Road to devolution: the first Dáil and Northern Ireland

The first Dáil had a huge impact on Northern Ireland and the move towards devolved power

JONATHAN BARDON

WHEN THEIR MPs ignored Sinn Féin’s invitation to attend the first Dáil in January 1919, northern Protestants had no thought of seeking a devolved arrangement. But the world had changed radically as the peacemakers at Versailles redrew the map of Europe. Prime minister David Lloyd George made the assumption – not tested by consultation – that nationalists would find two Home Rule parliaments less repellent than a straightforward exclusion of the northeast. In September 1919 he declared Dáil Éireann illegal and announced his plan to set up two separate parliaments for north and south, bridged by a Council of Ireland.

The Ulster Unionist Council was somewhat unconvincing in asserting loyalists would be making a ‘supreme sacrifice’ when, in March 1920, it accepted Lloyd George’s arrangement. Unionists quickly warmed to the idea of having a parliament of their own in Belfast. Captain Charles Craig, MP for South Antrim, said in the Commons on March 29th: “Without a parliament of our own constant attacks would be made upon us, and constant attempts would be made. . . to draw us into a Dublin parliament.”

Due to “the blessed refusal of Sinn Féiners to take the oath of allegiance”, as Arthur Balfour put it, and facing criticism from only half a dozen demoralised Nationalists, the government was able to draft the Better Government of Ireland Bill at leisure. It became law in December 1920.

Sir James Craig succeeded Sir Edward Carson as Unionist leader and called a Northern Ireland general election for May 24th, 1921. Winning a comfortable majority, he became prime minister of the UK’s first devolved region. After order had been restored by the end of 1922, Craig enjoyed a period of remarkable calm in which to shape the future of the six counties. But how much power did he have?

The Reverend James B Armour observed that Ulster Unionists had been “compelled to take a form of Home Rule that the devil himself could never have imagined”. The 1920 act was an amalgam of untried fillets cut from the three previous Home Rule Bills and desperate constitutional expedients designed to extricate Lloyd George’s government from its Irish quagmire.

Because they were of imperial concern, ‘excepted services’ were retained by Westminster: these included the army, navy and air force, trade agreements, the currency, and the making of war and peace. ‘Reserved services’ – including most taxation, the postal services and the supreme court of Northern Ireland – were to be kept by Westminster until the whole of Ireland had a single parliament. All laws passed in the mother parliament applied to Northern Ireland unless the region was specifically excluded.

The regional government discovered the financial provisions of the 1920 act acutely constraining. Westminster required Northern Ireland to make an “imperial contribution” towards the cost of excepted services. Craig’s government found it had control of no more than 20 per cent of its revenues. Largely due to an unremitting depression lasting two decades, the government constantly teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. Budgets at Stormont were balanced only by what one official described as “fudges”, “wangles” and “dodges and devices”.

In 1938 Westminster came to the rescue. As its chief negotiator put it, the British Treasury had “a very lively interest in the prosperity of Northern Ireland, which comes to us when bankrupt”. The imperial contribution was allowed to all but disappear. London began providing an annual subvention to ensure the region would enjoy the same standards of social services as those prevailing in the rest of the UK.

In the end the regime established by the 1920 act in Northern Ireland failed because successive Unionist governments abused what powers they possessed in full. Craig did not attempt to woo even some of the Catholic minority into an acceptance of the new state of affairs. With much truth Joseph Devlin, the Nationalist leader, said the Unionists were treating “one third of the population as if they were pariahs in the community”.

The abolition of proportional representation (PR) in local government elections in 1922 was followed by a blatant gerrymandering of ward boundaries to unionist advantage. Then in 1929 Craig removed PR in Northern Ireland parliamentary elections. Democracy survived but it was now in a pretty tattered condition.

The distribution of Catholics and Protestants in the region made the outcome of elections in single-seat constituencies highly predictable. There had been only eight uncontested seats in 1925 but by 1933, a total of 33 were uncontested – 70 per cent. And, of course, Stormont had no intention of activating the Council of Ireland.

Why did Westminster not intervene? It was preoccupied with the problems of mass unemployment, unrest in parts of the empire and the rise of the dictators on the European mainland; London took its eye off the ball.

Drawing on Britain’s gratitude for the region’s help during the second World War, after 1945 Stormont got the British treasury to underwrite most of the cost of funding the welfare state in Northern Ireland. Here, surprisingly, lay the origins of Stormont’s downfall.

The vast increase in the annual subvention was not accompanied by careful scrutiny from the other side of the Irish Sea. Unequal treatment of the minority magnified as public services expanded. Discrimination was routine in appointments; council houses were allocated with brazen unfairness; not all adults could vote in local elections; and gerrymandering was regularly fine-tuned right into the 1960s.

When prime minister Terence O’Neill announced a package of reforms in November 1968, it was too late. The juggernaut of the mass civil rights movement could not be halted. It became apparent that the sectarian dragon had been fully awakened and was leaping from its cage.

Later, British politicians facing the northern crisis were to regret that direct rule had not been introduced when troops were sent in during August 1969. When the gamble of internment failed, prime minister Edward Heath suspended Stormont in March 1972. Direct rule had begun and William Whitelaw arrived as the first Northern Ireland secretary of state.

In October 1972, Whitelaw published his proposed solution: the restoration of devolution, but an administration in which unionists and nationalists shared power; an acceptance that the Republic had a legitimate interest in the affairs of Northern Ireland; and decisive action to eliminate discrimination. With refinements, all ensuing Westminster governments and their official oppositions agreed this was the blueprint for peace. In time Dublin, too, came to accept this formula was the most realistic one available.

In December 1973 at Sunningdale, Whitelaw got representatives of an elected assembly to accept powersharing and a Council of Ireland. This agreement, however, was rejected by an overwhelming majority of Protestants in the general election of February 1974 and then the powersharing executive was pulled down by the loyalist strike in May.

There was all-party support at Westminster for a fresh attempt: the Constitutional Convention, elected in May 1975. But the majority of unionists had no intention of accepting powersharing. Secretary of state Jim Prior tried again with his scheme for “rolling devolution” in 1982 but it soon ran into the sands.

The bipartisan view at Westminster thereafter was that direct rule must be made to work. The peace process was nevertheless under way. Eventually, in 1998, Whitelaw’s solution (with highly elaborate additions and fine-tuning) was accepted by a majority in Northern Ireland. With much truth, the SDLP deputy leader, Seamus Mallon, described the Good Friday Agreement that year as “Sunningdale for slow learners”. In May 2007, after repeated false starts, a powersharing government was in place with a realistic prospect of functioning for more than just a few months.

Devolution in Northern Ireland today may be complex and expensive, but the model of powersharing there is inspiring constitutional arrangements in divided societies around the world.

Jonathan Bardon is a historian and author of A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes, which was published recently by Gill and Macmillan