Many Northern nationalists doubt Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael's commitment to Irish unity
Northern nationalists felt betrayed by Dublin 100 years ago, after the collapse of the
Boundary Commission
in December 1925. It left the border with
Northern Ireland
unchanged despite their hopes that it would make unification inevitable. Many of their descendants still feel that way.
Most Irish nationalists believed the commission, set up as part of the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, would see much of the territory of the six counties of the Northern Ireland state that was established in May 1921 being transferred to the fledging Irish Free State.
The shifting of Tyrone, Fermanagh, south Armagh, south Down (including Newry) and Derry City with their Catholic majorities to the Free State, it was hoped, would leave the remainder of Northern Ireland an unviable rump. Irish unity would then be inevitable.
Events, however, did not turn out as nationalists hoped, for a catalogue of reasons, including the ambiguous wording of Article 12 in the Treaty that set up the commission and allowed for multiple interpretations.
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From the off, the newly-created, inexperienced Free State government was politically and diplomatically outmanoeuvring by both London and the new authorities in Stormont. And, throughout, Northern nationalists were naive.
In the end, the commission ended in rancour when it proposed that only slight rectifications should be made to the original boundary lines drawn up in the Anglo-Irish Treaty, leaving the Border as it was then and remains today.
Even the simple things were not handled properly by the Irish side. The commission was chaired by a British-appointed head, not by an independent chairperson, while there were lengthy delays in setting the body up. Following a largely accurate forecast of the expected final boundary recommendations published by the diehard unionist Morning Post
newspaper on November 7th, 1925,
WT Cosgrave
's Free State government insisted the report as a whole should be shelved.
The newspaper's report had rightly claimed that the commission would propose only minimal transfers from Northern Ireland to the Free State. Crucially, the Free State would lose parts of east Donegal and north Monaghan.
The furore led the commission's Free State representative Eoin MacNeill to resign from the role. Once it was revealed, however, that he had appeared to consent to the changes, or had not substantially objected, he was forced to resign as the Free State's minister for education.
In a panic, Cosgrave rushed over to London to have the Boundary Commission report buried, and after a week of intense negotiations involving the Free State, British and Northern Irish governments, a tripartite agreement was signed on December 3rd, 1925.
Under the agreement, Article 12 of the Treaty, which set up the commission, was revoked and Northern Ireland's boundary remained as it had been defined under the Government of Ireland Act, 1920.
Meanwhile, Article 5, which had created a £150,000,000 bill that the fledgling State was to pay to London, was waived, with the Free State becoming liable for malicious damage incurred during the War of Independence.
Under the treaty, 40 parliamentarians, 20 each from Stormont and Dublin, were to have looked after subjects of common concern, including railways, fisheries and contagious diseases of animals. Extra powers could have been added, as required. However, these were scrapped too.
While the Council of Ireland was considered an 'irritant' to the Northern Ireland government, it was the Free State government that readily abandoned it. In lieu of it, the Northern Ireland prime minister James Craig 'suggested joint meetings of the two governments in Ireland 'at an early date' so that both governments could deal with charges brought by one against the other'. Cosgrave agreed but they never met again. In fact, the next meeting between the heads of both Irish governments was 40 years later, when Seán Lemass met Terence O'Neill in 1965.
Instead of engaging with Ulster unionists with a view to ending or limiting partition, Irish governments of different hues preferred to preach about its evils without offering anything like practical or tangible policies that could deal with the issue. It was only from the 1960s that Irish governments promoted the merits of North-South bodies, such as the Council of Ireland, as well as bodies that exist today such as the
Shared Island
initiative.
The fallout from the Boundary Commission has left a bitter taste in the mouths of Northern nationalists ever since 1925. Their trust in British governments (always threadbare) evaporated completely, but, perhaps more importantly, their trust in the South suffered an irrevocable blow, due to the Free State government's abandonment of the North for financial benefits. That mistrust still resonates today.
Many Northern nationalists believe there is a partitionist mindset in the South and that the 'establishment' political parties of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are not interested in Irish unity, despite rhetoric to the contrary. There is contempt for the geo-blocking of programmes in the North by
RTÉ
(particularly sporting ones), the provision of weather information from
Met Éireann
for just the 26 counties, the naming of the 26 county state as Ireland under the Constitution, and the prohibition of citizens in the North from voting in Irish presidential elections.
[
Geography and destiny – Ronan McGreevy on the Boundary Commission
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]
As prospects of a Border poll have entered public discourse since the acceptance of the Belfast Agreement of 1998, focus has shifted to an ambiguous clause in that agreement: Schedule 1 (2), which states that the British secretary of state for Northern Ireland 'shall exercise the power' to call a Border poll 'if at any time it appears likely to him that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the United Kingdom and form part of a united Ireland'.
As with the Boundary Commission, many Northern nationalists believe this clause leaves the power in the hands of the British government. Some fear that this could prevent a Border poll from occurring at all. While there appears to be a clear avenue to Irish unity now through the Belfast Agreement, people are still very wary that the way the commission imploded in 1925 could happen again through what they would see as underhand and devious methods over calling a Border poll.
Cormac Moore is a historian, currently serving as historian-in-residence with Dublin City Council.
His latest book, The Root of All Evil, about the Boundary Commission, is published by Irish Academic Press
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