Ireland: the Anglo-Irish Treaty

Abstract

The ceremonial opening of the new Northern Ireland parliament by King George V on 22 June 1921 seemed to symbolise the country’s formal division into two contrasting parts. Not only did it give the highest constitutional sanction to the six-county parliament, but the effusion of loyalty with which Belfast’s Protestants welcomed the monarch was intended to show the world how different their sentiments were from those of the rest of Ireland. But partition was not yet quite so firmly set as these events seemed to indicate. Sinn Fein had taken no part in the constitutional progress of the Government of Ireland Act and was still waging its unremitting armed struggle for a united Irish republic. In London there was a growing, albeit reluctant and belated, realisation that any settlement which did not include Sinn Fein would merely provide the basis for further bloodshed. Naturally the government would have preferred to negotiate from a position of strength and hence a final period of attempted military repression went alongside hesitant approaches towards the Sinn Fein leaders. Unofficial channels of communication already extended via Dublin Castle, but in April and May contact of a more melodramatic nature took place when Lord Derby and then Craig made secret visits to de Valera. Although these were inconclusive, they indicated the way British thinking was going.