Northern Ireland was presented with a workable administration from the very moment it came into being, thanks largely to the efforts of Ernest Clark. He, supported by a small team of no more than twenty, worked tirelessly following his appointment in September 1920 to set up the machinery of a new jurisdiction with very little to work with. He later testified, ‘I found myself … setting out to form a new “administration” armed only with a table, a chair and an Act of Parliament.’37 He also claimed, ‘I will do my best to fulfil my role as “John the Baptist”, and as far as can be done with the small staff at my disposal, get together information and “prepare the way”.’38 He established a framework for seven new government departments, organised buildings for those departments as well as their furniture and office equipment, attempted to source accommodation for the new civil service and secured instructions, guidelines and templates from different departments in London and Dublin in relation to how to run a department.39 Since most of the equipment was obtained from Dublin, as Belfast merchants could not supply the office furniture in a standard form and in the quantity the new administration required, some Dublin businesses were ‘able to benefit commercially from the creation of the new civil service in Northern Ireland’.40 Clark’s efforts were somewhat ‘handicapped in that the existing all-Ireland system was bureaucratic, cumbersome, and quite unsuited to modern means’.41 Also, under ‘the Union the powers of government in Ireland had been distributed among some thirty different departments, and the problem was how these powers could be most efficiently grouped in Northern Ireland without producing too many office-holders in parliament’.42
Clark was in constant communication with Craig in the lead-up to the formation of Northern Ireland, ensuring a functioning state would be operational from day one.43 He consulted Craig on many ‘mundane essentials of laying down the North’s administrative foundations. Craig, for example, was directly involved in the problem of determining the appropriate number and functions of the future Northern departments.’44 Clark sent a memo to Craig regarding the recruitment recommendations for the Northern Ireland civil service, including the instructions that ‘no preference [is] to be given to anyone based on religious belief’ and ‘competition for places should be open to women’.45 He warned ‘against adopting an official policy that would disadvantage Catholics in securing government employment,’ as religious discrimination was illegal under the Government of Ireland Act 1920.46 At this stage, though, Craig had no official role: he was the presumptive Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. Carson resigned as Ulster Unionist leader in February 1921, handing the leadership to Craig.47 Greenwood, the Chief Secretary of Ireland, was also guilty of ‘displaying a telling disregard for British civil service tradition of neutrality in party politics, directed existing departments to prepare for partition by communicating with the Ulster Unionists’.48
When Clark moved to Belfast, he was initially tasked with establishing the Ulster Special Constabulary and dealing with the ‘expelled workers’ from the Belfast shipyards.49 The expulsions of workers and the sectarian violence in the north in 1920 saw Sinn Féin make one of its first decisions directly relating to the north. It started a boycott. The boycott in many ways increased the likelihood of partition. Once the violence in the north began, Dáil Éireann felt it could not stand idly by. It imposed a boycott ‘of goods from Belfast and a withdrawal of funds from Belfast-based banks’.50 In reality, the boycott soon extended to other businesses and farms, and beyond Belfast too. Many saw it as an anti-partitionist move, a way to show that Northern Ireland could not survive without the rest of Ireland.51 The Westmeath Independent had suggested in January 1920 ‘a clean commercial cut with “Ulster”’ as a protest against those in favour of partition (“the dirty birds that soil the mother nest”) … ‘Ireland could manage very well if Belfast fell into the Lagan.’52 Traders in Tuam in County Galway voted to boycott businesses from any part of Ireland that ‘permits itself to be separated from the common life of the country’.53 According to Michael Laffan, the boycott ‘met with some disapproval in the south, and particularly in 1920 its impact was uneven and its direction sometimes faulty; southern protestants and northern catholics suffered as well as Ulster unionists’.54 When Seán MacEntee, TD for Monaghan South, proposed in Dáil Éireann in August 1920 ‘a commercial boycott of Belfast’ in response to the ‘pogrom’ perpetrated against Catholics in Belfast, another TD from Monaghan, Ernest Blythe, was ‘entirely opposed to a blockade against Belfast … If it were taken it would destroy for ever the possibility of any union’. Countess Constance Markievicz, the first woman elected to parliament for Britain or Ireland in 1918, agreed with Blythe that ‘a blockade would be playing into the hands of the enemy and giving them a good excuse for partition’.55 Despite the opposition, the Dáil and its cabinet approved the instigation of the boycott. It was also supported by county councils under Sinn Féin control, trade unions and members of the Catholic clergy.56 Nationalist firms in Belfast were also affected by the boycott. Ironically, Denis McCullough, one of the organisers of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) in Belfast and originally a supporter of the boycott, was forced to close his bagpipe factory as ‘the Irish public because of the Boycott, buy British-made pipes rather than support this purely republican firm’.57
It was in an atmosphere of war, sectarian hatred and boycotts that the Government of Ireland Bill became an act on 23 December 1920, and elections to the new parliaments were set for the following May, which was selected due to the ‘confidence of the British military that martial law could bring the IRA to heel within five months’.58 Many pondered on what the new political realities would bring. Bryan Follis in A State Under Siege remarked:
at the stage when the Act became law, Northern Ireland existed not as an entity but only in name and on paper. Not only had Northern Ireland no parliament and no government: it had no civil service to support and serve it, no police or defence force to enforce whatever laws it might make, protect its people, or defend its territory from possible (and indeed likely) attack, nor had it a judiciary to uphold its laws and administer justice.59
The main concern came from those who lived close to what would become the new border between northern and southern Ireland. In January 1921, the Lord Mayor of Derry, Hugh O’Doherty, claimed that partition ‘drew a barbed wire entanglement around six counties’.60 O’Doherty, as well as five of the nine county council chairmen of Ulster, sent a letter to the British government protesting against partition in late 1920.61 The Derry No. 2 Rural District was informed by the Local Government Board that it would be annexed to the relevant body in Letterkenny by 1 April, as it was located in County Donegal, which would form part of Southern Ireland, with Derry forming part of Northern Ireland. This was much to the chagrin of unionist Derry Council members.62 The Local Government Board ‘also intimated that … the portion of County Armagh that is situated in the Castleblayney [Co. Monaghan] Union will be transferred to the Newry [Co. Armagh] Union, and, similarly, Belleek district of Fermanagh will be transferred from the Ballyshannon [Co. Donegal] Union to the Enniskillen [Co. Fermanagh] Union’.63 This suggestion was rejected by Sinn Féin in Fermanagh, which