Ulster's Stand For Union

by Ronald McNeill

The Bill to give effect to these proposals (which became the Government of Ireland Act, 1920) was formally introduced on the 25th of February, 1920, and Carson then went over to Belfast to consult with the Unionist Council as to the action to be taken by the Ulster members.

The measure was a long and complicated one of seventy clauses and six schedules. Its effect, stated briefly, was to set up two Parliaments in Ireland, one for the six Protestant counties of Ulster and the other for the rest of Ireland. In principle it was the "clean cut" which had been several times proposed, except that, instead of retaining Ulster in legislative union with Great Britain, she was to be endowed with local institutions of her own in every respect similar to, and commensurate with, those given to the Parliament in Dublin. In addition, a Council of Ireland was created, composed of an equal number of members from each of the two legislatures. This Council was given powers in regard to private bill legislation, and matters of minor importance affecting both parts of the island which the two Parliaments might mutually agree to commit to its administration. Power was given to the two Parliaments to establish by identical Acts at any time a Parliament for all Ireland to supersede the Council, and to form a single autonomous constitution for the whole of Ireland.

The Council of Ireland occupied a prominent place in the debates on the Bill. It was held up as a symbol of the "unity of Ireland," and the authors of the measure were able to point to it as supplying machinery by which "partition" could be terminated as soon as Irishmen agreed among themselves in wishing to have a single national Government. It was not a feature of the Bill that found favour in Ulster; but, as it could do no harm and provided an argument against those who denounced "partition," the Ulster members did not think it worth while to oppose it.

But when Carson met the Ulster Unionist Council on the 6th of March the most difficult point he had to deal with was the same that had given so much trouble in the negotiations of 1916. The Bill defined the area subject to the "Parliament of Northern Ireland" as the six counties which the Ulster Council had agreed four years earlier to accept as the area to be excluded from the Home Rule Act. The question now to be decided was whether this same area should still be accepted, or an amendment moved for including in Northern Ireland the other three counties of the Province of Ulster. The same harrowing experience which the Council had undergone in 1916 was repeated in an aggravated form.[^[106]] To separate themselves from fellow loyalists in Monaghan, Cavan, and Donegal was hateful to every delegate from the other six counties, and it was heartrending to be compelled to resist another moving appeal by so valued a friend as Lord Farnham. But the inexorable index of statistics demonstrated that, although Unionists were in a majority when geographical Ulster was considered as a unit, yet the distribution of population made it certain that a separate Parliament for the whole Province would have a precarious existence, while its administration of purely Nationalist districts would mean unending conflict.

It was, therefore, decided that no proposal for extending the area should be made by the Ulster members. Carson made it clear in the debates on the Bill that Ulster had not moved from her old position of desiring nothing except the Union; that he was still convinced there was "no alternative to the Union unless separation"; but that, while he would take no responsibility for a Bill which Ulster did not want, he and his colleagues would not actively oppose its progress to the Statute-book.

It did not, however, receive the Royal Assent until two days before Christmas, and during all these months the condition of Ireland was one of increasing anarchy. The Act provided that, if the people of Southern Ireland refused to work the new Constitution, the administration should be carried on by a system similar to Crown Colony government. Carson gave an assurance that in Ulster they would do their best to make the Act a success, and immediate steps were taken in Belfast to make good this undertaking.

To the people of Ulster the Act of 1920, though it involved the sacrifice of much that they had ardently hoped to preserve, came as a relief to their worst fears. It was represented as a final settlement, and finality was what they chiefly desired, if they could get it without being forced to submit to a Dublin Parliament. The disloyal conduct of Nationalist Ireland during the war, and the treason and terrorism organised by Sinn Fein after the war, had widened the already broad gulf between North and South. The determination never to submit to an all-Ireland Parliament was more firmly fixed than ever. The Act of 1920, which repealed Mr. Asquith's Act of 1914, gave Ulster what she had prepared to fight for, if necessary, before the war. It was the fulfilment of the Craigavon resolution—to take over the government "of those districts which they could control."[^[107]] The Parliament of Northern Ireland established by the Act was in fact the legalisation of the Ulster Provisional Government of 1913. It placed Ulster in a position of equality with the South, both politically and economically. The two Legislatures in Ireland possessed the same powers, and were subject to an equal reservation of authority to the Imperial Parliament.

But with the passing of the Act the long and consummate leadership of Sir Edward Carson came to an end. If he had not succeeded in bringing the Ulster people into a Promised Land, he had at least conducted an orderly retreat to a position of safety. The almost miraculous skill with which he had directed all the operations of a protracted and harassing campaign, avoiding traps and pitfalls at every step, foreseeing and providing against countless crises, frustrating with unfailing adroitness the manoeuvres both of implacable enemies and treacherous "friends," was fully appreciated by his grateful followers, who had for years past regarded him with an intensity of personal devotion seldom given even to the greatest of political leaders. But he felt that the task of opening a new chapter in the history of Ulster, and of inaugurating the new institutions now established, was work for younger hands. Hard as he was pressed to accept the position of first Prime Minister of Ulster, he firmly persisted in his refusal; and on his recommendation the man who had been his able and faithful lieutenant throughout the long Ulster Movement was unanimously chosen to succeed him in the leadership.

Sir James Craig did not hesitate to respond to the call, although to do so he had to resign an important post in the British Government, that of Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty, with excellent prospects of further promotion. As soon as the elections in "Northern Ireland," conducted under the system of Proportional Representation, as provided by the Act of 1920, were complete, Sir James, whose followers numbered forty as against a Nationalist and Sinn Fein minority of twelve, was sent for by the Viceroy and commissioned to form a Ministry. He immediately set himself to his new and exceedingly difficult duties with characteristic thoroughness. The whole apparatus of government administration had to be built up from the foundation. Departments, for which there was no existing office accommodation or personnel, had to be called into existence and efficiently organised, and all this preliminary work had to be undertaken at a time when the territory subject to the new Government was beset by open and concealed enemies working havoc with bombs and revolvers, with which the Government had not yet legal power to cope.

But Sir James Craig pressed on with the work, undismayed by the difficulties, and resolved that the Parliament in Belfast should be opened at the earliest possible date. The Marquis of Londonderry gave a fresh proof of his Ulster patriotism by resigning his office in the Imperial Government and accepting the portfolio of Education in Sir James Craig's Cabinet, and with it the leadership of the Ulster Senate; in which the Duke of Abercorn also, to the great satisfaction of the Ulster people, consented to take a seat. Mr. Dawson Bates, the indefatigable Secretary of the Ulster Unionist Council during the whole of the Ulster Movement, was appointed Minister for Home Affairs, and Mr. E.M. Archdale became Minister for Agriculture. The first act of the House of Commons of Northern Ireland was to choose Major Hugh O'Neill as their Speaker, while the important position of Chairman of Committees was entrusted to Mr. Thomas Moles, one of the ablest recruits of the Ulster Parliamentary Party, whom the General Election of 1918 had sent to Westminster as one of the members for Belfast, and who had given ample evidence of his capacity both in the Imperial Parliament and on the Secretarial Staff of the Irish Convention of 1917.