When, in 1916, the Ulster Unionist Council voted in favour of the principle of partition for the six North East counties, it did so unanimously. As a unanimous vote the delegates from Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan had voted for the potential partitioning of Ulster. At the time Ulster unionists had accepted that a resolution of the Irish question was necessary to save the Empire. While it quickly became apparent that Lloyd George had rather overstated this to Carson the issue was not resolved until after the war. By then the idea of partitioning Ulster could no longer be justified on the basis of the emergency facing the Empire. Yet in March 1920 the U.U.C in a majority vote rejected the exclusion of the entirety of Ulster. A decision that resulted in the resignation of many delegates in the three and the six counties. In April the delegates from Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan issued a pamphlet entitled ‘Ulster and Home Rule. No partition of Ulster’ in which it addressed the plan to partition Ireland on the basis of the six North East counties. They explained:
The FIRST occasion on which the value of the Covenant came to be tested was in 1916, when we were in the midst of the war, and when it was represented by the Government that for the sake of the Empire, and in order to ensure Victory it was necessary the Irish question should be settled and that the Nationalists were willing it should be settled on the basis of excluding six Counties. The Ulster Unionist Council considered the situation but no one then thought for a moment (serious as the crisis was) of violating the Covenant. All was made dependent on the attitude of the three Counties. We met in a room by ourselves and the Council sat awaiting our decision. Had we rejected the proposal that would have been an end of it. We decided, in view of the then alarming state of affairs when the existence of the Empire was at stake; that we would leave the decision in the hands of the representatives of the six Counties. Our determination was recognised as a patriotic act of self-sacrifice, and it was declared that should the matter not go through we should never again be called on to make such a sacrifice. The matter did not go through owing to the attitude of the Nationalists, and we returned to our former position.
Having consented in 1916, they were now facing a second attempt in very different circumstances. Unlike previously, the delegates complained, unanimity was not sought:
The SECOND occasion on which the test of the value of the Covenant arose was at the meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council on the 10th March, 1920, but what a change? Our consent was not considered then to be necessary. The delegates by a majority rejected a proposal that the Northern area should consist of nine counties and limited it to six as proposed in the Government Home Rule Bill regardless of our protests. This we bitterly resent…’
Having lost the vote on the exclusion of the entirety of Ulster in March, the pamphlet would offer eight arguments against the decision that was taken:
(1) The meeting was conducted in haste which prevented delegates from both the six and three counties from speaking.
(2) The decision was carried on a show of hands, which were not counted. If they had been it would have been apparent that the majority for the six counties was slim.
(3) The major argument advanced for the six counties, by Thomas Moles MP, was that a unionist majority of members could not be returned from the nine of Ulster. This, they said, was to mislead the meeting and they offered three main reasons why. The first was that there was a Protestant majority of around two hundred thousand. The second was that based on the existing franchise there was a Unionist majority of eight. The third, that the Government of Ireland Bill gave Ulster 64 members and, on the basis of the previous, this would mean a unionist majority of twelve.
(4) The argument (“one…so childish that we hardly like to repeat it”) that the Covenant only applied to the situation in 1912 was false. As the delegates for the six counties recognised, the 1914 bill was “on the Statute Book and would into force unless repealed”. This was the bill “the Covenant was entered into to oppose.”
(5) “There was no reason why the historic Province of Ulster should be partitioned” and gave geographical arguments against it:
To partition it on the basis of six counties would increase the nationalist in the South (“the ideal position would be to have a fairly strong nationalist minority in the North and a fairly strong Unionist minority in the South”);
Six counties was “too small for a Parliament, and it is bound to become parochial” and a six county boundary would be “ridiculous” - Donegal would be cut off, Cavan and Monaghan form a “natural boundary” to the south; and
“Monaghan runs up to a point between Tyrone and Armagh into the very heart of the Province.”
(6) The argument that the three counties contain a nationalist majority is inconsistent as “so does Derry City, Fermanagh County, Tyrone County, South Armagh, South Down and the Falls Division of Belfast…yet no one proposes to exclude them”. Morever, there are more Unionists in the Southern area than there are Nationalists in the three Counties and no provision whatever is made for them”.
(7) The infrastructure and commercial activity of the nine counties of Ulster was centered around Belfast. Partition on the basis of six counties would reduce Belfast’s commercial opportunity and place a greater burden on the six counties than the nine in maintaining a parliament, government and law courts.
(8) Insofar as nine counties presents the greater opportunity for good government - because of (5) and (7) - it would present a greater “inducement to the three Southern Provinces to become settled and well governed also”.
They concluded:
We appeal to our fellow-Unionists in the six Counties not to desert us and not to violate their Covenant when they can take us in with perfect safety to themselves.