Sir, – The old chestnut addressed in your letters column, “Was NI ever a part of the Free State?” (December 17th and 27th) is sterile if a legalistic “yes” or “no” answer is expected. For Lloyd George and Arthur Griffith had in December 1921 framed their conditional agreement for a treaty politically rather than legally, to allow further progress. The better answer is “It was, up to a point”.
To the bitter end in London in late 1921, Griffith had wanted Belfast’s agreement to a meaningful boundary commission if not a united Ireland, but London let him down. Both Griffith and Collins thought they had Britain’s commitment to allowing Tyrone and Fermanagh join the south.
But, and this comes as a surprise to many, the provision in Article 12 of the Treaty that “the powers of the Parliament and the Government of the new Irish Free State shall no longer extend to Northern Ireland” if the majority in Norther Ireland agreed a resolution to that effect within a month of the foundation of the new state in December 1922 was entirely consistent with the policy articulated behind closed doors by Éamon de Valera in Dáil Éireann in August 1921.
Months before the talks in London that he refused to attend personally, he then said that any county in Northern Ireland should have the right to vote itself out of an Irish state.
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De Valera’s astonishing statement received little attention because it was made at a private session, although it dismayed some republicans. It suited many later to ignore it. Part of the noble Dev myth would soon be that the Treaty was responsible for permanent partition and that the Civil War was an attempt to reverse that tragedy.
The Treaty also provided that if Northern Ireland opted out of the Free State there would be a boundary commission to redraw the Border according to popular wishes. Both Tyrone and Fermanagh had nationalist majorities. It was a small mercy that Griffith and Collins were dead by the time that (due largely to the Civil War) that commission became the fiasco it did and their commitment to it was reduced to a financial pay-off. – Yours, etc,
COLUM KENNY,
Dublin City University,
Dublin 9.