Contributor:

Professor Richard Bourke

Talk Title:

Unionisms and Partition

Talk Synopsis:

This talk explores the background to the Government of Ireland Act (1920) and how it was ‘a departure from unionism in its original, “classic” sense’. It describes how the creation of a ‘parliamentary federation’ was ‘a setup which unionist statecraft had been determined to avoid’ and how it ‘envisaged the creation of yet another union: an Irish union’ which would be facilitated by the formation of a Council of Ireland. It suggests that UK government policy in the early 1920s ‘was neither unionist nor partitionist in complexion’ – something that was reflected in the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty which ‘prospectively incorporated’ Northern Ireland into the Irish Free State. It also looks at differing views of partition as either ‘undemocratic’ or ‘a matter of democratic right’ and the effect of subsequent political developments. And it looks to how Ulster unionism might think about its future and constitutional relations – ‘pursuing a lasting settlement instead of protesting as its future is shaped behind its back’.

Short biography:

Richard Bourke is Professor of the History of Political Thought, and a Fellow of King’s College, at the University of Cambridge.

Further Reading:

A Fool’s Paradise: Being a Constitutionalist’s Criticism of the Home Rule Bill of 1912 – A. V. Dicey Ulster’s Stand for Union - Ronald McNeill, Home Rule: An Irish History, 1800–2000 – Alvin Jackson Peace in Ireland: The War of Ideas – Richard Bourke “Genealogies of Partition: History, History-Writing and ‘the Troubles’ in Ireland,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 9: 4 (December 2006), pp. 619–34 – Margaret O’Callaghan ‘Democracy, Sovereignty and Unionist Political Thought during the Revolutionary Period’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 27 (December 2017), pp. 211–32 – Colin Reid