British conservative opinion, the Ulster question, and the partition of Ireland, 1912-21

Abstract

In 1939, in his book Ulster and the British empire, Henry Harrison described partition as ‘a word of evil omen. . . It implies something resembling the surgical division of a living organism—a lopping off of limbs’. A writer on the partition of Ireland, Dr Denis Gwynn, condemned it as ‘so illogical, and so harmful in its results, that it cannot continue indefinitely’, and hinted that the imperial parliament ‘which devised and imposed the present partition’ should use ‘its influence and its authority to promote agreement’. This paper, however, makes no attempt to judge the morality of what was done in 1920, nor does it suggest a means of its undoing. It examines the attitude of British conservatives to what was known as the ‘Ulster question’ at three critical phases between 1912 and 1921, with special reference to the period after 1916, it deals with Anglo-Irish relations only as they affect this theme; and it attempts to show that, as far as British conservative opinion was concerned, the fate of Ulster, or of any part of Ulster, was always secondary to what were regarded as the interests of England and of the British empire.