Ulster Exclusion and Irish Nationalism: Consenting to the Principle of Partition, 1912-1916

Abstract

In April 1912, Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith introduced the third Home Rule (Government of Ireland) Bill to Westminster. In so doing, he ignited a crisis in both Ireland and Britain which consumed political discourse right up to the eve of the First World War and beyond. By September of 1912, the Ulster question took centre stage as the dominant issue holding back the constitutionally predetermined progress of the Government of Ireland Bill.This article considers two important developments pertaining to Ulster within the broader Home Rule crisis. The first is the definition and rationalisation of a two-state solution to the so-called ‘Irish question’ which in 1914 resulted for the first time in the drafting of proposals for an Irish border, initially as a strictly temporary measure. The second theme here is to examine how, from November 1913 onwards, Nationalist politicians gradually and grudgingly came to accept, on a strictly temporary basis, the exclusion of a portion of the province of Ulster from the jurisdiction of a Home Rule parliament. This culminated in the summer of 1916 with a convention of nationalist delegates from the six Ulster counties earmarked for exclusion. At this conference, the leading Nationalist MP in Ulster, Joseph Devlin, prevailed upon his followers to vote themselves temporarily out of a Home Rule Ireland so as to ensure the immediate enactment of Home Rule for the rest of the island. Although the deal upon which this pact was predicated failed, it marked the moment where Ulster nationalists consented to the principle of partition. The partition of Ireland became a reality in 1921 and has remained the bedrock of the two-state solution to the Irish question ever since.