Why Did The British Government Partition Ireland in 1922?

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Why Did the British Government “Partition” Ireland in 1922?

There are many different factors contributing to the Partition of Ireland in 1922.

Britain had many of her own problems outside of Ireland, including the economic crisis that they were experiencing after the First World War.  David Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister, was keen to start up international trade after the war.  However, the Irish conflict was his primary concern at the time.  Lloyd George was desperate to forget about the conflict so that he could focus his attention on how to rebuild Britain’s economy, and the Partition was considered to be one way of doing this.

One of the reasons why Britain had gone to war in World War One was to defend the rights of small countries such as Belgium.  In spite of this, she seemed to be going back on this by denying the sort of rights that she had just campaigned for during the First World War, such as self-rule, for Ireland.  Britain was heavily criticised for this.  For many, the best solution would be let Ireland rule itself.

Lloyd George had planned for the British troops stationed in Ireland to crush the Irish Republican Army (IRA), and therefore end the guerrilla war in Ireland, which would hopefully end the conflict.  However, the troops were finding it impossible to defeat the IRA.  To do this, Britain’s military advisers had said that they would need at least 100,000 more troops and £100 million.  But with Britain’s economic crisis, Lloyd George could not afford these requirements.  He needed a cheaper remedy to keep the peace in Ireland.

After two rejections from the House of Parliament in London, the Home Rule bill (which stated that Ireland would rule itself from its own parliament in Dublin while still remaining part of the British Empire) was passed in 1912.  However, instead of solving the Irish conflict, it backfired.  Though the Nationalists were relieved that the bill was finally passed as a law, the Unionists saw it as a ‘Catholic plot’.  This created even more division and tension between the two sides in Ireland, leading to arguments and violence.  Rather than solving the Irish conflict (as the British hoped that it would), the Home Rule failed to please both sides.  Britain was eager to achieve a settlement between the two sides as soon as possible.

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Britain’s troops were expected to keep the peace in Ireland.  But in 1914, senior officers at the Curragh camp near Dublin threatened to resign if they had to enforce the Home Rule on Ulster.  This ‘Curragh Mutiny’ meant that Britain could not rely on its troops to maintain peace in Ireland, and left the British government under mounting pressure to find an alternative solution to the problem.

The Nationalists were also greatly to blame for the partitioning of Ireland.  The potato blight of 1845-1851 destroyed a large majority of the potato crop, the staple food of many Irish ...

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