Europe

Abstract

The political relations between Great Britain and Ireland had been in a state of almost continuous tension since the Union in 1800, periodically becoming acute. A crisis was reached with the outbreak of the Great War. On Easter Monday, 1916, there was a rising in Dublin, but the rebellion was abortive, although the political results were far reaching. The old ‘Home Rule’ party was discredited, and its place taken by the ‘Sinn Fein’ and physical force parties, whose nominees, at the General Election of 1918, swept the country with the exception of six of the nine Ulster counties, where the majority of the electors with equal determination declared for continued membership of the United Kingdom. To meet the difficulty an Act was passed m 1920, under which separate Parliaments were set up for “Sou hern Ireland” (26 counties), and “Northern Ireland” (6 counties), The Ulster Unionists accepted this scheme, and the Northern Parliament was duty elected on May 24, 1921, and opened by the King in person in the following June.