Birth of the Border. Cormac Moore

was empowered to appoint, on a temporary basis, Southern Ireland’s representatives of the civil service committee, and services were scheduled to be transferred to the north between 22 November 1921 and 1 February 1922.56 That Lloyd George, the wily negotiator, would grant rather than receive concessions from Craig suggests that his commitment to an all-Ireland solution was not wholly sincere. The Irish delegation were aware that the northern jurisdiction was not fully functioning when the negotiations began in October; services being withheld by the British demonstrated that partition could be negotiable, but they appeared unaware of how to use this to their advantage. The significance of services being transferred to the north seemed lost on almost all of those in Dublin too.57 The main opposition in Dublin came from the civil service itself. From 9 November, the Dublin Castle departments were commanded to assign officers for temporary transfer to the north. Whilst Craig sat on his rock of Ulster, ‘the civil service sat on the rock of the Civil Service Committee … confident that whatever would emerge from the London negotiations would be at least as good as existing terms and might be even better’.58 To prevent the enforced transfer of staff to Belfast, the civil service representative body, the Irish Civil Service Association, took a case to the High Court, further stalling the transfer of staff.59 This did not greatly perturb Craig or Clark, who had been filling the northern civil service with Ulstermen they considered loyal.60 In fact, it suited them not to have too many staff transferred from Dublin, particularly those staff members who did not want to be there. Craig was satisfied that finance and, most importantly, law and order, had successfully been transferred, with agricultural services to be transferred by 1 January and education services by 1 February 1922.61 The transfer of powers of law and order gave the Northern government control over the RIC in the six counties and allowed it to remobilise the Specials.62 Clark’s role in Dublin Castle was discontinued, and he became Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Finance and head of the civil service in Northern Ireland.63 The judiciary was transferred to Northern Ireland on 1 October, with a formal opening of the new courts taking place three weeks later.64

      With the possibility of reaching a settlement by pressurising Craig now ended, Lloyd George looked to squeeze the Sinn Féin delegation instead. His secretary, Tom Jones, dangled the idea of a boundary commission in front of Griffith and Collins. Collins was against the proposal, as ‘it sacrificed unity entirely’. When he enquired why the British would not concede to local plebiscites, cabinet member Austen Chamberlain could only reply meekly, claiming that ‘you could not put a more difficult question to us in the light of the history of recent years’.65 Griffith, however, ‘was not alarmed’.66 He believed the Ulster cabinet would not accept such an offer. Initially, the openness in relation to accepting a boundary commission was a tactical move ‘to deprive “Ulster” of support in England by showing it was utterly unreasonable in insisting to coerce areas that wished to get out’.67 Griffith did believe there would be benefits to it, writing to de Valera that the Boundary Commission ‘would give us most of Tyrone, Fermanagh, and part of Armagh, Down, etc.’.68 Griffith naively interpreted his assurances regarding a boundary commission as a ploy to help Lloyd George secure Irish unity. Instead, his assurances resulted in an animated Lloyd George using them against him as the negotiations reached their conclusion, leading to Griffith and the rest of the Irish delegation signing the Anglo-Irish Treaty on the morning of 6 December 1921.

      The Anglo-Irish Treaty’s main provision relating to Ulster was Article 12. It stipulated that if Northern Ireland opted not to join the Irish Free State, as was its right under the treaty, a boundary commission would determine the border ‘in accordance with the wishes of the inhabitants, so far as may be compatible with economic and geographic conditions’.69 Although Northern Ireland was nominally included in the Irish Free State, ‘in reality the inclusion of a clause allowing the north-east to opt out of Dublin jurisdiction, something they were to do at the first opportunity in December 1922, was merely window-dressing to disguise the established fact of partition’.70 Central to the problem with the Boundary Commission was its ambiguity. No ‘timetable was mentioned or method outlined to ascertain these wishes; how exactly economic and geographic conditions would relate to popular opinion, and which would prove most important’.71 No plebiscite was asked for, the clause was open to a number of different interpretations and no time was specified for the convening of the commission. The ambiguity suited Lloyd George perfectly. On one hand, he could give the impression to Sinn Féin that large tracts of Northern Ireland would be transferred to the south. On the other hand, he could give the impression to Craig that it would rationalise the cumbersome border, with perhaps the inclusion of Protestant strongholds to the north. The duplicity of Lloyd George in 1916 in his dealings with Carson and Redmond was clearly forgotten. The Sinn Féin delegation blundered greatly in acceding to such a vague and indefinable clause. Frank Pakenham contended that the blame on the Irish part ‘must rest either on the legal intelligences of 1921 which failed to see evil lurking in Clause 12, or on those of 1925 which permitted the decision of Mr. Justice Feetham [see Chapter Six]’.72

      Ulster unionists were vehemently opposed to the Boundary Commission, despite Craig being one of the first to suggest such a concept during the embryonic stages of the Government of Ireland Bill (see Chapter Two). Firstly, they were not party to the treaty and yet were now obliged to adhere to its clauses. It reignited the sense of uncertainty and once again put Northern Ireland’s future in doubt, or at least significant parts of it. Craig told Lloyd George that he would refuse to cooperate with the commission, as there was ‘no precedent in the history of the British empire for taking away territory from an established government without its sanction’.73 At a northern cabinet meeting the following month, the unionist government reflected on Craig’s refusal and weighed up their options on participating, or not, in the Boundary Commission. Although non-participation would make the government ‘very popular’ in Northern Ireland for a time, having no input meant that ‘Ulster would lose a larger area than if she had a representative on the Commission’, and resistance would be ineffective ‘unless we were prepared to take up arms against British troops’. Such a move would see them ‘probably lose the support of the Unionist Party in Great Britain’.74 If they did take part, Bonar Law assured them that either Lord James Clyde or Lord Dunedin, Andrew Murray, both politicians and judges within the Conservative Party, would act as the northern commissioner. Edward Carson also consented to act as Northern Ireland’s commissioner, stating that ‘a little modification of the boundary might be advantageous’. Craig ‘thought the best course would be not to show our hand at the present time but to consider the matter very carefully during the few months that might elapse before the Boundary Commission would be established’.75 A significant amount of time elapsed by the time the commission finally met in 1924.

      Nationalist leaders in the six and twenty-six counties were overly optimistic, as it would transpire, regarding the outcomes that would be achieved from the Boundary Commission, believing many areas in Northern Ireland would be transferred to the Irish Free State, including ‘Derry and its western hinterland, most of Tyrone and all of Fermanagh, south Armagh and south Down’.76 Denis Gwynn wrote that the ‘suggestion of a Boundary Commission seemed naturally to imply that the Ulster Unionists would not be allowed to retain the full Six-County area if they did refuse to enter the Free State’.77 To many nationalists, the treaty ‘was a temporary settlement, regarded by many as extorted by threat of immediate war’.78 The optimism over the Boundary Commission in many ways explains the small fraction of time devoted to partition (just nine out of the total 338 pages of the treaty debates) during the acrimonious Dáil debates on the treaty.79 Both the pro- and anti-treaty sides supported the Boundary Commission as a means to end or at least limit partition. Both sides ‘were complacent about the vague terms of reference for the Boundary Commission and the lack of provision for plebiscites even in border areas’.80 Sovereignty was the primary cause of the split that followed the treaty. Even de Valera’s alternative proposal to the treaty, Document No. 2, originally included the same clauses on the north as the original treaty.81 Many nationalists along the border believed their transfer to the Irish Free State was imminent. They were lulled into a false sense of security, believing they could continue to ignore the northern jurisdiction and its institutions. Their hopes would soon prove illusory.

      Up until 1922, partition was an administrative