Contributor:

Dr Margaret O’Callaghan

Talk Title:

Acts of partition: from the Government of Ireland Act 1920 to the Boundary Commission, 1925.

Talk Synopsis:

This talk describes Partition as ‘an instrument of policy that marked the [UK] government’s failure in the wider problem of governing Ireland’. It suggests that the Government of Ireland Act was ‘a landmark in the genealogy of partitions’ and sets out its immediate background and effects. And it argues that the partition of Ireland ‘was not an act, but a process’ that ‘happened in stages’. It details the sectarian tensions and violence of this period, the Treaty negotiations of 1921 and James Craig’s role as Prime Minister, including his interactions with politicians in London and Dublin. It also identifies key questions about what happened and suggests that whilst the ‘Boundary Commission would end the partition process’ in 1925, James Craig spent much of his time until then ‘consumed’ with ‘security and the campaign to resist’ the effect which the Commission might have in placing ‘his whole entity in jeopardy’.

Short Biography:

Dr Margaret O’ Callaghan is an historian and political analyst at the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics, Queen’s University, Belfast.

Further Reading:

Old Parchment and Water; the Boundary Commission of 1925 and the Copperfastening of the Irish Border. Bullan; an Irish Studies Journal , Volume IV, Number 2, 2000, pp 27-55 – Margaret O’ Callaghan Genealogies of Partition; History, History‐Writing and ‘the Troubles’ in Ireland. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 9:4, 619-634 – Margaret O'Callaghan The Evolution and Entrenchment of the Irish Border, 1911-1926: A political geography – Kieran Rankin Fatal Path: British Government and the Irish Revolution 1910-1922 – Ronan Fanning The Unresolved Question: The Anglo-Irish Settlement and its Undoing 1912-72 – Nicholas Mansergh Fatal Influence: the Impact of Ireland on British Politics – Kevin Matthews