As prime minister of Northern Ireland a century ago, James Craig made effective use of a pithy slogan to encapsulate the unionist mission of 1925: “Not an Inch!”.
This referred to the disputed Border in Ireland and the work of the Boundary Commission, catered for under Article 12 of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 to examine possible changes to the Border “in accordance with the wishes of the inhabitants, so far as may be compatible with economic and geographic conditions”.
The centenary of the Boundary Commission report and controversy this year provides a reminder of how Craig’s declaration was vindicated. Nationalists hoped the commission would interpret the wording of Article 12 in a way that would favour them, recommending such transfers of territory as to render NI inoperable, paving a path to unity.
But the chairman of the commission, Richard Feetham, a British-born judge of the South African Supreme Court, did not see his role in those terms, viewing his job as more about settling than reconstituting the Border, maintaining “NI must still be recognisable as the same provincial entity”.
Laura Kennedy: When Luigi Mangione’s ‘manifesto’ was published, the most surprising thing was how conventional it was
Will water stop a hangover and, if not, what will?
Rachel O’Dwyer: My friend sends me a dizzying list of pills for what she calls ‘biohacking perimenopause’
‘I actually felt unsafe as an English person in the Aviva’
Omagh-born Kevin O’Shiel, head of the Free State’s North-Eastern Boundary Bureau, which was preparing information for the commission, indicating the Irish government’s earnestness about this issue, admitted in late 1924, “we are entirely in the dark as to how the commission will result and its finding may prove much less favourable than most of us imagine”.
Due to Craig’s refusal to be involved, the British government instead appointed a representative for the NI government, journalist and unionist Joseph Robert Fisher, a close associate of Craig and firm advocate of partition.
Head of the Free State Government, WT Cosgrave, appointed, not O’Shiel, who might have been a better fit, but the Free State’s minister for education, Eoin MacNeill. He was Ulster-born and a Catholic, but was a reluctant appointee and hardly wily enough to vindicate nationalist claims, historian Joe Lee concluding he combined “integrity with incompetence”.
The Boundary Commissioners held 55 in-camera hearings in Border regions from March to July 1925, and Feetham reminded witnesses he was not empowered to arrange plebiscites. The wording of Article 12 was deliberately vague and contained no reference to a direct vote of the inhabitants of the Border areas.
When the commission’s report was leaked in November 1925 it revealed that the coveted nationalist prizes north of the Border were not on offer and even recommended a part of east Donegal be transferred to NI. The proposal was to shorten the Border by 50 miles, transferring 286 square miles to the South and 77 square miles to the North, which would have moved 31,219 people to the Irish Free State and 7,594 in the opposite direction.
Cosgrave rushed to London to get the report suppressed (it was not published until 1969), the Border remained as it was, and as it has done to this day.
A delighted Craig accused the Free State Government of having lived in a “fool’s paradise” in believing the commission would deliver Irish unity. Northern nationalists regarded it as a travesty; Cahir Healy, twice elected to the Westminster Parliament in the early 1920s as Sinn Féin MP for Fermanagh and Tyrone, accused Mac Neill and his colleagues of having “cut our cable and launched us rudderless into the hurricane without guarantee or security”.
The centenary of what was a debacle for the Free State government and a devastating blow for NI’s nationalist minority comes at a time when the fortunes of nationalists have been reversed, unionists are much less dominant and powerful and Sinn Féin is leading government in Belfast and almost matching the support of FF and FG in the Republic.
From 2016, Brexit shifted the perspective and the rhetoric about the Border, leading to some assertions akin to the more confident views expressed by nationalists in advance of the Boundary Commission, to the effect that the unity train had left the station.
But is such confidence undermined by the legacies of the 1925 storm that endure? Wounded and humiliated by the episode, the southern State had little appetite for decades to look over the Border and that disconnect and sense of NI as a place apart remains relevant.
For all Sinn Féin’s progress in recent years, the sobering reality for a party whose primary aim is Irish unity is that many of its voters in the Republic have more pressing priorities.
SF president Mary Lou Mac Donald, while talking of an unstoppable momentum towards a Border poll, has nonetheless acknowledged “civic society outside of the political bubble” has yet to be fully engaged with this issue. And as the advocates of unity discovered in 1925, possible routes to the desired outcome need to be understood in language and methods that are clear and precise.
- Listen to our Inside Politics Podcast for the latest analysis and chat
- Sign up for push alerts and have the best news, analysis and comment delivered directly to your phone
- Find The Irish Times on WhatsApp and stay up to date