Describe and explain the reactions of Unionists groups to the Partition Treaty of 1921

a) Describe and explain the reactions of Unionists groups to the Partition Treaty of 1921

In 1918 World War 1 ended and an Irish General Election was held. Sinn Féin received the most votes. The Irish Unionist Party won 26 seats, mostly in Ulster. All 73 Sinn Féin MPs refused to go to Westminster, and instead sat in their own Parliament in Dublin. Called Dail Eireann, it first met on 21st January 1919, although it had no power to exercise.

Sinn Féin represented a vote for complete independence, which was a dramatic change because the Irish people had always voted for Home Rule before. Now Sinn Féin had won the election, they set up their own law courts, police and government. The Irish volunteers were renamed the Irish Republican Army (I.R.A). Unionists were apprehensive and scared. They feared being a united Ireland with Catholics as the majority, as they were Protestants. Whatever the Catholics wanted, would always overrule the Protestants.

In 1919, the powers in Europe sat down to redraw the boundaries of Europe. Sinn Féin attended these meetings and attempted to have Ireland included in this redrawing. They argued that Ireland should be granted independence through the treaty. However the leaders in Europe largely ignored Sinn Féin and they returned home again empty-handed.

On 21 January 1919, the IRA shot dead two Irish policemen in county Tipperary, and this marked the beginning of what is now known as the War of Independence. With the post-war British army in a shambles, they were only willing to send over groups of ex-First World War solders to fight. The combination of black police uniforms and tan army outfits gave them the name 'Black and Tans' for these men. The 'Black and Tans' were undisciplined and often shot innocent civilians in revenge for attacks on them. These attacks helped to create and then strengthen local support for the IRA. Despite the conflict, in 1920 the British parliament passed the Government of Ireland Act, which attempted to set up a home rule parliament/government in both north and south. Crucially, however, the Act did not regard the partition of Ireland into six and twenty-six counties (see The Political Divide) as permanent, and referred to a possible All–Ireland parliament provided both sides agreed to give up their powers to it. Ulster unionists accepted the deal while Irish nationalists rejected it. The British lost all control of the South but stayed in control of the North of Ireland due to the unionist support.

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During 1920 and 1921, the IRA made frequent raids over the border into Northern Ireland. They often attacked the local Protestants and managed to occupy 40 square miles of county Fermanagh for a week. Within Northern Ireland many Protestants scapegoated Catholics for the IRA violence and the removal of Protestants from their homes in the Free State. This resulted in a dramatic rise in violence and rioting, although IRA violence was reduced once the Civil War began in 1922. Between July 1920 and July 1922, 257 Catholics and 157 Protestants were murdered in sectarian attacks in Northern Ireland. About 11,000 Catholics were forced to leave their jobs in Belfast's factories due to attacks from Protestant colleagues. The Northern Ireland government responded by setting up a second police force, called the "Special B Constabulary" (popularly known as the B-Specials), to try to maintain order. The old, all-Ireland police force called the Royal Irish Constabulary, were split up by the act of partition and renamed. They were split up into the ‘Garda Siochana’ for the twenty-six counties, and for the North the ‘Royal Ulster Constabulary’ for the other six counties.

The outbreak of civil war relieved the government of Northern Ireland of pressure and allowed them to use extremely repressive measures against the nationalist population. The result in the North was a semi-permanent peace.

The Political Divide

After the Anglo-Irish Civil war of 1918-1921, Ireland was partitioned into the North and South. Six northern counties (Armagh, Antrim, Down, Tyrone, Fermanagh and Londonderry) remained part of the U.K of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The twenty-six remaining counties in Ireland formed part of what is known as the ‘Irish Free State’ and would have its own army, although it would remain within the British Commonwealth. Britain would also have a representative in Ireland and would keep some naval bases in Irish waters. The partition treaty also set up a Boundary Commission that was to fine-tune the border to take account of Unionist/Nationalist communities close to it.

The Sinn Fein leader, Eamonn de Valera, became the first Prime Minister of the Irish Free State. He was a very devout Catholic and strengthened the Catholic Church in the new state. De Valera was fuming that Collins had agreed to the treaty. To him it still didn’t include all of what he had been fighting for, which was an independent Ireland covering all 32 counties. However, another party leader, Arthur Griffith, disagreed with de Valera's idealist attitude and strongly supported the treaty. Most members of the IRA who supported the treaty were transformed into the first official Irish Army. The split between the pro-and anti-treaty was so narrow, that Sinn Fein decided to have a vote on it. When the Dail voted 64-57 in favour of the treaty, de Valera and many Sinn Fein members walked out in protest. Griffith then replaced de Valera as Prime Minister.

The unionists were strongly against De Valera and the way in which he used his power. In 1937 De Valera introduced a new constitution. It called for a United Ireland and said that Northern Ireland had no right to exist. This constitution also gave a ‘special position’ to the Catholic Church. De Valera then began cutting off all links with Britain (i.e. imports). He also made a great effort to make people speak Gaelic as their main language, without success.

The partition brought great problems to people living in the North. There were still thousands of Catholic Nationalists living amongst the majority of Protestant Unionists. Many refused to accept the split. This caused street fighting in Belfast between July 1920 and 1922. 453 people were killed. This increased the fears of Protestant Unionists about the Catholics and their links with the South.

Sinn Féin opposed the division of Ireland, but in 1921 a group of members in Sinn Féin agreed to the partition as a temporary measure. Protestants now dominated the parliament of Northern Ireland. They passed laws that benefited the protestants and were unfair towards the Catholics. Unionists also altered local government election boundaries as to take control of local councils also. The fixing of boundaries in this way was called gerrymandering.

After the divide, the Unionists didn’t want anything to do with the South as they were seen as traitors and back-stabbers. Unionists believed Catholicism was an oppressive, backward religion and feared that Home Rule would result in ‘Rome Rule’. Moreover, they believed a parliament in Dublin run by what they regarded as 'primitive' Catholic farmers would be bad for Protestant business. The Unionists were sceptical of the divide at first, as they thought is would better to be in the majority of land - the more land they had, the more power they had in the Civil war.

Catholic Reactions to the Divide

The Catholic reaction to the divide of Ireland into the establishment of the Northern Ireland state was consistently hostile. In one response, the I.R.A (before and after the Anglo-Irish Treaty) was to use physical force against the new state. This was not successful and gave Sir James Craig (1871-1940) the first prime minister of Northern Ireland, the excuse to introduce three classes of parliamentary police to support the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), of whom the ‘B Special’ constabulary were hated by the Catholic minority.

Another response from the old Nationalist Party was to point out the lack of safeguards in the 1920 Act for the minority community, but neither the Unionists nor Britain took any notice.