Before the end of the war, the exclusion of Ulster, or at least some of Ulster, was the only option being considered in terms of the province’s special treatment. It is difficult to ascertain when exactly the option of providing a Home Rule parliament for Ulster was contemplated. The peace treaties after the war would certainly have been a factor. The treaties of ‘Versailles, Trianon and Saint Germain set new borders throughout central and southern Europe in the wake of the defeat of Germany, the collapse of Czarist Russia, and the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires’.15 The creation of a border in Ireland was unusual, as it involved the division of one of the victorious countries of the war. It was, however, an early ‘example of imperial fragmentation and nation-state building’ that occurred in the twentieth century.16 The partition of Ireland was ‘the first major partition in which a British cabinet participated in territory which it had formerly controlled, but it provided a precedent for later partitions’, including of India and Palestine.17 According to John Kendle, Long was approached by John Atkinson on 6 June 1919:
who argued that neither the 1914 Home Rule Act nor home rule all round would work. He favoured a scheme that would place Ulster on a par with other provinces within a federal system that ‘would be government [sic] by her own Provincial Government plus the Imperial Parliament and Executive, not plus an Irish Central Parliament and an Irish Executive dependent upon it’. ‘It is this Central Irish Government’, Atkinson reminded Long, ‘that Irish Protestants fear’.18
Atkinson was a unionist politician, lawyer and judge from Drogheda in County Louth.19 On 24 July, The Times publicly advocated the two-parliament option for Ireland for the first time. It proposed two provincial or state legislatures, one for the three southern provinces and one for the nine counties of Ulster, with the ultimate aim of the ‘establishment of an All-Ireland Parliament’.20 Whilst acknowledging The Times’s proposal as ‘a whiff of freshness to the stale atmosphere of our ancient controversy’, the Irish Times feared ‘the scheme would end in that very calamity of permanent Partition which The Times properly denounces as the worst of all possible solutions’.21 At a meeting days later in Trowbridge in Wiltshire, Long claimed that The Times’s ‘carefully-thought-out scheme’ was worthy of close examination.22 Throughout the summer of 1919, Long made a number of visits to Ireland to consult on the Irish question with Lord Lieutenant John French and Chief Secretary Ian MacPherson. Long tended not to disembark from his yacht, the Enchantress, which was docked in Kingstown (present-day Dún Laoghaire) harbour. Instead, both French and MacPherson joined him on the boat to discuss Irish affairs. Based on those meetings, Long sent a memorandum to Lloyd George on 24 September recommending two parliaments for Ireland.23 This memorandum formed the basis of the subsequent Government of Ireland Bill.
The leading nationalist MP left in Westminster, Joseph Devlin, believed the creation of a parliament for Ulster would result in the ‘worst form of partition and, of course, permanent partition. Once they have their own parliament with all the machinery of government and administration, I am afraid anything like subsequent union will be impossible.’24 Carson, who ideally wished for no Home Rule anywhere in Ireland, saw some attractions of an Ulster parliament, stating ‘Once it is granted … [it] cannot be interfered with. You cannot knock Parliaments up and down as you do a ball, and once you have planted them there, you cannot get rid of them.’25
The common council proposed in the Government of Ireland Bill was a Council of Ireland, which would be composed ‘of twenty members from each Parliament. In the first year it would look after transport, health, agriculture and similar matters, afterwards working towards [the] unity of the country.’26 It was envisaged that the council would lead to ‘the peaceful evolution of a single parliament for all Ireland’.27 A degree of unity within the central Irish administration headquartered in Dublin would be maintained through a common supreme court, railway policy and other all-Ireland functions.28 Postal services were also reserved, to be administered by Westminster ‘until they could be transferred to an all-Ireland assembly’ if Irish unity was realised.29 It was hoped that further common services could also be handed over to the council.30 Eamon Phoenix contends that the stated aim of the Council of Ireland to unify Ireland was disingenuous, ‘since the details of the Bill were drawn up by a largely Conservative Cabinet in close collaboration with Craig and the Ulster Unionists’.31 It was an attempt to settle the Ulster question, not the Irish question.
Long’s committee also advocated that all nine counties of Ulster be included in the northern parliament. Long knew the proposals would not placate Sinn Féin, ‘But nothing short of the setting up of a Republic would satisfy Sinn Fein. Therefore, why not recognise the fact and say so frankly?’32 It was never the intention of the Government of Ireland Bill to do so. Another committee member, Lord Birkenhead, admitted something similar when he said, ‘I assent to this proposed Bill as affording an ingenious strengthening of our tactical position before the world. I am absolutely satisfied that the Sinn Féiners will refuse it. Otherwise in the present state of Ireland I could not even be a party to making the offer.’33 The British government was only interested in securing the support of Ulster unionists, but initially, there were numerous objections from Ulster. The main objections were the admission of Home Rule, something they had never sought before; the reduction of Ulster representation in Westminster to just twelve seats; and the abandonment of many Protestants and unionists to the southern 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