Chapter 4 - Policy and Governance

Summary

[I had] not one idea in my head as to policy.

I know nothing of the application of freedom, as I know nothing of the application of tyranny.

—Ernie O’Malley

The struggle of the Volunteers was a struggle with the Irish people more than a struggle with the invader and indeed the real uphill fight which Sinn Féin has had is with the Irish people.

—Art O’Connor, Director of agriculture in the first Dáil2

The hon. member must remember that in the South they boasted of a Catholic nation.

They still boast of Southern Ireland being a Catholic state.

All I boast of is that we are a Protestant parliament and a Protestant state.

—Sir James Craig Prime Minister of Northern Ireland

Introduction

In 1912, Ireland was a united country, part of the UK, governed directly from Westminster. By 1922, it was divided into Northern Ireland with Home Rule status in the UK and the Irish Free State with dominion status in the British Empire (or Commonwealth). Almost none of those whose political leadership had led to that outcome had desired it in 1912.

Nationalists had wanted independence, sovereignty or at least self-governance, and that was what most got. Their desire that Ireland not be partitioned was frustrated. Unionists had wanted no devolution from Westminster, and that desire was not fulfilled; they had wanted not to be ruled by nationalists, and those in the north-east achieved that.

Hardly any nationalist or unionist leaders had given thought to what it would mean to govern. Northern unionists began to envisage the prospect of self-governance for their part of Ireland only from 1914; but they thought only of defending the perimeter, not of what it would mean to govern with a large recalcitrant nationalist minority. Failure to plan for governing a minority opposed to Home Rule was a more striking failure on the nationalist side, since they had worked for self-government for decades. They had constantly complained of British government neglect of Ireland, so more could have been expected of them in the 1890–1920 period as regards how they would govern better. They were so focussed on the issue of who should govern that they neglected the issue of how to govern, taking it as axiomatic that a native government would deliver better governance (Hoppen 2016, 11–62).