Partition and the birth of Northern Ireland
The Government of Ireland Act creates a six-county Northern Ireland with its own parliament, born amid sectarian violence in Belfast and a border that was meant to be temporary.
- A History of Ulster — Jonathan Bardon, Blackstaff Press (1992)
- Belfast's Unholy War: The Troubles of the 1920s — Alan F. Parkinson, Four Courts Press (2004)
- Northern Nationalism: Nationalist Politics, Partition and the Catholic Minority in Northern Ireland, 1890–1940 — Eamon Phoenix, Ulster Historical Foundation (1994)
- A History of the Ulster Unionist Party: Protest, Pragmatism and Pessimism — Graham Walker, Manchester University Press (2004)
By 1919 Ireland was at war. Sinn Féin had swept most of the island in the 1918 election and declared a republic, while in north-east Ulster unionists remained a solid majority. The British government’s answer was the Government of Ireland Act of December 1920, which created two Home Rule parliaments, one in Dublin and one in Belfast. Nationalist Ireland ignored the southern one. Unionists, who had never asked for a parliament of their own, accepted the northern one as the best way to keep out of a Dublin state.
- A History of Ulster — Jonathan Bardon, Blackstaff Press (1992)
- Home Rule: An Irish History, 1800–2000 — Alvin Jackson, Weidenfeld and Nicolson (2003)
- A History of the Ulster Unionist Party: Protest, Pragmatism and Pessimism — Graham Walker, Manchester University Press (2004)
Six counties, not nine
Historic Ulster has nine counties, but in Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan Catholics were a large majority. Unionist leaders chose six counties, Antrim, Down, Armagh, Londonderry, Tyrone and Fermanagh, the largest area they believed they could hold with a safe majority. Even so, about a third of the new state’s people were Catholic, and Fermanagh, Tyrone and Derry City had nationalist majorities. Unionists in the three abandoned counties felt betrayed; nationalists inside the border felt stranded.
- A History of Ulster — Jonathan Bardon, Blackstaff Press (1992)
- Northern Nationalism: Nationalist Politics, Partition and the Catholic Minority in Northern Ireland, 1890–1940 — Eamon Phoenix, Ulster Historical Foundation (1994)
Northern Ireland formally came into being on 3 May 1921. On 22 June King George V opened its parliament in Belfast City Hall and appealed to “all Irishmen to pause, to stretch out the hand of forbearance and conciliation”. James Craig became prime minister.
- Craig, James, 1st Viscount Craigavon — Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy
- A History of Ulster — Jonathan Bardon, Blackstaff Press (1992)
Born in blood
The new state was born amid savage violence. In July 1920 thousands of Catholic workers, and Protestant socialists dubbed “rotten Prods”, were driven out of the shipyards. Over the next two years Belfast saw riots, IRA attacks, reprisal killings and expulsions from homes. Counts of the dead in Belfast between 1920 and 1922 range from about 450 to about 500; the historian Alan Parkinson puts it at 498. Catholics, about a quarter of the city, made up a majority of the victims, though many Protestants were killed too. Nationalists often call it the “Belfast pogrom”; unionists remember a state fighting for its life against an IRA campaign.
- Belfast's Unholy War: The Troubles of the 1920s — Alan F. Parkinson, Four Courts Press (2004)
- A History of Ulster — Jonathan Bardon, Blackstaff Press (1992)
The government built its security on the Ulster Special Constabulary, the “B-Specials”, an almost entirely Protestant armed reserve, and on the Special Powers Act of 1922, which allowed internment without trial. Both would become central grievances for nationalists.
- A History of Ulster — Jonathan Bardon, Blackstaff Press (1992)
- Northern Ireland 1921–2001: Political Forces and Social Classes — Paul Bew, Peter Gibbon and Henry Patterson, Serif (2002)
A border meant to be temporary
The Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921 promised a Boundary Commission to adjust the border “in accordance with the wishes of the inhabitants”. Nationalists hoped it would hand over so much territory that Northern Ireland would collapse. When its report leaked in 1925, it proposed only small changes, and a shift of some land the other way. The governments shelved it and the 1920 line stayed.
- A History of Ulster — Jonathan Bardon, Blackstaff Press (1992)
- Northern Nationalism: Nationalist Politics, Partition and the Catholic Minority in Northern Ireland, 1890–1940 — Eamon Phoenix, Ulster Historical Foundation (1994)
Many northern nationalists refused at first to recognise the new state, which deepened unionist suspicion that their neighbours were disloyal. That mutual distrust, built into the foundations, shaped the next fifty years.
- Northern Nationalism: Nationalist Politics, Partition and the Catholic Minority in Northern Ireland, 1890–1940 — Eamon Phoenix, Ulster Historical Foundation (1994)
- Northern Ireland: A Very Short Introduction — Marc Mulholland, Oxford University Press (2002)
Ulster's Protestants were a distinct people who had made clear, in the Covenant and at the Somme, that they would never be ruled from Dublin. Partition was a reluctant compromise that secured their democratic right to stay British, defended against an IRA campaign to destroy the new state.
- A History of the Ulster Unionist Party: Protest, Pragmatism and Pessimism — Graham Walker, Manchester University Press (2004)
- Craig, James, 1st Viscount Craigavon — Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy
- Home Rule: An Irish History, 1800–2000 — Alvin Jackson, Weidenfeld and Nicolson (2003)
An undemocratic carve-up: Ireland voted overwhelmingly for independence in 1918, and the border was drawn to give unionists the largest territory they could safely hold, trapping a third of the population, including Catholic-majority areas like Derry, Fermanagh and Tyrone, in a state that did not want them.
- Northern Nationalism: Nationalist Politics, Partition and the Catholic Minority in Northern Ireland, 1890–1940 — Eamon Phoenix, Ulster Historical Foundation (1994)
- A History of Ulster — Jonathan Bardon, Blackstaff Press (1992)
Why it matters today
Everything about Northern Ireland, its shape, its two communities and its contested name, goes back to these five years. Unionists celebrate 1921 as the moment they secured their place in the UK; many nationalists still regard partition as an injustice imposed by threat of force. Its centenary in 2021 could not be marked in a way everyone shared.