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| Act of Parliament | |
 | |
| Long title | An Act to provide for the better Government of Ireland. |
|---|---|
| Citation | 10 & 11 Geo. 5. c. 67 |
| Introduced by | David Lloyd George (Commons) |
| Territorial extent | United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland |
| Dates | |
| Royal assent | 23 December 1920 |
| Commencement | 3 May 1921[1][2] |
| Repealed |
|
| Other legislation | |
| Repeals/revokes | Government of Ireland Act 1914 |
| Repealed by | |
Status: Repealed | |
| Text of statute as originally enacted | |
TheGovernment of Ireland Act 1920 (10 & 11 Geo. 5. c. 67) was anact of theParliament of the United Kingdom. The Act'slong title was "An Act to provide for the better government of Ireland"; it is also known as theFourth Home Rule Bill or (inaccurately) as theFourth Home Rule Act and informally known as thePartition Act.[3] The Act was intended topartition Ireland into twoself-governing polities: the six north-eastern counties were to form "Northern Ireland", while the larger part of the country was to form "Southern Ireland".[4] Both territories were to remain part of theUnited Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and provision was made for their future reunification through aCouncil of Ireland. The Act was passed by the British Parliament in November 1920, receivedroyal assent in December and came into force on 3 May 1921.[5][6]
The smaller Northern Ireland was duly created with adevolvedgovernment and remained in the UK. The larger Southern Ireland was not recognised by most of its citizens, who instead recognised the self-declaredIrish Republic in the ongoingIrish War of Independence. The conflict resulted in theAnglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921. Under the treaty, Ireland would leave the UK (with the option for Northern Ireland to opt out and remain in the UK, which it immediately did) in December 1922 and become theIrish Free State, which would later evolve into today's Republic of Ireland. The institutions set up under this Act for Northern Ireland continued to function until they weresuspended by the British parliament in 1972 as a consequence ofthe Troubles.
The remaining provisions of the Act still in force in Northern Ireland were repealed under the terms of the 1998Good Friday Agreement.
Various attempts had been made to give Ireland limited regionalself-government, known asHome rule, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
TheFirst Home Rule Bill of 1886 was defeated in theHouse of Commons because ofa split in the Liberal Party over the principle of Home Rule, while theSecond Home Rule Bill of 1893, having been passed by the Commons was vetoed by theHouse of Lords. TheThird Home Rule Bill introduced in 1912 by theIrish Parliamentary Party could no longer be vetoed after the passing of theParliament Act 1911 which removed the power of the Lords to veto bills. They could merely be delayed for two years.
Because of the continuing threat of civil war in Ireland, KingGeorge V called theBuckingham Palace Conference in July 1914 where Irish Nationalist and Unionist leaders failed to reach agreement.[7] Controversy continued over the rival demands of Irish Nationalists, backed by the Liberals (for all-Ireland home rule), and Irish Unionists, backed by the Conservatives, for the exclusion of most or all of the province ofUlster.[8] In an attempt at compromise, the British government put forward an amending bill, which would have allowed for Ulster to be temporarily excluded from the working of the Act; this failed to satisfy either side and the stalemate continued until overtaken by the outbreak ofWorld War I. A few weeks after the British entry into the war, the Act receivedRoyal Assent, while the amending bill was abandoned. However, theSuspensory Act 1914 (which received Royal Assent on the same day) meant that implementation would be suspended for the duration of what was expected to be only a short European war.
During the Great War, Irish politics moved decisively in a different direction. Several events, including theEaster Rising of 1916, the subsequent reaction of the British Government and theConscription Crisis of 1918, had altered the state of Irish politics and contributed toSinn Féin becoming the dominant voice ofIrish nationalism. Sinn Féin, standing for 'an independent sovereign Ireland', won 73 of the 105 parliamentary seats on the island in the1918 general election.[9] Its elected members established their own parliament,Dáil Éireann, whichdeclared the country's independence as theIrish Republic. Dáil Éireann, after a number of meetings, was declared illegal in September 1919 by theLord Lieutenant of Ireland,Viscount French.
When the Act became law on 23 December 1920 it was already out of touch with realities in Ireland. The long-standing demand for home rule had been replaced among nationalists by a demand for complete independence (anIrish Republic).[10] The Republic'sarmy was waging theIrish War of Independence against British rule, which had reached a nadir in late 1920.
A delay ensued because of the effective end of theFirst World War in November 1918, theParis Peace Conference, 1919 and theTreaty of Versailles that was signed in June 1919. Starting in September 1919, with the British Government, now led byDavid Lloyd George, committed under all circumstances to implementing Home Rule, the British cabinet's Committee for Ireland, under the chairmanship of formerIrish Unionist Alliance leaderWalter Long, pushed for a radical new solution. Long proposed the creation of two Irish home rule entities, Northern Ireland andSouthern Ireland, each withunicameral parliaments. The House of Lords accordingly amended the old Bill to create a new Bill which provided for twobicameral parliaments, "consisting of His Majesty, the Senate of (Northern or Southern) Ireland, and the House of Commons of (Northern or Southern) Ireland."
The Bill's second reading debates in late March 1920 revealed that already a large number of Irish MPs present felt that the proposals were unworkable.[11][12]
For a variety of reasons all the Ulster Unionist MPs at Westminster voted against the Act. They preferred that all or most of Ulster would remain fully within the United Kingdom, accepting the proposed northern Home Rule state only as the second best option. The Long Committee originally called for all nine Counties of Ulster to be included in Northern Ireland. When it became clear that three counties of Ulster would be excluded from Northern Ireland, southern Unionists left theIrish Unionist Alliance (dissolved in 1922) and formed theUnionist Anti-Partition League in opposition to the impending partition of Ireland.[13]
After considerable delays in debating the financial aspects of the measure, the substantive third reading of the Bill was approved by a large majority on 11 November 1920. On that date,Thomas Harbison, MP forNorth East Tyrone, predicted that violence would result in his constituency:[14]
"This is not a Bill for the better government of Ireland. I believe that the people in the county that I represent would be legally justified in using every form of resistance in their power to prevent this Act, if it ever becomes an Act, from coming into operation. It is a sentence of death, in my opinion, upon us as a unit in that Parliament. Our liberties are gone; and if the younger men of Ireland become indignant, and take courses that no sane man could defend, who will be responsible? The responsibility will be upon the men who have produced this Bill at the dictates of a narrow-minded set of reactionaries in the North-East corner of Ulster. It is a very small corner of Ulster; I have the map of it here. A set of reactionaries in that corner will have us under their heel for all time. I know the feeling of the men whom I represent, and I assure you, on this Armistice night, when all should be peace, that you are going to create, not peace, but eternal dissatisfaction, division, and, I am afraid, destruction."
A considerable number of the Irish Members present voted against the Bill, includingSouthern Unionists such asMaurice Dockrell and Nationalists likeJoseph Devlin.[15] Most Irish MPs were abstaining from Westminster, sitting in Dáil Éireann.
The Actdivided Ireland into two territories,Southern Ireland and Northern Ireland, each intended to be self-governing, except in areas specifically reserved to theParliament of the United Kingdom: chief amongst these were matters relating to the Crown, to defence, foreign affairs, international trade and currency. During a speech atCaernarvon (in October 1920) Lloyd George stated his reasoning for reserving specific governmental functions: "The Irish temper is an uncertainty and dangerous forces like armies and navies are better under the control of the Imperial Parliament."[16]
Northern Ireland was defined as "the parliamentary counties ofAntrim,Armagh,Down,Fermanagh,Londonderry andTyrone, and the parliamentary boroughs ofBelfast andLondonderry", and Southern Ireland was defined as "so much of Ireland as is not comprised within the said parliamentary counties and boroughs". Northern Ireland, amounting to six of the nine counties ofUlster, was seen as the maximum area within whichUnionists could be expected to have a safe majority. This was in spite of the fact that in the last all-Ireland election (1918 United Kingdom general election in Ireland) countiesFermanagh andTyrone had Sinn Féin/Nationalist Party (Irish Parliamentary Party) majorities.[17] Apparently referring to the results of that election, on 14 December 1921 the British Prime Minister spoke of the coercion of Tyrone and Fermanagh:
There is no doubt—certainly since the Act of 1920—that the majority of the people of two counties prefer being with their Southern neighbours to being in the Northern Parliament... What does that mean? If Ulster is to remain a separate community, you can only by means of coercion keep them there...Apart from that, would it be an advantage to Ulster? There is no doubt it would give her trouble. It would be a trouble at her own door, a trouble which would complicate the whole of her machinery, and take away her mind from building. She wants to construct; she wants to build up a good Government, a model Government, and she cannot do so as long as she has got a trouble like this on her own threshold, nay, inside her door.
At the apex of the governmental system was to be theLord Lieutenant of Ireland, who would be the Monarch's representative in both of the Irish home rule regions. The system was based on colonial constitutional theories.Executive authority was to be vested in the crown and, in theory, not answerable to either parliament. The Lord Lieutenant would appoint a cabinet that did not need parliamentary support. No provision existed for a prime minister.
Such structures matched the theory in theBritish dominions, such as Canada and Australia, where in powers belonged to thegovernor-general and there was no normal responsibility to parliament. In reality, governments had long come to be chosen from parliament and to be answerable to it. Prime ministerial offices had come intode facto existence.[a] Such developments were also expected to happen in Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland, but technically were not required under the Act.
The Act revised the constituencies in theRedistribution of Seats (Ireland) Act 1918 for elections to theParliament of the United Kingdom. In place of the 105UK MPs for all of Ireland in 1918, there were to be 33 UK MPs from Southern Ireland and 13 UK MPs from Northern Ireland. The same constituencies were to elect 128 MPs to the Southern Ireland House of Commons and 52 MPs to the Northern Ireland House of Commons.Elections for the two Irish parliaments took place in May 1921. No elections were held in Southern Ireland to the United Kingdom House of Commons as theIrish Free State was due to be established on 6 December 1922, less than a month after the1922 United Kingdom general election.
As well as sharing the sameviceroy, aCouncil of Ireland was to be composed of 20 members from each Parliament. The council would co-ordinate matters of common concern to the two parliaments (transport, health, agriculture etc.).[19] Each Parliament was to possess the ability, in identical motions, to vote powers to the council, which Britain intended should evolve into a single Irish Parliament.[20][21] The council had little real power – the provisions of the Act called for the council to promote consultations which could lead to eventual unity.[22] The Council never met.
TheParliament of Northern Ireland came into being in June 1921. At its inauguration, inBelfast City Hall, KingGeorge V made a famous appeal for Anglo-Irish and north–south reconciliation. The speech, drafted by the government ofDavid Lloyd George on recommendations fromJan Smuts[b] Prime Minister of theUnion of South Africa, with the enthusiastic backing of the King, opened the door for formal contact between theBritish Government and theRepublican administration ofÉamon de Valera.
Though it was superseded in large part, its repeal remained a matter of controversy until accomplished in the 1990s (under the provisions of the 1998Good Friday Agreement).[6]
All 128 MPs elected to theHouse of Commons of Southern Ireland in theMay 1921 elections were returned unopposed; 124 of them, representingSinn Féin, declared themselvesTDs (Teachtaí Dála,Irish forDáil Deputies) and assembled as theSecond Dáil of theIrish Republic.
With only the fourIndependent Unionist MPs, who had been elected for theDublin University constituency and fifteen appointed senators turning up for the state opening of theParliament of Southern Ireland at the Royal College of Science in Dublin (nowGovernment Buildings) in June 1921, the new legislature was suspended. Southern Ireland was ruled, for the time being, directly from London as it had been before the Government of Ireland Act.
TheProvisional Government of the Irish Free State was constituted on 14 January 1922 "at a meeting of members of the Parliament elected for constituencies in Southern Ireland". That meeting was not convened as a meeting of theHouse of Commons of Southern Ireland nor as a meeting of theDáil. Instead, it was convened byArthur Griffith as "Chairman of the Irish Delegation of Plenipotentiaries" (who had signed theAnglo-Irish Treaty) under the terms of the Treaty.[c]
Elections in June 1922 were followed by the meeting of theThird Dáil, which worked as aConstituent Assembly to draft aconstitution for theIrish Free State. For the purposes of British law the constitution was confirmed by theIrish Free State Constitution Act 1922; the new state then came into being on 6 December 1922.
The Treaty provided for the ability of Northern Ireland's Parliament, by formal address, to opt out of the newIrish Free State, which as expected, theParliament of Northern Ireland brought into effect on 7 December 1922 (the day after the establishment of the Irish Free State). AnIrish Boundary Commission was set up to redraw the border between the newIrish Free State and Northern Ireland, but it remained unchanged in return for financial concessions and the British and Irish governments agreed to suppress its report. In regards to the possible loss of territory due to the Boundary Commissions findings, on 25 January 1922James Craig, the 1stPrime Minister of Northern Ireland stated: ""I will never give in to any re-arrangement of the boundary that leaves our Ulster area less than it is under the Government of Ireland Act"[23] The newly formed Government of Northern Ireland refused to appoint a representative to the Boundary Commission. TheCouncil of Ireland never functioned as hoped (as an embryonic all-Ireland parliament), as the new governments decided to find a better mechanism in January 1922.[24]
In consequence of the establishment of the Irish Free State, the British parliament passed theIrish Free State (Consequential Provisions) Act 1922, which made a number of adjustments to Northern Ireland's system of government as set up by the 1920 Act. Most notably, the office of Lord Lieutenant was abolished, being replaced by the new office ofGovernor of Northern Ireland.
The final provisions of the 1920 Act remaining in force in the United Kingdom were repealed under the terms of theNorthern Ireland Act 1998, after theGood Friday Agreement. In the republic, theStatute Law Revision Act 2007 repealed the Act almost 85 years afterConstitution of the Irish Free State replaced it as the basic constitutional law.[25]
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