TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE ULSTER QUESTION.
I.—THE PROBLEM OF AREA. THE moment one begins to apply Self-Determination anywhere in the world one is confronted with the Area problem. What is the region in which the principle is to operate ? Thus the problem of Self-Determination immediately gives birth to another problem—the problem of Partition. It is one which has indeed strange vagaries. To make the Home Rule case good, you have got first to demand the partition of the United Kingdom in the name of self-determination, and then to deny partition in the sacred name of Irish Unionism. There has not been anything quite so topsy-turvy since Henry VIII.'s matri- monial difficulties. He had to adopt one theory of divorce in order to get rid of Queen Katharine, and a totally oppo- site theory in order to marry Anne Boleyn. When the Irish defend their paradox by saying that Ireland is a single and indivisible national unit, they are met by the undeniable fact that North-East Ulster, contrasted with the rest of Ireland, has quite as strong marks of a national unit as has Ireland, contrasted with the rest of the United Kingdom. North-East Ulster differs totally in religion, in race, and in industrial complexion from the South and West. The case is equally embarrassing for the Nationalist claim if you attempt to argue the matter on the principle that an island is by nature an indivisible political unit. That would deny the right of self-determination to Wales, which, after all, has the strongest marks of nationality of any portion of the United Kingdom. The people of Wales are com- pletely different in blood, in language, and in social characteristics from the people who inhabit the rest of the islands of Great Britain. If, then, you decide to apply self-determination to Ireland, you will find that you must partition Ireland. Then comes the crucial question— On what lines is your partition to run, what is your area to be ?
Boundary questions are notoriously difficult. In the first place, as soon as you come to consider them in detail you are almost sure to find that the nationalities and creeds and languages have sorted themselves exceedingly badly. Strive for complete justice as you will, you are obliged, for physical and geographical reasons, when drawing your line, to include people who ought to have been excluded and to exclude people who ought to have been included. Again, there is always the temptation when fierce political passions are involved to gerrymander—i.e., while keeping to yoUr principle in the letter, to avoid it in the spirit. That being so, the wise partitioner tries as far as possible to avoid breaking up old boundaries. He shies at new delimitations and new units like a horse at a paper-bag on a windy road.
The first impulse of any one who examines the question of partition in Ireland is to take the whole Province of Ulster and make a clean cut. As soon, however, as one begins to consider the matter closely, one finds that if the whole Province is taken much too large a Roman Catholic and Celtic population is included, and that the result is anything but that well-marked homogeneous political entity which it is imperative to create when the prime object is partitioning for purposes of self-determination. Homo- geneity, or as near as you can get to it in this difficult world, is, remember, wanted on both sides of the partition line.
If you are going to create, as clearly you must if you alter the status quo, a homogeneous Protestant com- munity, you must do something which translated into terms of action means—Eliminate from Protestant and non-Celtic Ulster Celtic and Roman Catholic Donegal, Celtic and Roman Catholic Monaghan, and Celtic and Roman Catholic Cavan. The remaining area consists of Antrim, Down, Londonderry (including Londonderry City), Tyrone, Armagh, and Fermanagh. This area is not, and does not profess to be, based merely upon County boundaries, but rather is an area which is conterminous geographically, which has well- defined existing boundaries, and in which, taken as a whole, you have a large plurality of Protestants, anti-Nationalists, and anti-Sinn Feiners —a majority of men, in fact, who are determined to maintain the Union with Great Britain and to remain under the Parliament at Westminster. This area has been called rather clumsily the Six-County Area, but we must never forget that it is a homogeneous political unit, and not in any sense a federation of Counties.
Those Nationalists who, while consenting to discuss the question of partition, deny that the option of remaining under a Westminster Parliament or going under a Dublin Parliament should be offered to this homogeneous area, adopt the following line of reasoning. They insist, though it is very difficult to understand their grounds for so doing, that an option to belong to, or separate from, the nest of Protestant Ulster must be given County by County. They make this demand largely, of course, as a wrecking demand. They hold that in Tyrone and Fermanagh they have a good chance of just keeping those Counties out. Possibly their calculations are correct ; but if so it is largely due to the fact that a much greater proportion of Protestants than of Roman Catholics went from the two Counties during the war never to return. Can we imagine a stronger reason than this for making the Protestants of Tyrone and Fer- managh demand that the Six-County Area must now more than ever be regarded as a homogeneous unit and not as six separate Counties ?
At first sight it might seem as if the remaining part of North-East Ulster would be the better for losing the large Roman Catholic populations of Tyrone and Fermanagh. As a matter of fact, however, there are parts of Tyrone and also of Fermanagh in which the Protestant population is so important and so intimately connected with the rest of the Ulster Protestants that it could not possibly be deserted on the ground that it had the misfortune to live in a County in which there was also a large Roman Catholic population. In fine, the Protestants could not agree to the isolation of Tyrone and Fermanagh.
But it may be asked—Why not let the matter be decided by the vote of Parishes, or of Districts, or of Parliamentary Constituencies ? But if these smaller areas of self-deter- mination were to be adopted in one part of Ireland, they would have to be adopted in another, with the result that you might have a terrible record of political morcellement. For example, there is a Roman Catholic quarter in Belfast which returns a Roman Catholic Member of Parliament. It would be impossible to put that one Constituency under the Dublin Parliament. Again, it is quite possible that a Division of Dublin would vote itself out of the Celtic and Roman Catholic Ireland. But clearly Belfast and Dublin must each be treated as a homogeneous political unit. In fact, you cannot be too meticulous. You must in many cases adopt the policy of the clean cut. That is, you must make the best homogeneous area that you can, and not allow any disintegrating conditions to obtrude themselves. The Nationalists would clearly be the first to complain of the application of the principle of Parish or Constituency determination. As just noted, it is very possible that such an application to Constituencies would withdraw a piece of Dublin from the Dublin Parliament. Its application to Parishes and Districts would certainly withdraw certain Parishes and Districts from the border Parishes in Ulster, and probably some in the neighbourhood of Dublin. We will not, however, go further into this matter just now. Next week we shall deal in detail with certain other aspects of the Six-County Area.
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