Ulster devolution demolished
John Biggs-Davison
The Factory of Grievances: Devolved Government In Northern Ireland 1921-39 Patrick Buckland (Gill & MacMillan £13) 'The six counties were hardly handed over to the new government in a state of good order.' Much that has been happening in Northern Ireland during the present dire decade was happening then. The IRA was at war. There were snipers in Belfast. There Were also loyalist private armies. A gbvernment in the South was exercised about prisoners in the North. A Northern government was anxious lest Unionists take the law into their own hands. London was eager to conciliate the South. In a somewhat different sense Northern Ireland is as it then ' was a 'factory of grievances'. The phrase is that of Sir Wilfred Spender, the English soldier who espoused the cause of Ulster and was persuaded by Sir James Craig (afterwards Lord Craigavon) to become his Cabinet Secretary. After 20 years as a civil servant in the province, Spender's views had become `jaundiced'; but he also applied the title of 'factory of grievances' to the Free State.
Dr Patrick Buckland, the historian of Irish and Ulster Unionism, describes 'the fundamental weakness of the 1920 Government of Ireland Act' as that of 'responsibility without real power'. The Northern Ireland parliament was very much subordinate to the imperial parliament which was to put an end to it in 1972. The major taxes were for Westminster not Stormont. Yet Westminster declined to insist on the redress of minority grievances. The weakness lay not in partition. 'Irishmen were divided before partition. The political, social, religious and economic development of Northern Ireland had produced by the early 20th century two powerful but opposed Political movements, Irish nationalism and Ulster Unionism. Partition merely recognised this division.'
Ulster was different even in the dim times When it was 'Ulaid'. She could see Scotland When lakes and bog and forest masked the kingdoms of the South. Self-determination for the distinct people of the north-east was the corollary and condition of the selfdetermination conferred upon Southern Ireland through the Treaty of 1921. When empires retire and the right of selfdetermination is exercised there are often those left on the uncongenial side of a frontier. Dismissing the notion of repartition, Dr Buckland asserts that 'any boundary between North and South Would have caused some economic dislocation and been contrary to either nationalist or Unionist wishes'. The Southern Irish loyalist remnant either left, or accepted, the Free State and, when it came about by subterfuge and stages, the Republic of Ireland outside the Commonwealth. Leading Unionists were made Senators of the new Dominion. Magnanimity was shown on both sides. In Ulster too little was shown on either side.
Carson, who receives scant mention from Dr Buckland, whose study begins in 1921, had urged that the minority should 'have nothing to fear from the .Protestant majority. Let us take care to win all that is best among those who have been opposed to us in the past. While maintaining intact our own religion, let us give the same rights to the religion of our neighbours.' But there were too few hands to grasp what olive branches were proferred. The Northern Ireland minority did not accept the new order as did the minority in the South. In 1922 Michael Collins was claiming to act as a self-appointed co-dominus. 'At first, all nationalists boycotted the new parliament. For a few months after 1922 some Catholics and nationalists did consider recognising the new state and taking their seats, partly because of the inability of the Northern government to follow a consistently con ciliatory policy, partly because of divisions within the nationalist community itself, and, partly because of continued nationalist hopes that Northern Ireland would disappear as a result of the Boundary Commission.' In the event, the Boundary Commission produced no change in the Border and the Irish Free State deposited with the League of Nations the Tripartite Agreement thereon. Most nationalist MPs then took their seats at Stormont only to withdraw when de Valera returned in 1932. John Henry Collins, the Nationalist Member for South Down, proceeded to the South to make election speeches on behalf of Fianna Fail, a party with which the SDLP in its turn has a connection.
It is not surprising that Unionism became an ideology of siege and that Unionists in power discriminated against such a minority. There could have been no excuse for discrimination had the minority acknowledged the majority will to remain united with Great Britain and worked for accommodation and accord with the majority, thus acquiring influence and authority in the province. The central character of this book is Craig. Indeed it started as a political biography of him. At the outset Craig promised fairness in the administration of the law; and 'much was said about the creation of a model state securing prosperity and justice for all classes and creeds'. However, Di Buckland's meticulous examination of departmental documents reveals that discrimination in the enforcement of the law arose out of the violence of 1921-22. At the same time Catholic policemen were staunchly defended against false and bigotted allegations of disloyalty, The first Inspector-General of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, Lieutenant-Colonel Wickham, insisted that without `RC Police and RC Detectives' information would not be obtained from 'the RC areas'. Dr Buckland also finds discrimination in education policy and gerrymandering of electoral boundaries. The case of Londonderry was flagrant. In both matters Catholics missed opportunities of advancing their grievances. Then as now the Presbyterians produced the abler political clerics. It is made clear that the abolition of PR was directed not against the minority but against the fissiparous faction to which Ulster Unionism is prone.
Here is a gloomy portrayal of the provincial regime. Northern Ireland was ground between an exacting Treasury and 'parsimonious local authorities'. Craig had held junior Ministerial office in the imperial government. He was more experienced therefore and also more tolerant than most of his colleagues, towards Ulster Catholics — loyalty was his criterion — and towards the South. At first he did not believe in the permanence of the Border. Nor did the imperial government, despite the slur of 'divide and rule'; which is why the regional parliament and government were set up.
Although often ill and absent, Craig exemplified the celebrated Stormont accessibility — Northern Ireland is rather smaller than Yorkshire — receiving countless deputations, touring the Province and particularly the Border, talking to everyone. He cut through red tape to provide a road for Cookstown or speed some other long delayed amenity. He sat easily to Estimates, which shocked the non-Keynesian (non-) Spender. Under Craig private enterprise, and, failing that, local government were left to get on with it. Stormont reacted, perhaps excessively, to the over-centralisation of the old Irish government.
From his sombre narrative Dr Buckland draws his mOral: that devolution is no answer to the problems of the United Kingdom. 'There really is no half-way house between union and complete separation.'
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