Dan Snow's History Hit - The Partition of Ireland

Episode Date: January 5, 2021

Patricia Clavin, Niamh Gallagher and Caoimhe Nic Dháibhéid joined me on the pod to discuss the history of the partition of Ireland.Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. We've got more podcasts. We're going to be seeing you through this lockdown if you're listening in the UK, if you're listening elsewhere in the world, wherever you are. We've got plenty

of podcasts, got plenty of content coming your way over the next few weeks and months. Don't panic. We're going to be here. You're not going to run out of history. You're not going to run out of history. And then the vaccine's going to come and then we're all going to meet for real. Hey, that's a good point. Don't forget to go to history.com slash tour. You can come on, watch one of these podcasts be recorded live in a big city in the UK near you. We're going to talk about the Anglo-Irish crisis, war of 100 years ago. There was an act passed in 1920, just over 100 years ago now, which saw the beginning of the idea of a divided Ireland.

I'm joined by Professor Patricia Clavin. She's a professor at Jesus College, Oxford. I've also got Niamh Gallagher. She's a fellow at St. Catherine's College, Cambridge. And I've got Cuiva Nguovade, who is a senior lecturer at Sheffield University. So this all-star cast was guiding me through the events of 100 years ago. A story of Britain and Ireland, but as you'll see, also a story of the international context, the end of the First World War, the chaos the world found itself in, influenza pandemic, and strengthening nationalist movements all over the world as well. If you want to go, the January sale is still on, if you want to go and get History sale is still on everyone. If you want

to go and get History Hit for a ridiculously cheap price, you just go on to historyhit.tv, use the code January and you get 30 days free and you get 80% off your first three months. In the meantime, everybody, enjoy these three wonderful historians talking about the beginnings of the partition of Ireland. Niamh, let's start with you. Just give me the background to this important piece of legislation in 1920, the Government of Ireland Act. So the Government of Ireland Act is a really important piece of legislation that is part of, we can see it as part of the Home Rule struggle, which has been a long struggle for self-government in Ireland, really since the 1880s. There were three Home Rule bills in 1886, 1893, then 1912-14, and at the end of 1914, September 1914, a Home Rule bill for Ireland was put in the statute book with a provision for Ulster. Ulster had opposed, in fact

unionists across Ireland had opposed self-government for Ireland. This had become concentrated in Ulster from 1912 and by the end of the First World War the time came for politicians at the time to think about what to do again about the Irish question on Ulster and it was a much more heated environment by the end of the First World War. A new republican party called Sinn Féin had swept to electoral prominence in December 1918 in the general election of that year, the UK general election of that year, I might add. Members had embarked on an insurgency campaign, as it was called at the time, now called the War of Independence or often called the Anglo-Irish War.

So really the act is passed in the moment of the end of the First World War, the crisis of empire that the government is trying to think about, the collapse of various empires in the aftermath of that conflict, but also with an insurgency campaign on the home front, so to speak, within Ireland. So it's passed in that very violent context. Cuiva, it's one of the most intractable problems. It's funny, we talk about 2020, there's sort of no administration has ever faced problems like this. But really, coming out of the end of the First World War with the Spanish influenza, everything else,

this was an extraordinarily difficult problem. You're right. This was an unprecedented situation that the coalition government were facing. And I think that's an important ingredient to bear in mind when we come to assessing the decisions that the British government took when it came to introducing this Government of Ireland Act. This was a coalition government. David Lloyd George was in coalition with some Conservatives. And he, to a certain

extent, is balancing quite a diverse range of opinion in his own cabinet, right? There are hawks and there are doves when it comes to dealing with Ireland. Now, Lloyd George himself, long-standing liberal, he had been a member of the Asquith's government who had introduced the final, the third Home Rule Bill. He was, you know, the famous Chancellor who introduced the People's Budget. He had been part at the heart of this constitutional reworking of the British systems in 1909 and 1910, which enabled that third Home Rule Bill to pass the statute books. Previous Home Rule Bills had been blocked by Conservative Unionist majority in the House of Lords. And of course, what the people's budget and the 1910

election does is to transform that political context. So now Lord George, having replaced Asquith as the prime minister, having made a couple of failed attempts to secretly revive that third home rule bill in 1916 and again in 1917, comes to it once more in 1920 as prime Minister at the head of a coalition government where there is quite a lot of diverging views at a point in time and this is something where Patricia will probably come in on where you know the international system is being renegotiated when there are questions around the future of the empire when the Paris peace conferences are still taking shape where there's mopping up of the great war still happening in parts of the Middle East, where there are fears in Britain itself about what will the divinend of the war be for those who served and made those sacrifices. And now you have this very extensive insurgency in what is a constituent part of the United Kingdom.

And Lord George is reluctant to throw the full weight. For him, it's a police matter. It's a problem of policing to be dealt with by police. And he's trying, I think, to a certain extent to legislate his way partly out of it. And that's what's behind the Government of Ireland Act. Yeah, that's such a good point, Patricia. The First World War obviously had disrupted the world, even for the victors. Empires had collapsed. There was dangerous talk of self-determination afoot. There was, you know, Wilson's ideas around how to build a post-war Europe and a post-war world were potentially existentially threatening to the British Empire. Is that an important part of the context here? It's critical, really, because self-determination, I mean, there's a will also for self-determination in some senses in the British public too, but it speaks to an idea about aligning the nation or the kind of

ethnic national identity of people with the state. And that's quite problematic in the context of the United Kingdom, but it's really existential threat for the British Empire. And there are different ideas about what empire should comprise. And that's partly what the peace process in Paris is also seeking to manage. So Wilson is the one that puts self-determination front and centre of his 14 points. And that's the basis on which the peace is supposed to be negotiated. The other thing that Cuiva and Neve are also highlighting is the way that really between 1918 and 1920, the British government faces a very rapidly changing international situation. So we imagine that peace comes with, you know, the signalling of the armistice in November 1918. But in fact, wars are continued to be fought across

Central and Eastern Europe and down into North Africa well into 1923. So there's a lot of violence and population displacement that's also affecting the way that Britain responds to the Irish question. And at the same time, you have the Americans coming in and saying, we're going to help build the peace through 1918. And then by the middle of 1919, they're starting to withdraw. So the British are also handed this problem of not just managing their empire, but also thinking about the wider international order in which it's situated. Ireland who absolutely regarded themselves not just as citizens of the UK, which is importantly, we don't even have an adjective, a noun for that, but as British, full British probably. And yet there were people who regarded themselves as colonial subjects, unwillingly so. How did the Brits or the Irish feel about Ireland when we're trying to make this categorisation?

Looking back at it from this perspective, you might be able to find a whole range of examples that demonstrate why Ireland didn't seem like an imperial possession. And I'm sure, you know, there's another side of this and Quay will say a little bit more about that. But in terms of why it didn't look like an imperial possession, there are lots of different examples you could choose from. So the Irish of all backgrounds sent MPs to Westminster, actually quite a lot of MPs given the size of the population, something that annoyed many Scottish home rulers at the time. So that was one difference from any other colony. You might also think about the question of land. So Ireland being a largely agricultural country, land was very important but it was even more important

because it was the emotional issue under land reform that had really driven a whole series of political movements, basically since the 1850s, but particularly from the 1870s onwards. Land was very much bound up with ideas of the famine in the 1840s and the idea that land should be owned by the people, not by landlords. And in fact, this question had been largely solved by 1903, with a series of land acts passed by both the liberal and conservative administrations. This was totally different to Russia, for example. You know, land was the greatest social revolutionary question that still exploded well into the 20th century.

But this had been largely solved in Ireland. Some instances, again, this looks like it wasn't an imperial possession. And maybe lastly, you might think about the social reform projects of the new liberal governments from 1900 through to the First World War. So the idea of national insurance, or indeed the Old Age Pensions Act. And in fact, the Pensions Act was enormously successful in Ireland, particularly for female pensioners who had suffered a lifetime of gender pay discrimination.

We'd probably use that term today, but it would have been called something different then. In fact, it wasn't even acknowledged then in many instances. But something like two years after the Act was introduced in 1908, more than 20% of people who were drawing the pension across the United Kingdom actually lived in Ireland. This is an astonishingly high proportion of people. And Cormac O'Grada, who's a fantastic economic historian, has worked on this. So these are lots of instances to show why Ireland was not, in some ways, an imperial possession, or at least you couldn't think of it like that when you're comparing it to other colonial possessions at that time.

Cuifa, do you want to come in on that? I'm really interested in this question at the moment. It's something I've been spending a lot of time thinking about in the last few months. And partly it's been in a response to the broader initiatives around decolonizing the curriculum which you may have been you know touching on with some of your previous guests in this podcast and and what what this might mean for Irish history because you're right Ireland is in a unique position when it comes to its position within the British Empire Ireland is a constituent part of the United Kingdom, as you said. Many, many Irish men serve in the British Empire. Many others serve in the Imperial Administration and the Civil Service. There's very close links between the Irish universities who produce graduates to go and staff the Indian Civil Service, for example. So it's unquestionable that Ireland, to a certain extent, participates in imperial expansion.

At the same time, though, there are other aspects where Ireland is closer and its experience is closer to that of other colonies. And so Ireland is really heavily garrisoned, you know, in terms of the number of army bases and British Army soldiers who are stationed there. The police force in Ireland is an armed police force, unlike the rest of the United Kingdom. Ireland is subject to a whole series of coercive legislation through the 19th century that is quite distinct. Ireland has a viceroy or a lord lieutenant, which is akin to a viceroy, which is, again, that is something that we associate with India or with other imperial possessions. And that's not something that really happens in Scotland or in Wales for example. So the question is really complex and one of the developments in Irish historiography over the last 15-20 years I would say has been, well as I see it, a kind of reappraisal of where historians sit and stand in relation to that question of Ireland's imperial history.

So from the 1990s, there's been a big emphasis on Redmondism, on emphasising the constitutional nationalist tradition. And Redmond, the former leader of the Home Rule Party, had a vision of a Home Rule self-governing Ireland that would play its part in the empire alongside Canada, alongside Australia, alongside South Africa, all the white settler colonies. But there is always a more advanced nationalist sentiment that makes common cause with other anti-colonial nationalists. There's a lot of connections between Indian nationalists and Irish nationalists that begin in the 19th century but run all the way through into the 20s 30s and even the 40s and indeed Ireland as an independent nation has built close relationships with other newly independent former imperial territories in the 50s and 60s through the

United Nations so I would say it's a question on which opinion is divided and what's interesting about the war of independence is that I think the IRA campaign and the growth of Republican sentiment taps into a latent anti-imperialist sentiment that is there throughout the 19th century and gets activated at certain key moments. And what happened in 1919-20 is that this becomes the mainstream sentiment. Niamh, we've just heard all about the context, the global context, the context in Ireland, historic context. How big a problem for the British government is this? And how big a problem are they trying to solve in this Act, the Government of Ireland Act of 1920? Well, I mean, in some ways, you could say this is one of the biggest problems that remains unresolved today. This is a question about national identity,

it's about the question of where sovereignty lies, you know, back to that kind of almost Rousseau idea of the social contract, where does authority lie in a democracy? And this has been part and parcel of the Irish question for the last 120 years, remains so today. So in some ways, for the last 120 years, remains so today. So in some ways, it is one of the biggest difficulties that the British government had to face in 1918. It was of less political importance in 1918 than it had been in 1914, for example, because this was the end of the First World War. There were a variety of other problems to deal with, but it certainly was something that the government and David Lloyd George, who was Prime Minister at the the time hoped to solve as quickly as he could so that he could a park this situation and finally put an end to it and b make sure that he was building a good rapport with the Americans who'd

become who'd come to the fore at the end of the First World War and seemed like a new superpower and of course Britain itself was heavily in debt to to them. So it was a project to resolve an age old question, but also a strategic concern for the environment from 1918 through to 1920. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this act feels like an instrument of government in Whitehall, like a top down. This is like politicians running around in London thinking, oh, God, we just need to do something about this. Is that a fair characterisation? It doesn't seem like something that was as a result of enormous consultation and thought on the ground in Ireland. Yes, absolutely. I think that's really fair.

There was no referendum in this, for example. There was no consultation of different groups or sort of any kind of opinion polling to find out what do people think about the Act. No, it was all rushed through really quickly and very much a top-down thing, as you say. So at the end of the First World War, Lloyd George had a few options. He had to revisit the Irish question, which wasn't really an option. He had to do that one. But in terms of how to solve it, he had a few different solutions in mind. But he chose to throw the problem over to Walter Long, who himself is a Southern Unionist, and to see if Long and a small committee of appointees

could figure it out. And over a series of months, Long privately consulted with some Ulster Unionists, so that's an important feature of this particular act, to see what might be palatable. And he arrived at the solution of having two Home Rule Parliaments for the island of Ireland one for the north one for the south the one in the north would become Northern Ireland that we still

have today the one in the south Southern Ireland never came to pass because it was replaced by the agreement signed the following year in the Anglo-Irish Treaty but back to 1920 you have these two Home Rule Parliaments and then a shared Council of Ireland across the Island of Ireland, which Long thought might be more palatable to nationalists because it kept that idea of unity open. But also it was very much palatable to himself as a Southern Unionist, who would probably be excluded from this Northern Ireland Parliament. But it was also palatable to British ministers, who in the end, didn't want to partition Ireland per se. They wanted unity to be sort of the final solution, so to speak, for Ireland. And, you know, they hoped that this provision would be

in place by the shared Council of Ireland. But little did they know that actually Ulster Unionists had very little intention of using this Council of Ireland and did all they could to thwart it over the next few years, particularly the backbenchers in the new Northern Irish Parliament, which was led by James Craig. You're listening to Danso's History Hit. We're talking about the partition of Ireland 100 years ago. More after this. Land a Viking longship on Ireland's shores.

Scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal japan in our special series chasing shadows where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive but to conquer whether you're preparing for assassin's creed shadows or fascinated by history and great stories listen to echoes of history a ubisoft podcast brought to you by history hits there are new episodes every week Every week. Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,

was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. and that solution was something that whilst various other parts of this act were never implemented and have faded to obscurity that essential idea has been enormously significant because is that the first time partition appears in statute? Cuva. The question of how you deal with Ulster is central to all the issues that are discussed in relation to the Home Rule Bill in 1912, 1913 and 1914. And there is an amendment that is proposed to the Home Rule Bill in that period, the Agar-Roberts

Amendment, which does put partition into the frame formally for the first time. Now, that Agar Roberts Amendment is intended to be a temporary amendment so that it would delay the implementation of an all-Ireland Home Rule Parliament for five years or seven years. I mean, these things are still being discussed. So what happens with the Government of Ireland Act is that it formally recognises partition, which is a proposed solution from at least eight years previously. As Niamh says, there are mechanisms envisaged for reunification, but as we know, they never came to pass. And so the Government of Ireland Act ended up being a sort of final partition or up to this point, a final partition of Ireland, whereas previously partition was

intended as a kind of temporary pause or a breathing space to allow the potential for reunification to come. That's not how it played out. The interesting thing about the Agar Roberts amendment is when it's proposed, so Lord George and Churchill are Liberal ministers at that point, and they abstain on that amendment, they don't vote against it, which I think is quite an interesting straw in the wind of the direction that they would then go down eight years later with the Government of Ireland Act. The other thing, you know, that you've just indicated, so many things that are foundational, but that come out as foundational, but appear temporary, happen in this moment. So the sort of top-downness that you get in this Act, you also get in the creation of mandatory regimes, you know, in Transjordan, in Palestine, in Syria, in Iraq. Of course, ultimately, the mandates go, but the territorial structures

around them remain. And they too were sort of set up with the anticipation at some point that state sovereignty might come and there might be various other ways of building statehood out of this, but it's not the way that it plays out because of the complexities of the situation on the ground. in this period. Is it useful to think about what other solutions there might have been for Ireland? And in fact, were there other competing ideas other than this hugely problematic partitioning of the island? Well, the Irish situation feeds into what's happening in the Paris Peace Conference and then into the League of Nations, which is the first intergovernmental organisation that's supposed to make the Paris peace settlement work and inherits the entire body of law that emerges there. And de Valera appeals to the Paris Peace Conference to allow international intervention

on the part of the Irish nationalists. And I guess what he had in mind is something that the Czechs have been able to secure. But of of course it gives the Irish nationalists rather a different kind of statehood or a different kind of recognition that the British wouldn't possibly have let them have. The other thing that's proposed is a mandatory regime for Ireland so actually putting it in the same kind of camp as Palestine which would have been enormously inflammatory though some people have argued that in fact what happens in Ireland is exactly like what happens in Palestine and some of the policing and some of the conflict that results comes out of that and then the third proposal is that the League of Nations create an international tribunal to consider the legality of the Government of Ireland Act and that potential settlement and put it before a bunch of international judges who come from territories that recognise,

they think they recognise these kind of minority issues. So the Dutch are proposed as judges, the Belgians are proposed as judges. So they've kind of got experience with ethno-national conflict within their boundaries. national conflict within their boundaries. And then there's also an interesting suggestion that the Swedes and the Norwegians should intervene because they had a peaceful separation in 1905. So you also get the beginnings of the Norwegian peace tradition and the kind of Oslo back channel that comes out of this too. Just to add to Patricia's point, I think it's really interesting to note that there were lots of other solutions proposed to solve the Irish question in the previous 40 years as well. So in 1886, Joseph Chamberlain, who had been a Liberal MP, he split from the Liberal Party in 1886 over the issue of Home Rule.

But he first proposed this idea of federalism, the idea of devolved parliaments across the United Kingdom, something, of course, we're very familiar with today. And this idea was revived again in 1911 by Winston Churchill, who proposed a parliament for Scotland, one for Wales, a parliament for all of Ireland, in addition to the creation of legislative authorities across England. And all of these bodies would be subservient to the imperial parliament. So this very much resonates today. And we can think about even the greater powers that have been given to Greater Manchester, for example. But in 1911, this was far too radical for any politician to entertain. And they barely even thought about the issue before they dismissed it. So that was one of the things. actually passed, it would be wrong to say that there was considerable agreement by parties on its actual final details. So, for instance, the Trades Union Congress was very much against this idea and believed that actually Ireland should be a dominion, much like Canada, much like Australia. The Esquithian Liberals, so those who had stayed with Esquith and those who didn't support David

Lloyd George, believed that there should be a county opt-out option for all of Ireland to do with the Act. They didn't believe that actually two parliaments and the shared Council of Ireland was the way forward. So I think it's really fair to say that this wasn't a sort of a solution that finally got agreement and was passed through. Still, it was really muddy and uncomfortable and there was very little agreement when it was actually passed in December 1920. Can I just ask all three of you, can we just rehearse the reasons why Ulster was so implacably opposed to even home rule, any kind of constitutional solution that involved them being ruled from Dublin? land a viking longship on island shores scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies

teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at

pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Well, I can start. I mean, we can talk about the reasons why unionist identity develops in the way that it does from the 17th century onwards and why it ends up being concentrated in the northeast of Ireland. There are plantations all over Ireland in the 16th and the 17th century. It's quite an extensive plantation in the 17th century in Ulster, where lots of settlers, planters come over from Scotland and from England. There's quite an intense historical experience later in the 17th century when there's a rebellion by those who have been displaced by that experience of plantation. those who have been displaced by that experience of plantation and they rise up in 1641 and and attack some of those settlers and that really enters into this kind of social memory of this community of this unionist community that they are different they are distinct they have a different religion to the rest of Ireland they have a different sort of ethnic background insofar as

they come coming from England and from Scotland, Lowland Scotland in particular. And through the 19th century, the industry that develops in Ireland is concentrated in Belfast. Belfast is the only part of Ireland that really goes through an industrial revolution. The shipbuilding industry, the linen industry is very developed in Belfast. And there's a sense that there's a distinct claim to nationhood based on ethnicity, based on religion, based on economic prowess. These are all the sorts of arguments that get rehearsed in 1886, in 1893, and again in 1912, 13 and 14. And as the rest of Ireland kind of undergoes slow industrialisation, if at all, doesn't really industrialise to the same extent, you have these two kind of divergent paths that are quite distinct in Ireland and in Ulster.

So it's a result of, I suppose, the happenstance of history, but it has a kind of very distinct geographic concentration in the Northeast. Guiva, I just want to say how happy it makes me that I ask a question about Ulster sentiments, and you just jump straight back to the 16th and 17th centuries to provide context. That's what I love about this podcast. I love about history fans. Niamh, let's come to you. Can I ask you, tell me about the Act when it goes through. Does it have any effect in Ireland or have events take on the ground taken over by that stage? Yes, yes, it does. So it's greeted very positively by the bulk of Ulster Unionists who endorsed the Act in the May 1921 elections. And for them, the Act is seen actually as a

victorious outcome. This is the outcome of years of resistance to Irish Home Rule, and it preserves the bulk of Ulster Unionists within the United Kingdom with their own Parliament, which might well enhance that relationship. So it seemed to be a very positive thing. Now, it's very different in the south. In the south, the parliament is opened, and in fact, a handful of Irish unionists attend the opening ceremony, but that's it. It gets no wider reception. And there's a couple of different reasons for this. So it's important to think about, firstly, that Ireland as a whole was undergoing what was called the War of Independence at that time, from 1919 to 21 and it was of course not an evenly spread conflict it was concentrated in particular areas but still you have this background context of yet

another conflict that Ireland is going through so not exactly the best conditions to open up a new parliament but even if that conflict hadn't occurred, I think it's probably fair to say that the December 1918 general election, UK general election, had demonstrated that Irish nationalists were no longer comfortable with the idea that Westminster should legislate on their behalf. In fact, it was up to Irish nationalists themselves, elected representatives of Irish nationalism, to decide Ireland's future not Westminster to decide the future and this is part of the reason why the Government of Ireland Act is itself ignored and indeed that Parliament of Northern Ireland isn't even recognised by many

nationalists. So in the south it gets overtaken the idea of setting up a home rule parliament in the south is is a dead letter and anyway the Act becomes superseded quite quickly by a treaty between Westminster and the Free Staters. Yes, it does. So December 1921 is a really important date in Irish nationalist memory, not December 1920 that we're talking about today. December 1921 is when the Anglo-Irish Treaty is signed between Irish and British representatives. It creates what is known as the Free State. That's the 26-county entity within Ireland that later on becomes the Irish Republic.

And this treaty is ratified in the new Irish Parliament in January 1922, which incidentally had been illegally formed from Westminster's eyes in January 1919, but which now they recognise. So in February 1922, the month after, Westminster agrees to this, formally agrees to this idea of a free state. And the free state itself comes into existence with agreement on the vast majority of sides in December 1922. For those who endorsed

the free state, such as Arthur Griffiths and Michael Collins, very familiar names who had been involved in the negotiations, this was freedom to gain freedom, as Collins famously said. So it wasn't quite the republic that many Republicans had fought and died for in the Easter Rising of 1916, but it was a stepping stone to get there, right, and what of course emerges later on in the 20th century. But because it wasn't exactly a republic there and then, there are various clauses within this Act that trigger a split within nationalism. And this causes a civil war in Ireland over the terms of the treaty that lasts from 1922 to 1923. So these are all really important moments in the history of Irish nationalism. And indeed,

Ireland will be thinking about how to commemorate these over the next two years. These are very divisive events and very tricky historical memories but just to say a word here on Northern Ireland. So when the Free State was created Westminster had a clause that allowed Northern Ireland to reconsider if it wanted to join Ireland so remain a part of Ireland but two days after the Free State was created Northern Ireland quickly said no. It left Ireland and joined the United Kingdom. And that's the sort of relationship that we have today. So this was a very clear indication from multi-unionism that they definitely didn't want to be associated with Ireland. They wanted to remain within the United Kingdom. Patricia, the fact that the British Empire, just the victor of the First World War, the largest empire by territorial acquisition in the history of mankind, the fact they just effectively lost a chunk of territory next to or arguably in the mother country, certainly next to the metropolitan centre.

What did that mean in the world at the time? Well, it was very closely watched outside as well as inside Britain. I think what's clear when you put what happens in the Government of Ireland Act and the broader context and the machinery of it that Niamh and Cuiver have set out is that you see this as one act in a whole series of pieces of legislation and territorial settlements that the British are trying to draft all at the same time. If you think about what's happening in Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, around the borders of Austria, Hungary, you know, you look across to Turkey, everything is on the move. And so the British are sort of, you know, pulling these levers and trying to do deals all over the shop. I'm not sure it really registered in quite the way that we think it did,

because it's seen as a contingent settlement and something that, you know, might play out and look different in a few years time. And that was certainly also what quite a lot of the other elements of the peace settlement people thought that they would change, you know, that peace would be sort of built in the making. You have minority commissions and minorities created all the way across central and eastern Europe and down and and of course they are they populate the British empire and the problem that the British have in a war that you know we always think of the second world war being fought for democracy in some senses Wilson's stress on self-determination and also the effects of mass conscription underscore that you know the kind of sense of some sort of dividend means that

you know nationhood is also turning into something else you've got to sort of deliver on the promises that the state is making and so losing a bit of territory in one place while you're trying to hold the national sort of project together in another seems like a reasonable deal in the short term, I think. But, you know, the other problem that the British have got is essentially through the Paris peace negotiations and the territorial settlement, everything that they're doing is now multilateral. They've got multilateral relations with the Dominion powers, who've also got a new sense of statehood. I mean, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, they have different power political relationships to Britain than they had before the First World War. Their consent hadn't been sought in this war either. So they're also flexing their muscles. So, you know, the British Empire is bigger, but it's also a heck of a lot more complex.

And then you've got the fact that the British are just massively in debt to the United States. So they're bigger. The economic and financial base on which they can use, you know, to manage this imperial presence is much diminished. And that produces all sorts of pressures subsequently. That's the interesting thing about this story for me, well one of the many interesting things. Does the dissolution of the United Kingdom a hundred years ago presage the collapse of the British Empire? Are we reading it as the complete dissolution of the United Kingdom? It's sort of just recalibrated and reformed and a bit is sort of carved off, which remains in the Commonwealth until 1949. And then through the Act of Declaring

a Republic exits the Commonwealth. So it seems to me that the United Kingdom is actually quite a durable and malleable institution that is quite flexible and can kind of reshape and remorph itself into various phases. I do think, though, that the example of Ireland is watched very closely by nationalists in India, by nationalists in Egypt. I think that once Ireland exits the Commonwealth in 1949, it's quite interesting that almost no other former colonies have taken that path since then I know it had come up recently in relation to is it the Bahamas I think Barbados I think Barbados I beg your pardon in the last few months certainly at the time Ireland did exit the Commonwealth and it was felt or it was believed that being a republic was incompatible with being inside the Commonwealth and certainly

as we know now with the example of India, that's not the case. But these are all very new relationships that are being forged and being created, and nobody quite knows how they're going to work. So I can see how you could make an argument that it kind of heralds the breakup of the empire.

But I think the empire is also a bit of a malleable institution that kind of takes form and repositions itself and reshapes itself. And now we have this thing called the Commonwealth. And the other thing I would add in, really, is that it's too easy to see Anglo-Irish relations in that kind of binary setting. And actually, if you look at how the British and the Irish cooperate internationally in places like Geneva,

essentially what you have through the crisis in the League of Nations as the Second World War comes is the British essentially usher in Sean Lester as the Secretary General, Irish Secretary General, into the League of Nations who kind of holds the flame of international institutions until the UN comes. So the British and the Irish in other international settings work together quite well. It's just more difficult when they have to negotiate with one another and the unionists in a kind of trilateral setting. That's when things get much more sticky. We're gonna have to leave it there. I'm afraid everybody I've taken up far too much of your time. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. hope you enjoyed the podcast just before you go bit of a favor to ask i totally understand if you don't want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money makes sense but if you could just

do me a favorites for free go to itunes or wherever you get your podcast if you give it a five star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review purge yourself give it a glowing review i'd really appreciate that it's tough weather that law of the jungle out there and i need all the fire support i can get so that will boost it up the charts it's so tiresome but if you could do it i'd be very very grateful thank you douglas adams the genius behind the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians.

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