Speaking in Wales 100 years ago this month, in September 1924, the former British prime minister David Lloyd George warned that the “Irish banshee has once again appeared in our midst, as it always does in every moment of difficulty in the history of this island”.
Even though he felt the crisis at the time over the Boundary Commission was “trivial… merely the uncombed fringe of that quarrel”, there did, to quote his former colleague Lord Birkenhead, lurk “the elements of dynamite” for the issue to wreak “havoc in British affairs”. At the same time, another former cabinet colleague, Liberal MP CFG Masterman, claimed that “Ireland has a peculiar habit of destroying the hopes of men”.
While Lloyd George believed he had settled the ‘Irish question’ with the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921, it dominated the political agenda in Britain for much of 1924 due to the unresolved boundary dimension of the Treaty. It even sparked an interest for British politicians to visit a border they were unaware of, something we are all too familiar with in recent times. And, as with now, the primary reason for their interest in Ireland was the pursuance of their own domestic agendas in Britain.
The boundary question was out of mind for two years in Britain because of delays in the commission’s convening due to the Irish Civil War and the political turmoil in Britain, amongst other reasons.
By the start of 1924, just as Ramsay MacDonald was about to lead his party into the first Labour government in British history, the biggest obstacle remaining was the northern government’s resistance to have anything to do with the Boundary Commission. It refused to appoint its representative and hoped this refusal would prevent the commission from convening at all.
With an unstable minority administration, MacDonald was desperate that Ireland would not derail his government, hoping that a settlement could be reached between both Irish jurisdictions without a need for the Boundary Commission.
He complained to his friend (some have argued he was obsessed with her) Lady Edith Londonderry, wife of the northern education minister, that the “burden of Atlas was nothing to mine. His was the world; mine is the follies of the world”. He pleaded with her “to help like a dear good woman to give us peace” by asking her Ulster Unionist friends to be reasonable.
The reply from Lady Londonderry was not encouraging, saying that MacDonald “must be reasonable too and keep the faith with Ulster”. She mercilessly mocked the Irish, saying they “can be very charming but they certainly are an inconsequent race – in fact, very like children and when given too much latitude, they get out of hand”. Both her and her husband’s reputations were later tarnished by their reputed support for Nazi Germany.
Despite the Labour British Colonial Secretary JH Thomas fancying himself as a negotiator who considered placating Craig with a peerage, saying, he “can have a bloody Dukedom if it will do the trick; I made a peer and two knights yesterday”, the new Northern Ireland prime minister was not for budging and all efforts at talks and conferences produced no settlement.
As the British and Free State governments moved towards passing simultaneous legislation to allow the British government to appoint the Northern Ireland representative to the commission, Craig galvanised Tory support and the die-hard press to try and wreck the plan, by insisting there could only be minor rectifications to the border, if any, and that Britain must stick by her Ulster friends. Two sets of MPs from Britain embarked on trips to Ireland to visit the border in June and September 1924, trips for show more than genuine efforts to seek solutions.
The opposition leader, Stanley Baldwin, visited Craig in Belfast to try to quell Craig’s anxieties, saying: “If the commission should give away counties, then of course Ulster couldn’t accept it and we should back her. But the government will nominate a proper representative and we hope that he and [Boundary Commission chairman Justice Richard] Feetham will do what is right.”
Despite the northern government refusing to appoint its commissioner, MacDonald chose Joseph R Fisher as its representative, based on Craig’s recommendation in private. Fisher was a staunch unionist who was fully aligned with northern government expectations. On Feetham’s appointment as chairman, Lionel Curtis from the Colonial Office wrote him a two-worded telegram: “England expects”. While Northern nationalists were punished for ignoring northern institutions, the northern government was rewarded for ignoring the Boundary Commission.
The primary concern for Baldwin and MacDonald was not Ireland, but Britain. Both did not want the Irish question to damage British party politics again. Ulster Unionists at the time had powerful allies in Britain that needed to be, if not satisfied, at least silenced.
While both clearly demonstrated a bias towards unionism, they had to use all their diplomatic skills to give the pretence of impartiality in case the Free State government collapsed and was replaced by republicans. For Britain, the Boundary Commission had to convene, not because it was the right thing to do, but because Britain would be at fault for breaching the Treaty if it did not, thus allowing the Free State to commit breaches too, such as potentially declaring a republic.
The same approach towards Ireland persists to this day. While nationalists have had few champions in British politics, unionists have had in the past.
Not any more. Boris Johnson did not align himself to the DUP because he cared about the north. The party was a useful tool until his “oven-ready deal”. The same is true of the TUV aligning with the Reform Party, painfully obvious when Jim Allister was ditched by Nigel Farage for his drinking buddies Ian Paisley Jnr and Sammy Wilson.
People should not be shocked by the bad news delivered by the Labour government last week on a Sean Brown public inquiry, the City Deals or on the funding of Casement Park, although the delivery of the news on Casement late on Friday evening was cowardly and galling.
There are no votes in the north for Labour. There are as good as no votes in the north for the Conservatives too. As history repeatedly shows us, Ireland, both north and south, is only important when British political interests are at stake.