22 June 1921 was a day of pomp and ceremony as it ushered in a new era in Ireland’s history. Despite ‘dire warnings’, the king and queen came to Belfast to officially open the new parliament. Belfast was draped with flags and bunting; pavements and lamp posts were painted red, white and blue. On the city streets, many banners reading ‘We will not have Home Rule’ were visible.34 The irony seemed lost on the banner holders that this was a Home Rule jurisdiction, up and running before one in the south was. The event was boycotted by almost the entire Catholic community, with Cardinal Logue turning down his invitation to the opening ceremony due to ‘a prior engagement’.35 For the opening ceremony, Craig drafted a speech that ‘greatly distressed’ the king. ‘He feels he is being made a mouthpiece of Ulster in the speech rather than that of the Empire.’36 The king felt that Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister, and not Craig, should be responsible for the king’s speech; it was not up to Ulster to dictate the king’s utterances. The king’s speech was subsequently changed, partly written by Lloyd George and partly on the advice of Jan Smuts, South African Prime Minister. Smuts convinced King George V to use his speech as an olive branch to Sinn Féin, as the ‘establishment of the Northern Parliament definitely eliminates the coercion of Ulster’ and cleared the road ‘to deal on the most statesmanlike lines with the rest of Ireland’.37 In his pacifying speech, the king appealed ‘to all Irishmen to pause, to stretch out the hand of forbearance and conciliation, to forgive and to forget, and to join in making for the land which they love a new era of peace, contentment, and goodwill’, paving the way for the truce between Sinn Féin and British forces weeks later.38
Notwithstanding the fanfare surrounding the occasion and the conciliatory speech delivered by the king, violence and the threat of it permeated the new jurisdiction. On the day of the ceremony itself, ‘there was enormous security, with armed policemen placed in commandeered houses along the route’.39 To mark the occasion, the IRA attacked ‘a troop train returning from the official opening of the Belfast Parliament’, derailing it ‘at Adavoyle on the Louth/Armagh border. Four men and eighty horses were killed.’40 The majority of the first cabinet meetings of the northern government were dominated with security issues. On 23 June, Nevil Macready and John Anderson were present to highlight measures being planned to curb Sinn Féin and the IRA, including ‘the establishment of Posts along the Border of Ulster, and the invention of a very strict Passport system,’ which, it was hoped, would ‘curtail Passenger Service to less than one-fourth of its present dimensions’ into Ireland.41 Before the truce of 11 July 1921, the British military had proposed that in southern Ireland, ‘all males between the ages of 16 and 50 will be required to provide themselves with Identification Cards. The Identification Card will include a Photograph of the Bearer.’42 The authorities believed the identification system would be ‘ineffective unless the Government of Northern Ireland will consent to establish a similar system along a belt on the frontier line, running from the Coast of County Down to the Sea Coast on the Southern Border of Donegal’.43 The northern government promised to assist the British authorities by
introducing a Passport system similar to that in the South, but so arranged that the facilities for obtaining Passports by all loyal persons in the North should be as easy as possible. It was agreed that Passport Offices would be necessary in Londonderry as well as Belfast, but that Newry might reasonably be restricted owing to its being really in the ‘disturbed’ area.44
Wickham, commissioner of the Specials, doubted the system would be effective given that there were ‘110 roads across the Southern frontier of Northern Ireland’