suggested the establishment of a Boundary Commission to examine the distribution of population along the borders of the whole of the six Counties, and to take a vote in those districts on either side of and immediately adjoining that boundary in which there was a doubt as to whether they would prefer to be included in the Northern or the Southern Parliamentary area.47
By conceding to the demands of the unionists, the British government showed that its commitment to Irish unity was somewhat flexible.
Even though the Ulster Unionist Council reluctantly endorsed the Government of Ireland Bill, many Ulster unionists eventually ‘concluded that the scheme proposed in the Government of Ireland Act would cause the least diminution of their Britishness’.48 Some, such as James Craig’s brother Charles, began to see the benefits Ulster unionists would garner from having their own parliament:
The Bill practically gives us everything that we fought for, everything we armed ourselves for, and to attain which we raised our Volunteers in 1913 and 1914 … We would much prefer to remain part and parcel of the United Kingdom … but we have many enemies in this country, and we feel that an Ulster without a Parliament of its own would not be in nearly as strong a position as one in which a Parliament had been set up, where the Executive had been appointed and where, above all, the paraphernalia of Government was already in existence … We should fear no one and … would then be in a position of absolute security.49
He also claimed that ‘I would not be fair to the House … if I lent the slightest hope of that union [of Ireland] arising within the lifetime of any man in this House’.50 Once it was realised that partition was being attempted through the creation of two parliaments, many commentated on the practical implications of such a massive undertaking.
A great deal of confusion surrounded the Government of Ireland Bill. The Freeman’s Journal described it as a complex problem, especially when one considered that ‘The whole scheme of Irish administration is based on recognition of Ireland as a national entity with its centre in Dublin’. There would be a need to have the ‘Local Government Board, the Department of Agriculture, the Insurance Commission, the Department of Education, the Estates Commissioners and Congested Districts Board and the Board of Works’ to be divided between ‘Ulster’ and the rest of Ireland.51 The newspaper deridingly named the bill ‘The Dismemberment of Ireland Bill’.52 The Irish News proposed some names for the new jurisdiction, including Carsonia and Craigdom, after the two most prominent unionists, Edward Carson and James Craig.53 The unionist-leaning Dublin Chamber of Commerce also condemned the bill, saying partition would negatively affect banking by restricting the free flow of business and making it more difficult and expensive to collect debt; dual government would mean increased taxation; political differences would be accentuated; the development of the country would be impeded whilst the creation of a second judiciary would be utterly unfavourable. It concluded by claiming that ‘one of the most regrettable effects of partition would be that it would deprive the Southern Parliament of the steadying influence and business training of the men of Ulster’.54 The Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin and Provost of Trinity College Dublin, Dr John Henry Bernard, speaking in his capacity as provost, insisted that Trinity College Dublin was ‘an Irish institution, that they stood for the whole of Ireland, that their men came from all parts of Ireland, and that, so far as they were concerned, they would resist by all lawful means any partition of Ireland’.55 One lawyer believed the withdrawal of legal business from the majority of Ulster counties would greatly diminish the standing of the Four Courts in Dublin.56 Staff members in the Four Courts agreed, with over a dozen based in Dublin applying for better-paid jobs in the future Northern Ireland.57
It has often been cited that the Government of Ireland Bill was allowed to pass relatively unchallenged due to the lack of nationalist representation in Westminster. Instead of eighty Irish nationalist MPs, there were just seven remaining in Westminster (six from Ireland and T.P. O’Connor from Liverpool) after the 1918 general election.58 It could be argued that even eighty nationalist MPs would have made little difference when one considers the make-up of the House of Commons after the election. The Conservative Party, Lloyd George’s Coalition Liberals and Irish unionists won over 500 seats, an overwhelming majority. The British Labour Party, with fifty-seven seats, opposed the Government of Ireland Bill with little effect.59 Former Prime Minister Herbert Asquith and his vastly reduced Liberal Party (of just thirty-six seats), also opposed the ‘cumbrous, costly, unworkable scheme’.60 His opposition also failed to make an imprint on the final act. It is doubtful that Sinn Féin’s presence would have made a difference either. What little voice the seven nationalist MPs remaining in Westminster had was further diminished by the Catholic Church’s belief that they should not participate in the committee stages of the Government of Ireland Bill or suggest amendments to the bill.61 The Catholic Church was virulently opposed to partition and believed that participating in the framing of the ‘Partition Bill’ would be seen as a sign of its acceptance. The leading nationalist MP in Westminster, Joseph Devlin, condemned the bill as ‘conceived in Bedlam’, ‘ridiculous’ and ‘fantastic’. He voted against it but did not in any way contribute to its final form.62
Sinn Féin, the leading nationalist movement after the 1918 general election, abstained from Westminster. It formed its own constituent assembly, Dáil Éireann, in the Mansion House in Dublin in January 1919. All Irish MPs, including unionists and members of the Irish Parliamentary Party, were invited to attend the opening session of the Dáil. Unsurprisingly, no one apart from the Sinn Féin MPs accepted.63 Sinn Féin’s policy on partition was almost non-existent from the outset, and it essentially chose to ignore it. Soon after the formation of Dáil Éireann, Louis J. Walsh, a Ballycastle solicitor and one of the leading northern Sinn Féiners, proposed in April 1919 that ‘attention should be given to Ulster, for he thought the organisation had not sufficiently grappled with that question’.64 According to Charles Townshend:
There were some signs in 1919 that the seriousness of this problem was recognised. A pushy Ulster Protestant, adoptive Canadian and Sinn Féin convert, William Forbes Patterson, was asked by Sinn Féin in June to investigate the northern situation. His verdict on republicanism there was bleak: it was effectively stillborn. But he believed that unionism was vulnerable to the (slowly) growing labour movement, and Sinn Féin could do worse than support labour. There were signs of cross-communal industrial action – notably the general strike in Belfast early in 1919 – although, as he saw, the British Labour party was unlikely to escape from its ‘English outlook’ … The prospects for military confrontation were grim, Forbes Patterson thought. If faced with a ‘pogrom’, republicans could not cope.65
Sinn Féin, of course, was not in the House of Commons to debate the Government of Ireland Bill. As the bill was making its way through parliament, the British government was waging a war with Sinn Féin and its military wing, the Irish Volunteers (later renamed the IRA). Sinn Féin leaders stuck steadfastly and naively to the view that Ulster would readily join an all-Ireland parliament once Britain was removed from the island. As well as having its own parliament, Sinn Féin also set up a counter-state with its own legal system, police force and local government. That the Government of Ireland Act came into law as Britain was at open war with Sinn Féin, who was supported by a considerable majority on the island, shows the total air of unreality that surrounded the act.66
Sinn Féin built on its 1918 general election mandate by taking control of the majority of local authorities in Ireland after the local elections of January and June 1920. The local elections of 1920 were a major disappointment for Ulster unionists, and this may explain part of their reasoning for insisting on Northern Ireland consisting of six instead of nine counties. It was the first time that the proportional representation (PR) system of voting was used in Ireland.67 PR involves a single transferable vote to be cast in multi-seat constituencies. The introduction of PR ‘was intended