Government of Ireland Act

Government of Ireland Act (1920), an attempt by the Lloyd George coalition government to create a new structure for Ireland. Its immediate origins lie in the report of the cabinet committee on the Irish question chaired by Walter Long. Long's committee, and subsequent government policy, tried to reconcile conflicting pressures. Sinn Féin's success in the 1918 election, followed by the outbreak of the Anglo‐Irish War, made some form of home rule inevitable. The government also saw the need to help the American president Woodrow Wilson in his campaign for ratification of the Versailles settlement by conciliating Irish‐American opinion. But in the 1918 election the Conservatives, who secured 339 seats in the coalition against 136 Liberals, made Lloyd George promise not to implement any policy leading to ‘the forcible submission of the six counties of Ulster to a Home Rule Parliament against their will’. Arguing that Britain could not impose unity, Long's committee on 4 November 1919 recommended the creation of two parliaments, one in Belfast for the nine Ulster counties, and the other in Dublin. Such a nine‐county partition, combined with a Council of Ireland, would encourage moves towards unity. Unsure of Unionist ability to govern Cavan, Monaghan, and Donegal, James Craig lobbied the cabinet for a six‐county partition, and was strongly supported by Arthur Balfour. On 24 February 1920 the cabinet voted that ‘the area of Northern Ireland shall consist of the parliamentary counties of Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry, and Tyrone and the parliamentary boroughs of Belfast and Londonderry’. The subsequent bill passed its third reading on 23 December 1920.

In the elections which followed for the parliament of Southern Ireland, only the four representatives of Trinity College, Dublin, attended; 124 Sinn Féin members abstained. By contrast, Unionists won 40 of the 52 seats for the Northern Ireland parliament, enabling Craig to form his government. While largely satisfying Lloyd George's Conservative allies and the unionists of the six counties, the act was bitterly resented by unionists elsewhere in Ireland, and failed to meet the aspirations of Sinn Féin. Nevertheless, it provided the constitutional framework for the creation of Northern Ireland.

Bibliography

Fraser, T. G. , Partition in Ireland, India and Palestine: Theory and Practice (1984)

T. G. Fraser