No matter has divided Irish politics and society as vigorously in recent generations as the topic of partition. Ireland was partitioned, or divided into Northern and Southern Ireland in May 1921 after the Fourth Home Rule Act became law on that day. The question continues to dominate politics in Northern Ireland to this day as politics is still divided between supporters of partition (Unionists) and opponents of partition (Nationalists). Partition was proposed several times before it actually happened and was just as controversial back in the early 1900s as it is now today. I believe that partition was the right decision due to several reasons which I will argue here. While partition did cause some problems for Northern Ireland as seen by the Troubles, it did mean that the violence that could have happened during the Home Rule Crisis didn’t happen like it did in Ireland. While partition was not good for some people, namely Catholics in Northern Ireland and Protestants in Southern Ireland, it meant that the majority of people in Ireland were accepting of what happened.
The roots of partition can be seen as far back as the Plantations. Before the Plantations the majority of people in Ireland were either local Irish Catholics or the descendants of Old English Normans. With the Plantations being formed under King James I in the early 1600s, the north of Ireland, in particular the north-east of Ulster by the 1800s had a Protestant majority. By the late 1800s politics in Ireland became divided between Unionists who wanted to remain part of the United Kingdom and Nationalists who wanted Home Rule or independence. Partition as a possible solution to whether Ireland should have Home Rule was proposed when William Gladstone brought in the first Home Rule Bill in 1886. Liberals who opposed Home Rule suggested splitting off counties of Ulster with Protestant majorities as a compromise to the crisis. Unionists and Nationalists opposed this at the time as they wished to remain all Ireland and they didn’t want the island divided. Nationalists opposed it as it meant that Ireland would be divided and they didn’t believe that as they preferred Home Rule for all Ireland. Unionists didn’t want it as it would mean that Home Rule would happen and there would be less of an argument against excluding all Ireland from Home Rule.
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Partition became a major issue when the Third Home Rule Bill was proposed in 1912. The December 1910 general election in Britain brought similar results to the Liberals and Conservatives. Neither achieved a majority so they needed to find another party to work with. So, the Liberals decided to make an agreement with the Irish Nationalists who wanted Home Rule. The Nationalists led by John Redmond agreed to support the Liberals’ reforms in return the Liberals agreed to support the Third Home Rule Bill. In 1912, the Liberal government brought in the Third Home Rule Bill which would give Home Rule to Ireland. Because of the Liberal reforms, the House of Lords couldn’t block Home Rule now for more than two years which meant that Home Rule seemed like it would finally pass. Most of the Irish population reacted positively as they supported the Irish Nationalists, yet the Protestant majority in north-east Ulster were very displeased as they wanted to join the United Kingdom. At the election the Irish Nationalists won nearly everything outside of north-east Ulster where the Irish Unionists did well. These Unionists were called Ulster Unionists and wanted to be excluded from the Bill and to be ruled directly from London. This meant that they now supported partition of Ireland by removing all or parts of Ulster from Home Rule. This was opposed by nearly everyone else in Ireland. Nationalists in Ulster opposed this as it meant they would not be part of Home Rule and would be a minority in Northern Ireland. Southern Nationalists wanted Home Rule on the whole of Ireland and opposed any partition. Southern Unionists preferred Home Rule to partition as partition meant they would become an even smaller minority in a Catholic dominated Ireland.
Asquith and his government wanted to finally pass Home Rule which had been an annoying problem for many years in British politics. It seems from this that many English politicians simply wanted to get rid of the issue which had caused many problems for governments before. Passing it meant that the issue would not arise again. This meant that the Liberals simply wanted rid of Home Rule and didn’t seem to care how they did it. They were oblivious to the concerns of Ulster Unionists and their opposition to Home Rule. The threat of the Ulster Unionists to block the bill and oppose it strongly didn’t seem to be important to the Liberals and Nationalists. Some Southern Unionists who didn’t like Home Rule or partition decided to use partition as a way to wreck the government’s bill and prevent it from passing. One of these was Edward Carson who while being the leader of the Ulster Unionists was a Dublin MP and wanted to use Ulster to help block Home Rule for all of Ireland. Had partition been accepted by the Liberals at this point then a lot of the momentum of the Unionists in opposing Home Rule would have disappeared making Home Rule far more likely to pass. The Liberals by their refusal to listen to the concerns of the Ulster Unionists or to see them as a serious threat helped to cause the crisis to get worse. One Liberal MP, called Thomas Agar-Robartes, tried to get a solution by proposing that four north-eastern Ulster counties which had Protestant majorities be taken out of Home Rule. If the government accepted this it would have taken away the major arguments of the Unionists and allowed Home Rule to probably happen. The government refused to support this or the Ulster Unionists’ demands for all of Ulster to be excluded. Regardless of what happened some people would be unhappy, but with Home Rule passed and exclusion of parts of Ulster the two largest groups of the Southern Nationalist and Ulster Unionists would have been happy. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen as the Liberals and the Nationalists insisted that Ulster would not be excluded and thought partition would destroy Home Rule.
After partition was rejected and the bill was passed in Parliament things started to get worse and a crisis happened. A week later Carson and 500,000 people in Ulster and Ireland signed the Ulster Covenant which showed that Ulster Protestants were serious that they did not want Home Rule in Ulster. Still the government and most Nationalists didn’t seem to think the Ulster Unionists were serious in their threats. In 1913 the UVF was formed which was a paramilitary group that was committed to opposing Home Rule in Ulster by force. Even with this the government and Redmond thought the Unionists were bluffing and would eventually come around to accept Home Rule. In response Nationalists formed the Irish Volunteers in opposition to the UVF which was led by Redmond. By the time of 1914 it was clear that things would get out of hand if a solution didn’t happen. In 1914 the Curragh incident happened in March. This was when British soldiers stationed in Ireland were told that they might be used to put down the UVF if it rebelled. Some officers and soldiers threatened to resign or be fired if they were told to attack fellow British citizens. This showed that even in the army feelings were against Home Rule as it stood. Not long after both the UVF and the Irish Volunteers smuggled guns into Ireland, the UVF at Larne and the Volunteers at Howth. By this point the government and some Nationalists began to realize how serious things had become and that they should consider changing Home Rule at the very least. In July King George V called a conference at Buckingham Palace to solve the crisis. The Conference didn’t do that as Carson rejected Asquith’s proposal of a temporary exclusion of Ulster as a stay of execution. This showed that some had come to see partition as something that might avoid the crisis getting worse. A small rival Nationalist party called ‘All for Ireland’ led by William O’Brien even refused to support Home Rule as they saw Home Rule with Unionists dragged in to support it as worse than staying in the UK as a united Ireland.
In 1914 World War I broke out which was helpful for the government as it meant they could postpone Home Rule and not look at it for a time. This did not happen. More and more Nationalists became frustrated that they had not achieved Home Rule and that it had been blocked. This meant that they wanted something more extreme than Home Rule. Some like Sinn Fein founder Arthur Griffith wanted an independent Ireland with the British King in charge, others wanted a socialist Republic, and others a Catholic Republic. After Redmond supported the war, the Irish Volunteers split and were taken over by republicans who didn’t support the war. Some republicans would become so extreme that they did the 1916 Easter Rising which began a rise in support of the anti-war Sinn Fein who wanted a completely independent Irish Republic as opposed to Home Rule. This increasing popularity meant that at the next election after the war in 1918 the old Nationalist Party was destroyed winning only one seat in Southern Ireland while Sinn Fein won everything else outside of Ulster. The rise of a more extreme nationalist party was caused by the government’s inability to pass their Home Rule Bill. In the end Ireland was partitioned between an independent Irish Free State and a six county Northern Ireland which left Southern Nationalists and Ulster Unionists happy.
While partition has caused Northern problems for many years in Northern Ireland as seen by the Troubles, I believe that it was the right decision. If Ulster had not been partitioned then I think the UVF could have taken up arms in opposition to the new country. The crisis over Home Rule and events after 1916 meant that Irish and Northern Irish politics became more extreme with one side against each other. If Asquith and Redmond had accepted some kind of partition when the bill first happened, maybe only 4 Protestant majority counties or modern-day Northern Ireland, then Home Rule would likely have passed with less people opposed. While there would probably have still been problems it would have meant that many in Ireland didn’t become as anti-British as they did after 1916 and could have meant that Ireland, Britain and Northern Ireland got on better during the 1900s unlike what really happened. I don’t believe that the problems and disagreements in Northern Ireland and Ireland today are just because of partition. If partition had been done earlier and not after what happened in 1916 then the sectarian and political arguments here might not have been as bad as they are now. That is why I believe that partition was not the mistake, but how and when it was done.
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