QUB Talks 100 – The Partition of Ireland: Causes and Consequences

Contributor:

Dr Robert Lynch

Talk Title

Partition and the Anglo-Irish Treaty

Talk Synopsis:

This talk explores the background to the Anglo-Irish Treaty and its immediate (and lasting) effects. It suggests that ‘the most extreme paranoias of the Unionist psyche’ were reinforced by the events of the post-Treaty period, including as a result of growing unionist mistrust of the British government. And it explores how the Boundary Commission allowed ‘both sides to place radically different interpretations on the shape of any future settlement.’ It also looks at Sinn Féin’s attitude towards/understanding of unionist concerns and the extent to which these may have been predicated on a sense of unionism as ‘somehow inauthentic… and that conflict in Ireland was due fundamentally to the British presence’ rather than the ‘reality that there were almost one million people in Ulster who wanted nothing to do with their nationalist project.’ And it concludes by suggesting that ‘Ulster’s experience in 1922’ shaped the ‘rather draconian defensiveness’ of the Unionist government which emerged in its aftermath as well as creating disunity within the ‘northern Catholic minority’ and between northern and southern nationalists.

Short biography:

Dr Robert Lynch, University of Glasgow

Further Reading:

A State Under Siege. The Establishment of Northern Ireland 1920-1926 – Brian Follis

Contributor:

Professor Robert Savage

Talk Title

Broadcasting and the Border: How partition influenced broadcasting on the island of Ireland

Talk Synopsis:

This talk explores the development of broadcasting in Ireland during the 1920s and how the new radio stations in Belfast and Dublin were affected (and constrained) by politics. It describes the growing popularity and influence of broadcast services and the impact of new technologies, competition and wider social changes on the work of programme-makers in the BBC and RTÉ. It reflects critically on aspects of editorial decision-making and output by both broadcasters, but suggests that despite ‘all of [their] inevitable failures and shortcomings, ‘independent public service media’ remain ‘an indispensable component of any truly democratic society.’

Short biography:

Professor Robert Savage is the Director of the Boston College Irish Studies Program and a member of the university’s History Department faculty.

Further Reading:

The BBC's Irish Troubles, Television, Conflict and Northern Ireland – Robert Savage

Contributor:

Professor Bill Kissane

Talk Title:

The Partition of Ireland in a Global Context

Talk Synopsis:

This talk explores partition in an international context and also the similarities and differences between what happened in Ireland and elsewhere, including Cyprus, India and Palestine. It suggests that most partitions are ‘provisional’ because they ‘fail to resolve conflicts’ and looks at ‘the identity shifts that occur when borders change’ and what these meant (and mean) in an Irish context. It looks at how majority rule ‘polarised rather than reconciled’ communities in Northern Ireland and the way in which Partition led to ‘consolidation and identity formation based on religion’ in the decades that followed. And it concludes by considering what the experience and effect of partition might mean for future attempts to resolve deep-seated territorial  conflicts.

Short biography:

Bill Kissane is a Reader in Politics at the London School of Economics.

Further Reading:

Literature, Partition and the Nation State – Joe Cleary

Contributor:

Professor Richard Bourke

Talk Title:

Unionisms and Partition

Talk Synopsis:

This talk explores the background to the Government of Ireland Act (1920) and how it was ‘a departure from unionism in its original, “classic” sense’. It describes how the creation of a ‘parliamentary federation’ was ‘a setup which unionist statecraft had been determined to avoid’ and how it ‘envisaged the creation of yet another union: an Irish union’ which would be facilitated by the formation of a Council of Ireland. It suggests that UK government policy in the early 1920s ‘was neither unionist nor partitionist in complexion’ – something that was reflected in the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty which ‘prospectively incorporated’ Northern Ireland into the Irish Free State. It also looks at differing views of partition as either ‘undemocratic’ or ‘a matter of democratic right’ and the effect of subsequent political developments. And it looks to how Ulster unionism might think about its future and constitutional relations – ‘pursuing a lasting settlement instead of protesting as its future is shaped behind its back’.

Short biography:

Richard Bourke is Professor of the History of Political Thought, and a Fellow of King’s College, at the University of Cambridge.

Further Reading:

A Fool’s Paradise: Being a Constitutionalist’s Criticism of the Home Rule Bill of 1912 – A. V. Dicey

Contributor:

Professor Brendan O’Leary

Talk Title

Partition in Comparative Perspective

Talk Synopsis:

This talk places the Partition of Ireland in a comparative international context. It describes some of what was happening elsewhere in Europe at the same time and looks at the background and effects of the ‘two partitions in 1920: of Ireland and of Ulster.’ It notes that ‘few modern partitions have endured’ and explores the arguments that have been advanced for them and their application in different places, including Ireland. It suggests that conflict ‘in and over Northern Ireland over the last century may be correctly attributed both to partition itself and to the imperfection of the partition’. And it makes a case for how (in both general and specific terms) ‘partitions generate security dilemmas… pushing conflict downstream’, concluding that ‘prudence… mandates opposing partition in policymaking and placing the burden of proof on its advocates.’

Short biography:

Brendan O'Leary is the current Lauder Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania.

Further Reading:

A Treatise on Northern Ireland, (Vol 1, Chapter 7, and Vol 2, Chapters 1 and 2) – Brendan O’Leary,

Contributor:

Professor Fearghal McGarry

Talk Title:

The Killing of Sir Henry Wilson: An Irish Tragedy

Talk Synopsis:

This talk explores the circumstances and impact of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson’s murder on the doorstep of his Belgravia home in June, 1922. It describes his role in the politics of this period, including as chief security advisor to the new Northern Ireland government, and how his killers (two London-born republicans) had served in the British army during WW1. It suggests that the story of Sir Henry Wilson and his killers, including their views and sense of identity, illustrates the complex and interconnected nature of relationships ‘within and between’ Ireland and Britain – many of which are played out in people’s individual lives/family circumstances. And it concludes by suggesting that ‘an ethical remembering of this difficult history’ might usefully foreground ‘its complexities and contradictions and the cost of violence for those left behind… not least the narrowing of identities… which continues to challenge reconciliation in Ireland.’

Biography:

Fearghal McGarry is Professor of Modern Irish History at Queen’s University Belfast.

Further Reading:

Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson: A Political Soldier – Keith Jeffery

Contributor:

Dr Tim Wilson

Talk Title:

Violence: the Human Cost of Partition

Talk Synopsis:

This talk explores the context and nature of the violence that accompanied Partition and the establishment of Northern Ireland and also the lasting effects/significance of the events of that period. It describes the scale of sectarian violence and related disturbances in Belfast and elsewhere, including workplace expulsions, rioting and the forced movement of people from their homes. It suggests that events in Northern Ireland were part of ‘a wider, all-Ireland conflict’ but that they also had their own ’dynamic and… momentum’ and that all of this was ‘complex, shifting [and] layered’. And it details how violence began to adopt the tactics and technology of WW1, local efforts at conciliation and the ways in which this ‘extraordinarily intense period of turbulence’ allowed all sides to ‘glimpse a sort of abyss underneath the constitutional floorboards’ whilst also setting ‘the pattern for events to come’.

Short Biography:

Dr Tim Wilson is the current Director of the Centre for Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at University of St Andrews.

Further Reading:

From Pogrom to Civil War: Tom Glennon and the Belfast IRA – Kieran Glennon

Contributor:

Professor Marianne Elliott

Talk Title:

Partition's Casualties: religious minorities in the new states

This talk looks at the experience of minority communities in the decades that followed Partition and some of the social, religious and political factors involved. It suggests that Partition ‘created two states whose characters were informed by sectarianised religious cultures’ and explores how community relations have changed over time. It describes the impact of violence and discrimination and the role played by religion in public life and how this has been attenuated, to varying degrees, in both states. It also argues that ‘unionism and the Catholic church still behave like endangered species in Northern Ireland’ and speculates about the effect which Brexit might have on constitutional arrangements more generally.

Short Biography:

Professor Marianne Elliott is Professor emerita at the Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool.

Further Reading:

Protestant and Irish: the minority's search for place in independent Ireland – Ian d’Alton and Ida Milne (eds.)

Contributor:

Professor Glenn Patterson

Talk Title:

Writing and the Border

Talk Synopsis:

This talk looks at how ideas of borders and boundaries have been reflected in Irish literature. It ranges widely across time and genres and includes reflections on works by Spike Milligan, Anna Burns, Patrick Kavanagh and Seamus Heaney. It suggests that ‘fractal-like, the border recurs and recurs’ in much of the writing from/about Northern Ireland down the decades and that this divide is ‘repeated and magnified in the divisions between neighbourhoods, or .. internalised as a set of no-goes and sometimes no thinks’. It picks up on Seamus Heaney’s observation (from a 1998 documentary for the BBC) that ‘with so much division around, people are forever encountering boundaries that bring them up short’ but also the ways in which borders are sometimes bridged, or transgressed. None of this, Glenn Patterson says, is intended as ‘a survey’, rather it ‘is a thought taken for a walk… as wayward and eccentric as its subject.’

Short Biography:

Glenn Patterson is an author and the Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University, Belfast.

Further Reading:

Ulster Cycle

Contributor:

Dr Margaret O’Callaghan

Talk Title:

Acts of partition: from the Government of Ireland Act 1920 to the Boundary Commission, 1925.

Talk Synopsis:

This talk describes Partition as ‘an instrument of policy that marked the [UK] government’s failure in the wider problem of governing Ireland’. It suggests that the Government of Ireland Act was ‘a landmark in the genealogy of partitions’ and sets out its immediate background and effects. And it argues that the partition of Ireland ‘was not an act, but a process’ that ‘happened in stages’. It details the sectarian tensions and violence of this period, the Treaty negotiations of 1921 and James Craig’s role as Prime Minister, including his interactions with politicians in London and Dublin. It also identifies key questions about what happened and suggests that whilst the ‘Boundary Commission would end the partition process’ in 1925, James Craig spent much of his time until then ‘consumed’ with ‘security and the campaign to resist’ the effect which the Commission might have in placing ‘his whole entity in jeopardy’.

Short Biography:

Dr Margaret O’ Callaghan is an historian and political analyst at the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics, Queen’s University, Belfast.

Further Reading:

Old Parchment and Water; the Boundary Commission of 1925 and the Copperfastening of the Irish Border. Bullan; an Irish Studies Journal , Volume IV, Number 2, 2000, pp 27-55 – Margaret O’ Callaghan