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CHAPTER THREE

‘Armed only with a table, a chair and an Act of Parliament’

During the summer of violence in Ulster in 1920, unionists looked to take responsibility for the enforcement of public order in the province. Although the UVF had not been active between 1914 and 1919, its members had retained their weapons.1 As the unrest spread to Ulster, many started to organise into vigilante groups. One, ‘Fermanagh Vigilance’, was organised by Sir Basil Brooke, future Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, who ‘felt that the hotheads on the Ulstermen’s side might take the matter into their own hands, if not organised’.2 He urged Dublin Castle to form an official special constabulary in June.3 Another vigilante group, ‘Protective Patrol’, formed by John Webster in Armagh city, sought and received 174 UVF rifles from the Ulster Unionist Council.4 ‘Worried lest Loyalists at the local level should pass beyond the Unionist Party’s own control, Sir James Craig assigned Colonel W.B. Spender the task of resurrecting the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) in order to harness Loyalists’ militant energies’.5 Unionists looked to police themselves as they did not trust the RIC. As an all-Ireland body, its membership was mainly Catholic, and with the IRA campaign, ‘the authorities had begun to transfer the most zealous and strongly loyalist RIC men to the South and West and send old, inefficient, unenthusiastic or even suspect men to the North’.6

The violence that accompanied the expulsion of workers dissipated in late July. However, another wave began after the death of RIC district inspector Oswald Swanzy in Lisburn in August. Swanzy was believed to have been involved in the killing of the Lord Mayor of Cork, Thomas MacCurtain, in March 1920, thus making him a prime target of the IRA.7 He was shot dead on 22 August as he left a church service in Lisburn. The loyalist reaction led to the expulsion of almost the entire Catholic population of Lisburn from their homes. 300 homes were destroyed.8 Catholic families fleeing Lisburn took trains to Belfast or Newry, and many had to walk to Belfast, crossing the Divis Mountain en route. The rioting spread to Belfast, where twenty-two people were killed in just five days.9 On 30 August, ‘the military authorities brought in a curfew from 10:30pm to 5:00am for the Belfast area. It was to last, with variations in the times, until 1924.’10

Even though most of the violence was perpetrated against Catholics, Craig warned ‘that the loyalists were losing faith in the government’s determination to protect them, and were threatening an immediate recourse to arms which would precipitate a civil war’.11 He attended a ministerial conference in London on 2 September where he used the pretext of attempting to keep the extreme loyalist elements in harness to demand a special Ulster constabulary to serve only the area that would become Northern Ireland. Ultimately, Craig wanted the nucleus of the UVF to form an armed constabulary for the six counties. The Conservative Party leader, Bonar Law, was unsure and pointed out that ‘if we armed Ulster, public opinions in this country would say the Government was taking sides and ceasing to govern impartially’.12 The military Commander-in-Chief in Ireland, Nevil Macready, and the leading civil servant in Dublin Castle, Under-Secretary John Anderson, were also opposed. Macready wrote to Bonar Law, stating that a remobilised and rearmed UVF ‘would undoubtedly consist entirely of Protestants, and no amounts [sic] of so-called loyalty is likely to restrain them if the religious question becomes acute … the arming of the Protestant population of Ulster will mean the outbreak of civil war in this country, as distinct from the attempted suppression of rebellion with which we are engaged at present’.13

He threatened to resign if the UVF was recognised. It wasn’t. However, helped by the backing of Arthur Balfour and Bonar Law, Craig was granted his special constabulary. Balfour felt that ‘in view of the terms of the Bill the government would be justified in thus hiving off the Ulster administration forthwith from that of the rest of Ireland’.14 The British government, fearing the public would think they were taking sides, wanted it to appear as if they had had the idea. Otherwise, as Bonar Law told Lloyd George, it would seem ‘as if we were acting on their dictation’.15 The special constabulary was meant to be for all of Ireland, but ‘the relevant Cabinet minutes betray the government’s actual motivation: they refer to the creation of the special constabulary in “Ireland”, with “Ireland” written in pen over the crossed out “Ulster” in typescript’.16

The Ulster Special Constabulary came into public existence in October 1920, with enrolment starting on 1 November and an initial strength of 3,000 planned. Its members were organised into three classes: The ‘A’ class consisted of full-time uniformed police auxiliaries; the ‘B’ class were employed on a part-time basis and allowed to keep their weapons at home, whilst the ‘C’ class, the largest group, were only to be called out for emergencies, such as invasions.17 Enrolment was slow at first, with many suspicious that they would be asked to serve in the south or west of Ireland. They had to be reassured that they would only have to serve in the six counties.18 According to Robert Lynch, while northern Catholics were officially allowed to join the force, few did nor were they actively encouraged to do so. From the very beginning, northern nationalists saw the Specials as being ‘nothing more and nothing less that the dregs of the Orange lodges, armed and equipped to overawe Nationalists and Catholics, and with … an inclination to invent “crimes” against Nationalists and Catholics’.19

The new special constabulary was placed under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Wickham, the divisional commissioner of the RIC for Ulster, partly answering to another new appointee, the Assistant Under-Secretary for Ireland to be based in Belfast, Sir Ernest Clark.20 Craig also won the support of the British government in securing the appointment of the Assistant Under-Secretary (Clark) with responsibility for the area that would make up Northern Ireland before the Government of Ireland Bill was enacted in December 1920. Clark claimed that his appointment was not a preliminary step to partition.21 In reality, however, it was, and signified yet another concession to Ulster unionists.

Born in Kent in 1864, Ernest Clark joined the British civil service in 1881, where he built up a reputation as a leading taxation expert. This brought him to the Cape Colony government in 1904–5 where he witnessed for the first time the establishment of a Home Rule territory – the South African federation.22 Clark’s ‘bluster about “setting up” the South African government’ caused some annoyance later on with personnel in Dublin Castle.23 He served as Assistant Under-Secretary to Ireland from September 1920 until November 1921. Following this, with the formal transfer of services, he became Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Finance and head of the civil service of Northern Ireland, a position he held until 1925. He subsequently served as governor of Tasmania from 1933 to 1945.24 His work as Assistant Under-Secretary was crucial in creating the structures of a functioning government for Northern Ireland when it came into being in the summer of 1921. Basil Brooke described him as the ‘midwife to the new Province of Ulster’.25

John Anderson, who himself favoured a different settlement to the Government of Ireland Bill, recommended Clark for the post in Belfast. Years later, Clark described a letter he received from Anderson in September 1920:

asking me whether I still was in a mind to come to Ireland and if so, whether I would take the position at Belfast of Assistant Under Secretary for Ireland … His letter ended with a sentence which at the time I did not understand; ‘I suppose you are not by any chance a Roman Catholic?’ … he realised as I subsequently did, that had I been a Roman Catholic I could never have been accepted by the Northern Government or been able to carry out my duties, even had I survived to undertake them.26

Once he expressed interest, he was interviewed in London by Hamar Greenwood, who had recently replaced MacPherson as Chief Secretary for Ireland. Greenwood then brought Clark to James Craig’s office in the Admiralty, where he was ‘vetted’ by Craig and two other prominent Ulster unionists, Wilfrid Spender and Richard Dawson-Bates. Clark later revealed, ‘I afterwards found … that really I was on show to Craig (and possibly also to Spender and Bates)’.27 At the meeting, Clark recalled that the Ulster unionists ‘were full of grievances’ and painted ‘a picture of the deathly peril which threatened all loyalists’. He later ‘discovered by experience how necessary it has always been to emphasise, even to exaggerate, the conditions in Ireland in order to arrest the attention of the ordinary Englishman’.28 As the meeting was ending,

Sir James Craig walked across to me and towering above this little man said ‘Now you are coming to Ulster you must write one word across your heart’, and he tapped out with his finger on my chest “ULSTER”. I fear that I only saw the humour of this and not understanding its importance at the time said, ‘Sir James, I can hardly do that, for the space is already occupied by two names … “The British Empire” and “England”. I am afraid “Ulster” can only be written after these’.29

Clark experienced a degree of distrust, even hostility, from some loyalists. Unionists were also unhappy with Clark’s ‘subordination to Dublin Castle: he would not, as had been construed from initial reports, enjoy the full authority of an under-secretary for Ulster’.30 At a meeting in Belfast on 13 October between Greenwood, Anderson, Clark and leading Ulster unionists, the latter declared they had ‘not the smallest confidence in the officials in Dublin Castle’.31 They believed many in Dublin Castle were nationalists, even Sinn Féin sympathisers. They wanted ‘an assurance that Sir Ernest Clark would have direct communication with the Chief Secretary. They did not want any possibility of leakage.’32 Greenwood responded that Clark ‘can send me information he can withhold from the King, the Pope and James MacMahon’.33 MacMahon, a Catholic born in Belfast who grew up in Armagh, was, like Anderson, an under-secretary in Dublin Castle. He was believed to be ‘sympathetic to nationalist aspirations for self-rule’.34 He came in for particular ire from unionists. At the 13 October meeting, responding to criticism of MacMahon, Greenwood said he had total faith in MacMahon, ‘an Ulsterman himself’. Thomas Moles replied, ‘Not necessarily a horse because born in a stable,’ which Greenwood said was ‘a most unhappy metaphor. The Saviour of the world was born in a stable.’ MacMahon ‘cannot help his birth or his religion’.35 Clark remained answerable to Dublin Castle, but as time went on, he became more and more independent of Dublin. He ‘knew what was expected of him and he soon dispelled Unionist apprehension. From the start he worked consistently and uncompromisingly for the interests of the future Northern Ireland government.’36

Northern Ireland was presented with a workable administration from the very moment it came into being, thanks largely to the efforts of Ernest Clark. He, supported by a small team of no more than twenty, worked tirelessly following his appointment in September 1920 to set up the machinery of a new jurisdiction with very little to work with. He later testified, ‘I found myself … setting out to form a new “administration” armed only with a table, a chair and an Act of Parliament.’37 He also claimed, ‘I will do my best to fulfil my role as “John the Baptist”, and as far as can be done with the small staff at my disposal, get together information and “prepare the way”.’38 He established a framework for seven new government departments, organised buildings for those departments as well as their furniture and office equipment, attempted to source accommodation for the new civil service and secured instructions, guidelines and templates from different departments in London and Dublin in relation to how to run a department.39 Since most of the equipment was obtained from Dublin, as Belfast merchants could not supply the office furniture in a standard form and in the quantity the new administration required, some Dublin businesses were ‘able to benefit commercially from the creation of the new civil service in Northern Ireland’.40 Clark’s efforts were somewhat ‘handicapped in that the existing all-Ireland system was bureaucratic, cumbersome, and quite unsuited to modern means’.41 Also, under ‘the Union the powers of government in Ireland had been distributed among some thirty different departments, and the problem was how these powers could be most efficiently grouped in Northern Ireland without producing too many office-holders in parliament’.42

Clark was in constant communication with Craig in the lead-up to the formation of Northern Ireland, ensuring a functioning state would be operational from day one.43 He consulted Craig on many ‘mundane essentials of laying down the North’s administrative foundations. Craig, for example, was directly involved in the problem of determining the appropriate number and functions of the future Northern departments.’44 Clark sent a memo to Craig regarding the recruitment recommendations for the Northern Ireland civil service, including the instructions that ‘no preference [is] to be given to anyone based on religious belief’ and ‘competition for places should be open to women’.45 He warned ‘against adopting an official policy that would disadvantage Catholics in securing government employment,’ as religious discrimination was illegal under the Government of Ireland Act 1920.46 At this stage, though, Craig had no official role: he was the presumptive Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. Carson resigned as Ulster Unionist leader in February 1921, handing the leadership to Craig.47 Greenwood, the Chief Secretary of Ireland, was also guilty of ‘displaying a telling disregard for British civil service tradition of neutrality in party politics, directed existing departments to prepare for partition by communicating with the Ulster Unionists’.48

When Clark moved to Belfast, he was initially tasked with establishing the Ulster Special Constabulary and dealing with the ‘expelled workers’ from the Belfast shipyards.49 The expulsions of workers and the sectarian violence in the north in 1920 saw Sinn Féin make one of its first decisions directly relating to the north. It started a boycott. The boycott in many ways increased the likelihood of partition. Once the violence in the north began, Dáil Éireann felt it could not stand idly by. It imposed a boycott ‘of goods from Belfast and a withdrawal of funds from Belfast-based banks’.50 In reality, the boycott soon extended to other businesses and farms, and beyond Belfast too. Many saw it as an anti-partitionist move, a way to show that Northern Ireland could not survive without the rest of Ireland.51 The Westmeath Independent had suggested in January 1920 ‘a clean commercial cut with “Ulster”’ as a protest against those in favour of partition (“the dirty birds that soil the mother nest”) … ‘Ireland could manage very well if Belfast fell into the Lagan.’52 Traders in Tuam in County Galway voted to boycott businesses from any part of Ireland that ‘permits itself to be separated from the common life of the country’.53 According to Michael Laffan, the boycott ‘met with some disapproval in the south, and particularly in 1920 its impact was uneven and its direction sometimes faulty; southern protestants and northern catholics suffered as well as Ulster unionists’.54 When Seán MacEntee, TD for Monaghan South, proposed in Dáil Éireann in August 1920 ‘a commercial boycott of Belfast’ in response to the ‘pogrom’ perpetrated against Catholics in Belfast, another TD from Monaghan, Ernest Blythe, was ‘entirely opposed to a blockade against Belfast … If it were taken it would destroy for ever the possibility of any union’. Countess Constance Markievicz, the first woman elected to parliament for Britain or Ireland in 1918, agreed with Blythe that ‘a blockade would be playing into the hands of the enemy and giving them a good excuse for partition’.55 Despite the opposition, the Dáil and its cabinet approved the instigation of the boycott. It was also supported by county councils under Sinn Féin control, trade unions and members of the Catholic clergy.56 Nationalist firms in Belfast were also affected by the boycott. Ironically, Denis McCullough, one of the organisers of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) in Belfast and originally a supporter of the boycott, was forced to close his bagpipe factory as ‘the Irish public because of the Boycott, buy British-made pipes rather than support this purely republican firm’.57

It was in an atmosphere of war, sectarian hatred and boycotts that the Government of Ireland Bill became an act on 23 December 1920, and elections to the new parliaments were set for the following May, which was selected due to the ‘confidence of the British military that martial law could bring the IRA to heel within five months’.58 Many pondered on what the new political realities would bring. Bryan Follis in A State Under Siege remarked:

at the stage when the Act became law, Northern Ireland existed not as an entity but only in name and on paper. Not only had Northern Ireland no parliament and no government: it had no civil service to support and serve it, no police or defence force to enforce whatever laws it might make, protect its people, or defend its territory from possible (and indeed likely) attack, nor had it a judiciary to uphold its laws and administer justice.59

The main concern came from those who lived close to what would become the new border between northern and southern Ireland. In January 1921, the Lord Mayor of Derry, Hugh O’Doherty, claimed that partition ‘drew a barbed wire entanglement around six counties’.60 O’Doherty, as well as five of the nine county council chairmen of Ulster, sent a letter to the British government protesting against partition in late 1920.61 The Derry No. 2 Rural District was informed by the Local Government Board that it would be annexed to the relevant body in Letterkenny by 1 April, as it was located in County Donegal, which would form part of Southern Ireland, with Derry forming part of Northern Ireland. This was much to the chagrin of unionist Derry Council members.62 The Local Government Board ‘also intimated that … the portion of County Armagh that is situated in the Castleblayney [Co. Monaghan] Union will be transferred to the Newry [Co. Armagh] Union, and, similarly, Belleek district of Fermanagh will be transferred from the Ballyshannon [Co. Donegal] Union to the Enniskillen [Co. Fermanagh] Union’.63 This suggestion was rejected by Sinn Féin in Fermanagh, which advised that the letter from the Local Government Board be ‘thrown in the waste paper basket’ and that ‘Northern Sinn Feiners would never enter the Ulster Parliament’.64 One observer, Godfrey Fetherstonhaugh from Dublin, claimed that ‘by way of reductio ad absurdum that Donegal, the most northern county of Ireland, is to form part of “Southern” Ireland’ with ‘a narrow strip only a couple of miles wide, near Bundoran, being the connection’ between Donegal and the rest of ‘Southern’ Ireland.65

The Irish Times, in an article written in February 1921, revealed the level of confusion surrounding partition at the time. Partition, it contended, would ‘have old-established bodies to be broken up and destroyed, but, in most cases two new ones put in place of each old one. The heads of departments are called upon to decide what portion of their duties is concerned with Southern Ireland, and what with Northern they have to allocate their various staffs in the same way.’66

Many in the civil service, which was administered in Dublin, were reluctant to move to Belfast and uproot their families and homes, even in instances where their work solely related to the area that would become Northern Ireland.67 George Chester Duggan, a civil servant who did move to Belfast, claimed that everyone in the civil service in Dublin ‘seemed to believe that the Government of Ireland Act in its present form would never become law, that something would happen to prevent the partition of Ireland’.68 Martin Maguire also asserts:

For the civil service itself ‘the nightmare of transfer to Belfast’ as it was described in Red Tape, the civil service journal, seemed remote. Such was the conviction within the civil service associations that partition would not happen or, if it did, would not work, that they several times repeated their determination that they would remain as all-Ireland associations.69

Members of the old RIC from throughout Ireland did move to Northern Ireland in large numbers to join the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) when it was formed in 1922, perhaps not surprising considering their unpopularity in most parts of Ireland at the time.70 The leadership of the civil service trade unions worked to prevent the forced movement of civil servants to Belfast. They also secretly maintained contact with the revolutionary forces in Dáil Éireann, just in case Sinn Féin would be in power one day.71

The breaking up of the Department of Agriculture was particularly bemoaned, as it was seen as a great success since its formation twenty-one years earlier. However, two of its functions – namely, fisheries and the administration of the Diseases of Animals Acts, were reserved for the Council of Ireland.72 There was a sense of nostalgia at the last all-Ireland Council of Agriculture meeting on 15 March 1921. At the meeting, T.P. Gill, council secretary, made the following resolution:

That this Board, representative of all parts of Ireland, desire to place on record the fact that for twenty-one years they have worked together in unbroken harmony, in discharging the responsible duties entrusted to them, and they venture to express the hope that under some arrangement or other, this useful and gratifying co-operation will not be wholly dispensed with in the future.73

The Council of Agriculture had seen close cooperation between unionists and nationalists throughout its existence, as had other all-Ireland bodies, such as the Association of Municipal Authorities, where ‘Southern Sinn Feiners and Northern Unionists’ were known to work comfortably with each other.74 The Royal College of Science, the Albert Model Farm in Glasnevin, the Royal Veterinary College at Ballsbridge, the National Museum and the Metropolitan School of Art were all administered by the Department of Agriculture, all based in Dublin. It was unclear how those institutions could be split in two, it not being an option to move half of them, in situ, to Belfast.75 There was also confusion surrounding art treasures. Would the National Gallery in Dublin also be expected to be split in two, with half of its valuable contents shipped to Belfast and the other half remaining in Dublin?76

The Freeman’s Journal posed the question, ‘Will anyone even adduce a single fact to show that such breaking up is not ruinous from every point of view?’77 Teachers met in Belfast in March 1921 to prepare for the impending six-counties education bill, where it was advised that ‘individual representatives of the various organisations whose ramifications extend throughout all Ireland to keep in sympathy and close touch with the general ideals of those associations’ until a proper Department of Education for Northern Ireland was formed.78 As the body that controlled primary education in Ireland, the National Board, was not established through an act of parliament (the advisory committee members were nominated by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland instead) there were doubts about whether the Government of Ireland Act was capable of breaking it up and establishing two education departments.79 Insurance companies envisaged that they would be disastrously affected by partition. To illustrate the complications that ‘the sea of confusion’ of partition would bring, the Freeman’s Journal provided a breakdown of health insurance holders in Ireland in April 1921:

There are approximately 750,000 insured persons in Ireland who are members of Approved Societies. Of these about 474,000 reside in Southern Ireland and 276,000 in Northern Ireland. Of the 474,000 who reside in Southern Ireland it is estimated that 357,000 belong to societies with headquarters in Southern Ireland, 13,000 to societies with headquarters in Northern Ireland, and 94,000 to societies in Great Britain. Of the 276,000 who reside in Northern Ireland it is estimated that 119,000 belong to societies with headquarters in Northern Ireland, 50,000 to societies with headquarters in Southern Ireland, and 107,000 to societies with headquarters in Great Britain.80

The transfer of the National Health Insurance to the governments of Northern and Southern Ireland, it was believed, would seriously affect the ability of insurance companies to operate, considering the geographical composition of their membership.

Despite the substantial opposition to the Government of Ireland Act, the British government continued with its implementation. Elections for the two new parliaments were set for May 1921. The Manchester Guardian summed up what it saw as the seriously flawed nature of the government’s actions:

To-day is the ‘appointed day’ under the Government of Ireland Act … The date of the elections must be fixed, the machinery for election under the novel system of proportional representation must be provided, and many other arrangements for the division of the administration and judicial machinery at present common to the whole of Ireland into separate parts must be begun. It is an extensive and a critical process, and will take place under conditions the most adverse imaginable. The grant of self-government to Ireland should have been an occasion full of rejoicing and hope, and so with a consenting Ireland it would have been. But Ireland has not consented; four-fifths of it has refused. The proffered gift is not welcomed; it is rejected, and rejected with anger and with scorn. An act which should have been an act of conciliation and friendship has taken on the guise simply of another exercise of power. It postulates calm and peace; it takes place in presence of the extremes of violence and in an atmosphere of hate. It forebodes not the cessation but the continuance of strife. Such are the fruits of a policy which has substituted force for statesmanship, which plants thorns and bids us gather grapes. It has brought us nothing but suffering, failure, and disgrace. Is there not yet some remnant of sense and courage among our governing men which shall suffice to put an end now, at long last, to this travesty of justice, this mockery of the very elements of wise statesmanship?81

The Government of Ireland Act came into effect on 3 May 1921. Three weeks later, elections were held for the two parliaments. Known as the ‘Partition Election’, it determined the make-up of the first parliament of the new entity that was Northern Ireland.