British government publishes plan to partition Ireland

London, 28 February 1920 - The British government has published its long-anticipated plans for the future government of Ireland.

The plan is closely modelled on that outlined by Prime Minister Lloyd George on 22 December 1919. It is to divide the island of Ireland into two jurisdictions, each with its own home rule parliament.

The northern parliament area will be made up of the six counties of Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Derry and Tyrone, with a separate parliament representing the rest of the island. It is proposed that the northern parliament will comprise 52 members, with 128 sitting in the southern chamber, while the two parliaments will be linked by a 40-member Council of Ireland. Both parliaments will return representatives to Westminster, 12 from the north and 30 from the south.

The new bill, if passed, will repeal the 1914 Government of Ireland Act.

Sir Edward Carson was reluctant to comment extensively on it until he had seen the detail. What he did say, however, is that ‘it is obvious that we have before us in Ulster a choice of the utmost gravity. It is the severest crisis we have had to face’.

Less reluctant to react to the bill was the Irish Party’s Joseph Devlin, who, when questioned by the London Evening News, described it as ‘one of the most insulting proposals ever submitted’, in that it allowed for the permanent division of Ireland.

Cartoon on the public's reaction to the current home rule proposals (Image: Sunday Independent, 7 March 1920)

Judging by the initial press response in Ireland, Devlin’s opposition is shared widely across the political spectrum.

The unionist Belfast Newsletter has cited its adherence to the Union in registering its opposition to the plan. ‘We object to partition because we object to being divorced from full parliamentary representation in the Imperial Parliament, not for ourselves in the North alone, but for our country.’

The Newsletter objects to the choice between this partition bill and a Sinn Féin republic: ‘In short, we are up against a choice of evils, since the maintenance of the Union is not a feasible alternative to the government bill. We are back to the situation of 1916, when Sir Edward Carson, entirely against his will, and under the dire compulsion of that situation, advised us to accept a scheme of settlement by partition of the six counties, and when such a scheme was agreed to by the nationalist leaders, only for them to resile from it later at the dictation of the Irish hierarchy’.

The nationalist press is equally aghast at the proposals. The Freeman’s Journal has called it a ‘poisonous plan’ and ‘the worst proposal ever made for the settlement of the secular quarrel between Great Britain and Ireland... The partition, too, is to be a sectarian cut.’

The Irish Independent has also criticised the new proposals. ‘We have had government by bayonets, machine-guns and tanks, and now the Prime Minister adding the carving knife to the armoury, hacks the country in the very first clause by proposing to create a Parliament for ‘Southern Ireland’ and another for ‘Northern Ireland’… Ireland is by every test a nation, one and indivisible, but the government, acting on a deliberate and set plan, ignoring the majority and pandering to a small minority, propose to shatter that unity. Then they ironically suggest certain devices by which the ‘Irish union’ may be re-established. An ornamental body with no legislative functions, called ‘the Council of Ireland’ is to be set up.’

In addition to the partition plan, the Irish Independent has denounced the financial provisions of the bill as ‘simply a swindle upon Ireland’. Ireland, north and south, would contribute £18m for what are called imperial services and neither Irish parliament would have control over customs and excise and income tax, etc. What the Irish parliaments would have the power to do is impose surcharges or ‘any new taxes that ingenuity can devise.’

The Independent’s editorial concluded that this plan was the fourth iteration of a government of Ireland bill, and was ‘also the worst’.

[Editor's note: This is an article from Century Ireland, a fortnightly online newspaper, written from the perspective of a journalist 100 years ago, based on news reports of the time.]