Southern Ireland (1921–22)

Southern Ireland (Irish Deisceart Éireann, English Southern Ireland) was the official name of the state created by the Government of Ireland Act 1920, which comprised 26 of Ireland's 32 counties. The legislative power of the state was the Southern Ireland Parliament. The Act formally divided the island into Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland. Both countries were given a bicameral parliament and a separate executive. Two links existed, however: the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland as the King's representative in both countries, and the so-called Council of Ireland, a political body which took over the voting between the two governments and which, it was promised to the Irish nationalists, would be the beginning of an all-Ireland parliament.

History

The Government of Ireland Act, also known as the 4th Home Rule, was designed to find a solution to the problem that had plagued Irish politics since the 1880s: the dispute between unionists and nationalists. Nationalists had been seeking some form of Home Rule for decades, as they wanted to see Ireland without a British rule. Unionists, on the other hand, were afraid that a nationalist government in Dublin would act discriminatorily against Protestants and introduce taxes aimed mainly at the agricultural counties of the northeast. Extremist Unionists then imported early arms from the German Empire and formed the Ulster Volunteer Force to prevent the enforcement of Home Rule in Ulster. In turn, nationalists also imported arms and formed the Irish Volunteers in 1913. The final partition by the Government of Ireland Act was originally intended to be merely a transitional state.

In reality, however, Southern Ireland never became functioning - unlike Northern Ireland, where a working parliament was formed which lasted in this form until 1972. The first election to the Southern Ireland House of Commons in 1921 was seen by Sinn Féin as an election to the parliament of the revolutionary Irish Republic, which was unilaterally proclaimed in 1916 but never recognised. Sinn Féin won 124 out of 128 votes, but at the first meeting of the Southern Ireland Parliament in June 1921 only the four elected Unionists appeared (the elected Sinn Féin members assembled instead as a Second Dáil), so there could be no question of a Southern Ireland government.

It was not until January 1922 that the Southern Ireland House of Commons was given a supporting role. As British policy never recognised the revolutionary parliament, the Southern Irish House of Commons remained the only legal one in the eyes of the British. When the Anglo-Irish Treaty was created in 1921, the question arose as to which of the two powers of the state (the Southern Irish House of Commons or the revolutionary parliament of the Second Dáil) had to agree to this treaty from the Irish side. Since neither side wanted to give in, the treaty was ultimately recognised by both bodies (whose personnel composition was almost identical).

Southern Ireland was - in retrospect - only a separate state on paper, overshadowed by the revolutionary Irish Republic and absorbed into the Irish Free State as a result of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1922. On the other hand, the co-negotiator of the Treaty and subsequent Chairman of the Provisional Government of Southern Ireland, Michael Collins, is regarded as an important figure in Irish Independence.

See also

• history of Ireland