Government of Ireland Act 1920
An Act to Provide for the Better Government of Ireland, more usually the
Government of Ireland Act 1920 (this is its official
short title; the formal citation is
10 & 11 Geo. 5 c. 67.) was the second act passed by the
Parliament of the
United Kingdom to provide for
Home Rule in
Ireland. It is the act that
partitioned Ireland and created
Northern Ireland.
Various attempts had been made to give Ireland limited regional self government, known as
home rule, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The First Home Rule
bill proposed
1886 had been defeated in the
House of Commons following a split in the
Liberal Party, while the Second Home Rule Bill, having been passed by the Commons in
1893 bill was
vetoed by the
House of Lords. The
1912 bill was stalled by the same body. However a revolutionary change in the
British Constitution in 1912 had removed the Lords' ability to veto bills, replacing it with a delay of three parliamentary sessions.
[As each session usually runs from November to November, it amounts to a normal delay of three years. However shorter sessions can occur if multiple general elections occur in the one year or at short intervals.] Though rejected by the Lords in 1912 and 1914, it was approved over the Lords' rejection in 1914, and received the
Royal Assent of King
George V immediately before the outbreak of the
First World War. Because of the continuing threat of civil war in Ireland, King George called the
Buckingham Palace Conference where Nationalist and Unionist leaders were invited to seek agreement. The conference eventually failed. Due to controversy over the rival demands of Irish Nationalists, backed up by the Liberals (for all-island home rule), and Irish Unionists, backed up by the Conservatives, for the exclusion of most or all of the province of
Ulster, the Act's implementation was delayed until after what was expected to be a short European war.
Under the
Parliament Act to be enacted against the wishes of the House of Lords a Bill had to be passed three times in
identical form by the House of Commons. As a result changes that were thought necessary between the first attempted enactment in 1912 and its completed enactment in 1914 could not be included, without starting the whole process of three attempted enactments all over again. Rather than try to amend the 1914 Act, and face the same problems over its contents with the House of Lords and a possible three session delay in the enactment of the amendments, Prime Minister
David Lloyd George abandoned the 1914 Act and started again with a new Bill.
The Bill itself was shaped by the British cabinet's Committee of Ireland, under the chairmanship of former
Ulster Unionist Party leader
Walter Long. It was Long, even during the
First World War, who pushed for a radical new idea. Instead of leaving the part of Ireland to be excluded under direct
Westminster rule, he proposed creating two Irish home rule entities,
Northern Ireland and
Southern Ireland with
unicameral parliaments. The House of Lords amended the Bill to create two
bicameral parliaments, "consisting of His Majesty, the Senate of (Northern or Southern) Ireland, and the House of Commons of (Northern or Southern) Ireland". The 1920 Act is also known as the
Fourth Home Rule Bill.
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The first meeting of the First Dáil, in January 1919.
The Dáil met in the Round Room of the Mansion House, residence of the Lord Mayor of Dublin. |
While Long's and Lloyd George's thinking was still based on developing on the 1914 Act, Irish politics had moved on decisively in a different direction.
Sinn Féin, standing for 'an independent sovereign Ireland', had won seventy-three of the one hundred and five parliamentary seats on the island in the election in the
1918 General Election and established its own
UDI state, the
Irish Republic with its own extra-legal parliament,
Dáil Éireann.
[Dáil Éireann, after a number of meetings, was declared illegal by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. His declaration did not diminish Irish support for the new assembly and its republic.] Thus, when the Act was passed on
23 December 1920 it was already out of touch with realities in Ireland. The long-standing demand for home rule and been replaced among Nationalists by a demand for complete independence. The Republic's
army was waging the
Irish War of Independence against British rule, which had reached a nadir in late 1920.
The Act divided Ireland into two territories,
Southern Ireland and
Northern Ireland, each intended to be self-governing except in areas specifically reserved to the
Parliament of the United Kingdom: chief amongst these were matters relating to the Crown, to defence, foreign affairs, international trade, and currency.
"Southern Ireland" was to be all of Ireland except for "the parliamentary counties of
Antrim,
Armagh,
Down,
Fermanagh,
Londonderry and
Tyrone, and the parliamentary boroughs of
Belfast and
Londonderry" which were to constitute "
Northern Ireland". Northern Ireland as defined by the Act, amounting to six of the nine counties of
Ulster, was seen as the maximum area within which
Unionists could be expected to have a safe majority. This was in spite of the fact that counties
Fermanagh and
Tyrone had Catholic Nationalist majorities.
At the apex of the governmental system was to be the
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who would be chief executive of both Irish home rule states. 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 the colonial constitutions in
Canada and
Australia, where in theory powers belonged to the
governor-general and there was no theoretical responsibility to parliament. In reality, governments had long come to chosen from parliament and to be answerable to it. Prime ministerial offices had come into
de facto existence.
[A prime minister of Canada had come into existence within a decade of colonial rule in Canada, while in Australia a prime minister appeared in the system of government from the moment the Commonwealth of Australia came into being.] Such developments were also expected to happen in Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland, but technically were not required under the Act.
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Northern and Southern Ireland |
A
Council of Ireland would co-ordinate matters of common concern to the two parliaments, with each parliament possessing the ability, in identical motions, to vote powers to the Council, which it was hoped would evolve into a single Irish parliament in time. Both parts of Ireland would continue to send a number of
MPs to the
Westminster parliament. Elections for both lower houses took place in May
1921.
The
Parliament of Northern Ireland came into being in 1921. At its inauguration, in
Belfast City Hall,
King George V made a famous appeal for Anglo-Irish and north–south reconciliation. The speech, drafted by the government of
David Lloyd George on recommendations from
Jan Smuts[Jan Smuts was one of the best Boer commanders of the Second Boer War. His deep Commando raids into Cape Province caused considerable embarrassment and difficulties for the British Army. After the war he decided that his future and that of South Africa lay in reconciliation between Afrikaner and the British. In 1914 at the start of World War I the Boer "bitter enders" rose against the government in the Boer Revolt and allied themselves with their old supporter Germany. General Smuts played an important part in crushing the rebellion and defeating the Germans in Africa, before fighting on the Western Front. The South African establishment, of which Smuts was a part, in contrast to the British establishment in 1916, was lenient to the leaders of the revolt, who were fined and spent two years in prison. After this revolt and lenient treatment the "bitter enders" contented themselves with working within the system. It was his experience of the Boer British rapprochement which he was able to bring to the attention of the British government as an alternative to confrontation.] Prime Minister of the
Union of South Africa, with the enthusiastic backing of the King, opened the door for formal contact between the
British Government and the
Republican administration of
Eamon de Valera.
Southern Ireland never became a reality. All 128 MPs elected to the
House of Commons of Southern Ireland were returned unopposed, and 124 of them, representing
Sinn Féin, declared themselves
TDs (
Irish for Dáil Deputies) and assembled as the
Second Dáil of the
Irish Republic.
With only the four Unionist MPs (all representing graduates of the Irish Universities) and 15 appointed senators turning up for the state opening of the Southern Ireland Parliament in the Royal College of Science in Dublin (now Government Buildings) in June 1921, the new legislature was suspended.
The
House of Commons of Southern Ireland came back into existence again for a short time under the
Anglo–Irish Treaty of
1921, to fulfill two functions. The first was to formally ratify the Treaty, which it did in January 1922 (The
Second Dáil, which had authority in nationalist eyes for ratifying the Treaty, did so in December 1921). Secondly, it was required to put in place a
Provisional Government, which it did, under General
Michael Collins. Collins was then legally installed in office by the Lord Lieutenant,
Viscount Fitzalan of Derwent.
The Parliament of Northern Ireland met there in June 1921.]]The Treaty provided for the ability of
Northern Ireland's Parliament, by formal address, to opt out of the new
Irish Free State, which was a foregone conclusion. An
Irish Boundary Commission was set up to redraw the border between the new
Irish Free State and
Northern Ireland, but the British and Irish governments agreed to suppress the report when it emerged that very few majority Nationalist areas were to be transferred to the Irish Free State, while a rich part of East Donegal was to be transferred to Northern Ireland. The
Council of Ireland never functioned as hoped, (as an embryonic all-Ireland parliament), as the
Unionists simply refused to meet and the
British government made no effort to compel them.
In the aftermath of the creation of the Irish Free State, the
Irish Free State (Consequential Provisions) Act adjusted the Northern Ireland system of government slightly to cover the failure of Southern Ireland to function. The office of Lord Lieutenant was abolished and replaced by the
Governor of Northern Ireland.
The 1920 Act was finally
repealed under the terms of the
Northern Ireland Act 1998, after the
Good Friday Agreement.
*
Second Dáil*
Parliament of Southern Ireland*
Parliament of Northern Ireland*
Unionists (Ireland)*
Irish Government Bill 1886 (First Irish Home Rule Bill)
*
Irish Government Bill 1893 (Second Irish Home Rule Bill)
*
Government of Ireland Act 1914 (Third Irish Home Rule Bill)
*
Government of Ireland Act 1920 (Parliamentary and Dáil constituencies)*
History of Ireland (1801–1922)*
History of the Republic of Ireland*
Text of the Act as applied in Northern Ireland* Robert Kee,
The Green Flag: A History of Irish Nationalism (
2000 edition, first published
1972), ISBN 0140291652.
