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Republic of Ireland since Partition

The Formation of the State

The Government of Ireland Act, enacted by the British Parliament in 1920 was the basis for the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 that ended the Irish War of Independence and partitioned Ireland into two dominion states of the British Empire, the 26-county Irish Free State and the Northern Ireland State. The Treaty was accepted by the second Dail Eireann and ratified by the Southern Ireland Parliament on January 12, 1922. The Southern Ireland Parliament together with the Northern Ireland Parliament was established by the above-mentioned Government of Ireland Act.

The second Dail Eireann

The second Dail Eireann consisted of members returned in the elections of 1921 to the parliaments of Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland established by the British enacted Government of Ireland Act of 1920.  Sinn Féin participated in these elections but refused to recognize the new Home Rule parliaments. They treated the elections as elections to the Second Dáil Eireann. 

The Second Dail convened in August 1921 and functioned until June 1922. Its most notable act was to end to the War of Independence by accepting the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty by a vote 57 to 64. The Sinn members who opposed the treaty left the Dail.

On January 10, 1922, Arthur Griffith was elected President of Dail Eireann. Two days later, as head of the Delegation to London that signed the Treaty, he called into existence the Parliament of Southern Ireland to ratify the Treaty and set-up a Provincial Government.

The Treaty War Aka Civil War 

The Treaty War started in April 1922, when 200 anti-treaty IRA volunteers led by Rory O'Connor, occupied the Four Courts in Dublin in an attempt to arrest the subversion of the Irish Republic.  A tense standoff ensued until June 27, when the Free State under pressure from the British government bombarded the Four Courts with artillery supplied by the British.

The bombardment of the Four Courts provoking a week of street fighting in Dublin City that left 315 dead, 250 of them civilians. When the fighting ended Dublin was in Free State hands and the IRA retreated to their rural heartlands where they engaged in a campaign of guerilla warfare. The Treaty War ended on May 24, 1923, when Frank Aiken ordered the volunteers to cease fighting and dump arms rather than surrender them to the Free State.

The Third Dail Eireann and the Irish Free State

The Third Dáil was elected at the general election held in June 1922 as required under provisions of the Anglo-Irish Treaty signed in December 1921. From September through December of 1922, it functioned as the Provisional Parliament of Southern Ireland.

Its main function was the adoption of the Constitution of The Irish Free State. The said constitution became effective upon receiving royal assent on December 5, 1922.

After the Irish Free State was established in December of 1922, the Third Dail became the lower house of the Oireachtas (the National Parliament). The newly established Seanad (Senate) became the upper house.  Members of the Executive Council, the Dáil and Seanad were required to take an Oath of Allegiance to the Constitution of the Free State and declare fidelity to the British monarch.

The Irish Free State, comprised 26 of the 32 counties of Ireland, was established on December 6, 1922, as a Dominion of the British Commonwealth. The Free State government consisted of the Governor-General, the British monarch’s representative, the Executive Council and the Third Dail and the newly established Seanad.

Boundary Commission.

Terms of the Treaty allowed for Northern Ireland to become part of the Irish Free State unless the government of Northern Ireland opted out which, it did on December 7, 1922, the day after the establishment of the Irish Free State. The Treaty also provided for a Boundary Commission be set up should Northern Ireland choose not to be included in the Irish Free State.

Due to the Treaty War, the Boundary did not materialize until 1924. Even then, the Northern Ireland government refused to participate. Eoin MacNeill, the Irish Free State representative was not up to the task and resigned before the Boundary commission Report was completed in 1925. Instead of large Catholic populated areas along the border being ceded to the Free State, the report made few changes to the taking as much away from the Free State as it gave.  

Having failed to gain any territory, the Free State accepted the original Northern Ireland/Southern Ireland setup by the British government’s 1920 Government of Ireland Act in return for Britain dropping the Irish obligation to share in paying Britain's Imperial debts. The Dáil approved the boundary by a large margin of 71 to 20.

Political Parties

With the exception of the Labor party, all of the other established political parties are right wing of leaning right wing parties. All of them profess to Irish unity, but none have put forth a plan or program, of any description, to reunify Ireland. One may argue that by removing Articles 2 and 3 from the constitution as part of the Good Friday Agreement, they acknowledge the partition of Ireland as irrevocable, a done deal. One may also argue that any move to bring about Irish reunification would have to originate with the people of Northern Ireland. 

Irish politicians know that the cost of Irish unity would require changes to existing power structures, changes they fear would deprive them of the unlimited perks and privileges they have taken for granted since the formation of the state in 1922.

Cumann na nGaedheal, a right-wing political party was founded after the Treaty War ended in 1923 by pro-Treaty members of the government and their supporters in order to contest future elections. The party held a majority in the Dáil until 1927 and therefore was able to form a majority government from 1922 to 1927. After Fianna Fail entered the Dail and a second election in 1927, Cumann na nGaedheal no longer held a majority and was forced into a coalition with the Farmers Party and independent Dail members in order to form a government.

In September of 1933, Cumann na nGaedheal, the National Centre Party and the Army Comrades Association merged to form a new right-wing party, Fine Gael under the leadership of Eoin O’Duffy.  O’Duffy was head of the Army Comrades Association aka the Blueshirts, a Fascist leaning association. He, O’Duffy, was an admirer of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. The comrades under his leadership adopted Fascist type uniforms and salutes.  

Fianna Fail was established in 1926 after a motion introduced by de Valera's was defeated at the 1926 Sinn Fein Ard-Fheis. The motion he introduced stated that ‘the only Republican objection to the Free State was the oath to the English King and that it was removed they would enter Leinster House'.

Opponents led by Father Michael O’Flanagan, defeated his motion by a vote of 223 to 218.

de Valera subsequently resigned as Sinn Féin president to form Fianna Fáil, a new Free State party. The new party entered the Free State government in 1927.  It garnered the most seats in the General Election of 1932 and was able to form a government with the support of the Labor Party.  From then on it continued to be the dominant party in Irish politics, holding power for 61 of the 79 years between then and the election of 2011.

Sinn Fein, a party that splintered numerous times over the years since it was founded by Arthur Griffith in 1905, has made a comeback in recent years as another right-wing party. For most of its history it was an abstentionist political party who refused to participate in governments perceived to be instituted or controlled by the British. After the Good Friday agreement, the wing of the party known as the Provisional Sinn Fein changed its policy and surreptitiously its name back to Sinn Fein. It so doing, it abandoned its abstentionist stance and entered Dail Eireann and the British instituted government in Northern Ireland. 

The Labor Party was founded in 1912, by James Connolly, James Larkin, and William O'Brien as the political wing of the Irish Trades Union Congress. it is a left-wing party that entered into a coalition government with both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael on a number of occasions over the years.

1937 Constitution and the Irish Free State renamed Eire (Ireland)

In 1931, the British government enacted the Statute of Westminster that removed most of the British parliament's authority to legislate for its dominions including the Irish Free, thus, in so doing granted the dominions limited sovereignty to enact national legislation without British government oversight.

Emboldened by their new-found freedoms, the Irish government, under the leadership of deValera, embarked on a crusade to republicize the Irish Free State as follows,

1.  In 1933 removed the oath of allegiance to the British monarch from the 1922 constitution

2. In 1936 abolished the senate established under the 1922 constitution.

3.  In 1936 abolished the role of Governor-General having gradually diminishing its role since 1932.

4.  In 1936 removed all mention of the British monarch from the 1922 constitution

5. In 1937 enacted a new constitution referred to by many historians as the de Valera constitution.

The New constitution was a State-Church collaboration in that it incorporated input from Church leaders, particularly John Charles McQuaid who, three years later, became the Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland. Before the document was placed before the people in referenda, it was sent to the Vatican for review.

Some of its most controversial articles included,

1.  Articles 2 and 3 that laid claim to whole territory of the island of Ireland, its islands, and territorial seas. In actuality it was meaningless as it did not change the status of Northern Ireland.

2. Article 4 changed the name of the state from Saorstát Éireann (Irish Free State) to Eire (Ireland)

3. Article 41, couched in language to obfuscate its misogynistic content, Article 41 subordinated the role of women in Irish society to that of men. It has been interpreted by many to mean that the woman’s role was primarily limited to the kitchen and bedroom.

4.  Article 44 recognized the special position of the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church as the guardian of the Faith professed by the great majority of the citizens.

In 1948, the Irish government passed the Republic of Ireland Act to end the remaining statutory role of the British monarch in the state.  In describing itself as a Republic, all ties with the British Commonwealth were revoked in accordance with British law. However the name of the state did not change, as the name Eire (Ireland) was codified in the 1937 constitution.

The following three sections of the Act read as follows,

1.     The Executive Authority (External Relations) Act, 1936 (No. 58 of 1936), is hereby repealed.

2.     It is hereby declared that the description of the State shall be the Republic of Ireland.

3.     The President, on the authority and on the advice of the Government, may exercise the executive power or any executive function of the State in or in connection with its external relations.

In subsequent amendments to the Constitution, some of the controversial articles mentioned above were revoked or amended as follows.

1.      Articles 2 and 3 were removed by the Good Friday agreement

2.      Article 41 was amended in 2006 when divorce became legal in Ireland.

3.      Article 44 was amended in 1972 to remove any mention of special status for the Catholic Church.

The United Nation and the European Union

Ireland was admitted to the United Nations in December 1955.

The European Economic Community (EEC) was created by the Treaty of Rome in 1957.  When the European Union (EU) was created by the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, the EEC was incorporated into the EU and renamed the European Community (EC). In 2009, the EC formally ceased to exist, and its institutions were directly absorbed into the EU.

In 1961, Denmark, the UK, and Ireland applied for membership of the ECC. France vetoed all three applications in 1963.

In December of 1965, the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Agreement was signed after their EEC applications was vetoed by France.

In 1967, together with Denmark, the UK, and Norway, Ireland submitted its second application to join the ECC.  In 1972 after numerous delays, prolonged negotiations and the death of de Gaulle, Ireland, Denmark, and the UK signed the Treaties of Accession and formally joined the EEC in 1973.

The Northern Ireland Conflict

Suffice to say that the thirty years of warfare that started in Northern Ireland in 1969 had its roots in the turmoil of the Middle Ages when the Norman and English invaders first set foot in Ireland in 1169. After that grim marker was set in Irish history, the people of Ireland were never free of overlords or the misery they wrought. In the nine hundred years since the Irish Chieftains and the Norman and British Barons first crossed swords, Irishmen and women never relented to serfdom or domination. In every generation since, they bore arms to assert their right to freedom and sovereignty. The dawn of modernity did not change that human intrinsic motivation to be free from foreign domination, be it benevolent, barbaric or something in between.

The total number of people killed during the conflict are as follows,

The low-level war aka the Troubles more or less ended with the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) that was signed by the British and Irish governments in 1998. At best, the GFA was a band-aid solution that masked the real problem i.e., the partition of Ireland. As has happened with previous attempts to prolong partition, the GFA may be coming apart, unable to withstand the stresses brought about the present-day Brexit debacle. If the mainstay of GFA, the absence of a physical border across the Irish landscape is reversed, and pillboxes and watchtowers are reintroduced, renewed violence may be the outcome.

The Economy and Emigration

Most countries send out oil or iron, steel or gold, or some other crop, but Ireland has had only one export and that is its people.’ John F. Kennedy on his presidential visit to Ireland, June 1963

No country in Europe has been as affected by emigration over the last two centuries as Ireland. Approximately ten million people have emigrated from the island of Ireland since 1800. Since partition, the state of the economy and emigration go hand in hand.

After the partition to Ireland through the 1950s, the Irish economy was a rural based agriculture economy mostly depending on the export of agriculture products to England. The fiscal policy was conservative and remained so through the 1950s. Public finances were helped significantly by the cancellation by England of Ireland’s share of Britain's imperial debts in return for Ireland’s acceptance of the original Northern Ireland/Southern Ireland borders.

During that period emigration was a fact-of-life. In the 1920s, political retribution after the Treaty War as well as a stagnant economy played a role. In the 1930s and 1940s a prolonged economic war with England coupled with WWII resulted in an increase in emigration to England, some to join the British army, others to man factories and hospitals and after the war to rebuild English cities.

The late 1940s and the 1950s constituted a remarkable era of mass emigration. Over 500,000 people left Ireland between 1945 and 1960—stark evidence of the poor state of the Irish economy at that time. Every little changed from then until the late 1980s. Low economic growth, wrong fiscal policies, protectionism, and sometimes corrupt governments had widened the gap between Ireland and every other economy in western Europe. By the mid-1980s, Ireland was experiencing a 19.6% unemployment, had the highest debt per head in the world, and the nation's GDP per capita was only 63% of their neighbours, the United Kingdom. The Irish were then known as the beggars of Europe.

The economic situation changed dramatically during the 1990s when Ireland achieved a remarkable rate of economic growth. From 1990 to 1995 Ireland's economy grew at an average rate of 5.14% per year, and from 1996 through 2000 it increased at an average rate of 9.66%. By the end of the decade, unemployment went down to a 4.5% and the nation's GDP per capita stood at $25,500, During a little over a decade, Ireland was transformed from one of the poorest countries in Europe to one of the EU's richest countries. Ireland's economic boom during that period is referred to as "The Celtic Tiger".

The subsequent fall of the Celtic Tiger was caused by poor public financial management and taxation policies that created a housing bubble. Due to the unprecedented economy growth new homes were in high demand. Banks were lending money to homebuyers and property developers willy-nilly with little or no regard of the borrowers’ ability to repay the loans. For a short period of time this had been going well, however, with the global economic downturn, the investors suddenly lost their confidence and withdrew their money causing a total collapse in the building industry and consequently in the overall economy.

One thing that the emigrants can be certain about is that the Irish state will have little interest in their plight once they emigrate. Since 1922 governments, regardless of the political party in power, have consistently done only the barest minimum to assist Irish citizens residing abroad, mandatory consular services and limited grants to welfare organizations. Irish citizens who have left the country are no longer voters and no political party has ever championed their cause.

   TMMTP

Date posted 8/6/2022