IRELAND TODAY : III. A KINGDOM DIVIDED
By DEREK VERSCHOYLE
[This is the third of a short series of articles dealing with Ireland in its domestic and external aspects. Next week's article will deal with " Social Trends in Eire "] THE unity of Ireland is an ideal which no Irish patriot will ever abandon. Partition outrages national senti- ment more savagely even than .did the Union system of government which, however great and numerous its demerits, at any rate did no essential violence to the natural unity of the country ; and it is economically indefensible. Even in the six counties it would be difficult to find a single reason- able person, whatever his political views, who would not deplore the fact of Partition. But it is equally true that in the whole thirty-two counties of Ireland it would be as difficult to find a reasonable person who would assert in a mood purged of sentiment that the immediate ending of Partition is within practical politics.
Partition dates as a fact of political history only from 1921. But much earlier than then a distinct cleavage in social and political aims existed between the north-eastern corner and the rest of Ireland. The causes of Partition may be traced in the final analysis to the plantation of Ulster in the seven- teenth century, when the resistance of Ulster to English rule was for the first time in history successfully broken by the introduction into the Irish social system of an alien element incapable of assimilation. The more immediate cause. was the discrepancy of political objectives created in Ireland in the course of the nineteenth century by the various measures by which the privileged position of the Protestant ascendancy was destroyed, and the vested interests of the Protestant landlords in the continuance of the existing system of government diminished. In the South the Fran- chise Act of 1884 and reforms in the land system removed the barrier of privilege which had existed between Protestant landlord and Catholic tenant. But in the North Presbyterians were as numerous as Catholics among the new tenant purchasers.
As rent-paying tenants, at variance with Protestant landlords, Presbyterians and Catholics had had interests and objectives in common. The land reforms, which removed Presbyterian grievances against Protestant landlords, also removed what causes they had had for collaboration with Catholics ; they united Episcopalians and Presbyterians and had the effect of replacing their previous opposition on agrarian questions with a common antagonism against the Catholics who were their competitors for the land. This Protestant Front, deter- mined to maintain the ascendancy which survived in the North, recognised in Home Rule for the whole of Ireland the only political development which could undermine its position. It represented only a small fraction of popular opinion in Ireland, but its position was made impregnable by the support which it received from Protestant opinion in Great Britain. Great Britain's refusal to discourage even the technique of its oppositioh to Home Rule, demanded with increasing vehemence by the overwhelming majority of the Irish, finally made Partition inevitable. England's willingness to defer to the minority on this fundamental point against the demands of the great majority of the inhabitants of Ireland is to the Irish nationalist the crowning injustice in the history of England's treatment of Ireland. It has had 'the effect, not of settling the Irish question, but of creating a new problem in Anglo-Irish relations almost as great as the sum of those which the Treaty removed. It is moreover a problem whose acuteness the passage of time will do nothing to diminish ; it will rather be raised with greater bitterness in every generation as resentment against it accumulates, for the Irish nationalist will never be reconciled to Partition and will never abandon his grievance against Great Britain for providing the machinery whereby it was imposed. But even those who protest most vehemently against its existence recognise, if they are honest with themselves, that the problem is no more easy to solve now than it was before 1921. Indeed it can at any rate be argued that if British policy in Ireland had followed a different course from lgoo onwards, Partition could have been avoided in 1921 ; no one in his senses can suggest that it could be summarily removed now.
Developments north and south of the border since 1921 have emphasised rather than diminished the cleavage in political and social aims between the two areas. There is no reason on urea why the Free State should have felt constrained to modify any part of its policy in deference to the wishes of a minority artificially maintained outside its territory, but it must be recognised that few features of the Free State's political or social programme during the last sixteen years have been designed to increase Northern enthusiasm for reunion. The exact depth of Ulster's attachment to the Crown is difficult to fathom ; judging from the threats of Orangemen in moments of supposed crisis it would be reasonable to suppose that its loyalty was strictly conditional on British willingness to preserve intact the Protestant ascendancy in the North. But however secure or insecure its basis in sentiment may be, its attach- ment is certainly strong enough for it to have been deeply shocked by the Free State's policy towards the Crown and the Commonwealth. Equally objectionable to the Northern mind is much of the social programme of the South. Many of its objections it is possible for anyone to share. Eire's ridiculous censorship of books and film;, its ban upon divorce and interference in marital affairs, and tht Jansenist attitul towards entirely harmless pleasures which the Roma Catholic Church is encouraged to exercise, are not feature of life in a satisfactorily progressive State. Southern Ireland record during the last fifteen years shows that Protestan fears of official victimisation for religious reasons are quit._ groundless, but these indirect results of Roman Catholic supremacy are equally offensive to Northern sentiment. , A still greater obstacle to the ending of Partition is Ulster s fear of the economic consequences of reunion. The economy of the North of Ireland is based principally upon export industries, largely dependent for their prosperity on the open British market. The present export surplus of the linen, rope, tobacco, and textile-machinery concerns could not be wholly or even largely absorbed by Southern Ireland ; and Ulster fears that, if Ireland were again reunited, competitors in Great Britain would agitate for the exclusion of Northern Irish products from the British market. For the shipbuilding industry Southern Ireland could patently do nothing, unless the plan to create an Irish merchant fleet should materialise, which for various reasons it would be very unlikely to do. Yet before Ulster will show the slightest enthusiasm towards any scheme for reunion with the rest of the country, Eire will have to produce a guarantee, whether by extracting from Great Britain the promise of unusually generous terms or by some other means, that a United Ireland will improve rather than weaken the none too healthy industrial position of the North.
The Irish question, with its potentially disastrous effects on the safety of the British Isles and the solidarity of the Commonwealth, thus for the moment rests almost in a state of deadlock. Southern Ireland can do nothing to solve it, beyond recognising, as she now appears to do, that the un- healthy state of her relations with England in recent years is one of the major causes of Ulster's hostility towards her, and taking the appropriate steps towards removing that cause of friction. The sum of Gteat Britain's contribution to thz solution of the problem is strictly limited : she cannot coerce Ulster, she can only suggest, and avoid a policy which will unnecessarily reinforce Ulster's reluctance to allow the position to be reviewed. The settlement of the problem is almost entirely in the hands of the Government of Northern Ireland. It is unlikely to be moved to assist in a settlement by the existence within its territory of a minority, representing about one-third of its population, which is vehemently opposed to the maintenance of Partition ; but if its professions of loyalty are anything but mere cupboard love, it conceivably may be by the knowledge of how substantially the prolonga- tion of a purely obstructive attitude might diminish the safety of Great Britain. Corporate union is obviously impossible at the moment to achieve ; but it should not be impossible to devise some arrangement, combining juridical unity with full local autonomy, which would satisfy the interests of both areas. The South is so anxious to obtain some recognition of the unity of Ireland that the North could obtain what terms it demanded for facilitating it. It is perhaps doubtful whether anything which the South could offer by itself would appear to the North to be enough ; but if Great Britain recognises that it is her moral duty to contribute all that she can towards the solution of a problem which is largely of her creation, the question should not be incapable of settlement.
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