism a two-thirds majority.
While criticism of Collins and even more so of Arthur Griffith, the leading Sinn Féin negotiator, is understandable, in their defence it is highly relevant that their assumptions were shared by the northern Irish unionists. That the Border Commission was “the root of all evil” was a warning not from the nationalist side, but from James Craig, the first prime minister of the devolved northern administration. The northern unionists were not signatories to the Treaty, but they went along with most of it. However, they refused to officially cooperate with the Commission, citing the probable loss of Fermanagh and Tyrone. Their press denounced the “Judas-like treachery” of the British for allowing this prospect.
This collective opposition helped to delay the establishment of the Commission, as did the Irish civil war and the determination of successive British governments, Tory and Labour, to kick this can down the road. Again, Moore uses the word “duplicitous” to describe the behaviour of the Tories and then Labour’s MacDonald and the ultra-unionist J.H. Thomas to both delay the Commission’s formation and influence its outcome.
It did not meet until nearly three years after the Treaty was signed. By then much had changed. Collins had been assassinated by opponents of the Treaty in August 1922. Arthur Griffith, the Sinn Fein leader, died earlier in the same month. The Irish Free State administration that followed, was led by W.T. Cosgrave who was both a poor negotiator and, contends Moore, someone whose “real concern” was not a united Ireland, but “the territory under his control, the [26-county] Irish Free State.”
The northern unionists took the Commission seriously, despite their leaders’ official boycott. Individuals, local councils, churches, business organisations and others submitted evidence. The local unionist newspapers editorialised. This turned out to be one of the most successful propaganda campaigns in the unionists’ history. It was when slogans were coined that have been echoed ever since. “Not an Inch” was one, referring to their determination to give up nothing to the Free State, whatever the Commission said. “What We Have We Hold” and “This We Will Maintain” were others.
The unionists repeated the threats and denigration of their Irish enemies that had been common in the late nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries. This time one northern unionist said that to transfer territory to the south would hand it to “a lower civilisation.” Another referred to the Irish language as “a barbarous guttered language… something between cough and spitting.”
Many unionists argued that because Protestants owned more land, factories or paid more rates, their wishes carried more weight than the Catholic poor. There were threats of armed resistance. Moore quotes the Reverend S. T. Nesbitt of Ballyclare, County Antrim saying in April 1924 that “tens of thousands of Ulstermen would rise in their might,” if Tyrone, Fermanagh and other areas were lost.
The composition of the Commission ensured that this was never likely. Eventually, in May 1924, the MacDonald government appointed Richard Feetham as its chairman. He was born in Wales but had spent his career in South Africa and its judicial system. He was very much an empire loyalist, exemplified by his membership of the Round Table movement that promoted closer union between Britain and its dominions. Joining Feetham was Joseph Fisher, who represented the northern unionists. They had refused to nominate anyone, as part of their boycott, so Fisher was appointed by MacDonald, but, it seems, with the approval of James Craig. Fisher was a pillar of the northern unionist establishment and a former editor of the Belfast morning unionist newspaper the Northern Whig.
The nominee of the Free State government was Eoin MacNeill, a supporter of the Treaty, the Minister of Education, and most famously the man who, when a leader of the Irish Volunteers, had ordered them not to participate in the mobilisation of what became the 1916 Rising. Thus, the Commission was composed of two determined unionists and one non-militant Irish nationalist. Not only was this an uneven contest, but by then the British had moved the goalposts, with both MacDonald and Thomas indicating that the promises of Lloyd George to Irish nationalists no longer applied and that the Commission’s role was confined to minor adjustments of the border that had been operating since the 1920 Government of Ireland Act. In other words, the economic and geographical conditions were the priority over the wishes of inhabitants, a contention that echoed the northern unionists.
The first meeting of the Commission was on 6th November 1924. It took its time. In September 1925 Feetham submitted a memorandum to his fellow commissioners. This said “the wishes of the inhabitants” were “the primary but not the paramount consideration”, adding that even if the inhabitants wanted to change their territorial jurisdiction this had to be by a “substantial” majority and even then the Commission could override these wishes for “economic or geographic” considerations. These guidelines meant little would change.
They were leaked to the Morning Post in early November. It was only when northern nationalists protested that, as Moore comments “it dawned on the Free State government that it was facing a political crisis of magnitude.” MacNeill resigned as a commissioner, although he had largely gone along with his fellow commissioners’ thinking, and the Free State government even abandoned the Council of Ireland promised by the Treaty. The now Tory UK government gave the Irish a sweetener by waiving another article of the Treaty that had required the Free State to make a continuing financial contribution to the UK for war pensions and elements of historic public debt. Thus, says Moore, Cosgrave “abandoned Northern nationalists over money.”
The real winners were James Craig and the northern unionists, who in the final discussions rejected both criticisms of the alleged anti-Catholic sectarianism of his administration and suggestions to change policies associated with this. Well, to be fair, Craig did promise to recruit more Catholics to the RUC, but to be fairer still, this turned out to be another unfulfilled promise.
In the final page of his book, Moore suggests a contemporary relevance when he compares the Treaty’s Article 12 to Schedule 1 (2) of the 1998 Good Friday/Belfast Agreement. This says that the British Northern Ireland Secretary of State has the sole authority to call a border poll on reunification. As such, notes Moore, this “leaves the power in the hands of the British government, with some fearing that this could prevent a border poll.”
This may indeed be a fear, but with Irish nationalism more experienced, its northern part more militant and unionism weaker and divided, it is a fear that can be overcome. Nevertheless, it is important to understand that things can go wrong. This book helps with such an understanding. It is also a significant addition to the historiography of the British Labour Party’s colonial record in Ireland.
Geoffrey Bell’s latest book is The Twilight of Unionism (Verso).
