On 12th June 1916 the Ulster Unionist Council (U.U.C) accepted, for the first time, the idea of partitioning the six north-east counties of Ireland from a Dublin Home Rule parliament. It unanimously resolved:
‘We, the delegates constituting the Ulster Unionist Council, representative of the Unionist population of the Province of Ulster, have considered the proposals laid before us for an adjustment of the Home Rule question on the basis of the definite exclusion from the Government of Ireland Act, 1914, of the six counties of Ulster, in view of the critical situation of the Empire arising out of the European war, declare as follows:
That, Unionists, proud, of our citizenship in the United Kingdom, we reaffirm our unabated abhorrence of the policy of Home Rule, which we believe to be dangerous to the security of the Empire, subversive of the best interests alike of Ireland and of the United Kingdom; and we decline to take any responsibility for setting up such a form of Government in any part of Ireland.
As, however, the Cabinet - which is responsible for the Government of the country - is of the opinion that it will tend to strengthen the Empire and to win the war in which it is now engaged, if all questions connected with Home Rule are settled now, instead of - as originally agreed - at the termination of the war; and as these suggestions by the Government put before us by Sir Edward Carson have been made with that view; we feel, as loyal citizens, that, in this crisis of the Empire’s history, it is our duty to make sacrifices, and we consequently authorise Sir Edward Carson to continue the negotiations on the basis of the suggestion explained to this meeting, and to complete them if the details are arranged to his satisfaction.
We further desire to make it clear that if, from any cause the negotiations referred to prove abortive, we reserve to ourselves complete freedom of action in the future, in opposition to the policy of Home Rule for Ireland.’
The decision of the U.U.C to accept the principle of partition for north east Ulster was problematic for three reasons. First, the apparent abandonment of southern unionists. Second the apparent abandonment of Ulster unionists in Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan. Third, in September 1912 hundreds of thousands of Ulster men and women in signing the Ulster Covenant had pledged to resist Home Rule ‘by using all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland.’ Six north east counties may be a means found necessary to resist Home Rule but not a means to do it for Ulster never mind for Ireland. Not so solemn and not much of a league, after all.
Yet in explaining this decision council member Hugh de Fellenberg Montgomery, emphasised its pragamtic basis. In a letter to M.F. Headlam, a week after the U.U.C decision, Montgomery writes:
I do not like what we did a bit, but it still seems to me the only thing we could do under the very extraordinary circumstances.
Three days later he would write another letter, this time to his son Charles Hubert Montgomery (a civil servant in the Foreign Office), in which he explained at greater length the reasons for the Council’s decision. Having outlined Lloyd George’s position that a resolution to the Irish Question was necessary to the war effort, particularly with respect to the involvement of the United States, he moves to Carson’s private address to the Council in which Carson explained the situation he believed Ulster Unionists were then facing:
The Cabinet having unanimously decided that under pressure of difficulties with America, the Colonies and Parliament (but chiefly with America) they must offer Home Rule at once; and (not being prepared to coerce Ulster) having authorised Loyd George to arrange a settlement, Carson, after what had happened at the Buckingham Palace Conference in 1914, could not well refuse to submit to his followers the exclusion of six counties as a basis of negotiation. Carson had satisfied himself apparently that he had lost all the ground he and his colleagues had gained in their anti-Home Rule campaign before the war, and that the majority of the Unionist members and voters took the same view as the majority of the unionist papers as to the necessity of a settlement. If Ulster Unionists refused to consider such a settlement the Nationalists and radical would hold them up to odium as the people who were preventing a settlement of the Irish question, and they could not hope for any sympathy or support in Great Britain now or hereafter.
The Home Rule Act was on the statute book and now that the Unionist leaders in the Coalition Government had become parties to a proposal to bring it into immediate operation in 26 counties there was no hope of removing it from the statute book at the end of the war. If we did not agree to a settlement we should have the Home Rule Act coming into operation without the exclusion of any part of Ulster, or subject only to some worthless Amending Act which Asquith might bring in fulfillment of his pledge, and we should either have to submit to this or fight. To begin fighting here at the end of the great war would be hopeless and we could not hope for any support. If, in spite of our apparent weakness we succeeded in our fight we could not possibly hope to get more than we were now offered without fighting viz. the exclusion of six counties, we should probably get less: We should be in a better position to hold our own and help our friends with only six counties excluded returning 16 Unionists and 9 Nationalists than we should be with 9 counties excluded returning 17 Nationalists and 16 Unionists. We should be in a better position to help Unionists in any part of Ireland if we are excluded than if we formed a portion of a permanent minority in a Dublin Parliament: therefore on the whole Carson was justified in coming to us and recommending us to authorise him to enter upon negotiations on the basis of the exclusion of six counties and the chief reasons for recommending us to agree to this were:
(1) that if we did not agree to do this we should lose any remaining sympathy we had in Great Britain as the people who had prevented Ireland being pacified.
(2) that if we did not take this offer we should never get as good a one again.
(3) that the Cabinet having unanimously made up their minds to give some form of Home Rule at once we could not prevent it; if the Home Ruler themselves refused the offer that is a different pair of shoes.
In Montgomery’s reasoning we see his answers to the issue of abandonment and the suggestion of an answer to the breaking of the Covenant:
(1) The partition of the six North East counties was the best outcome that could then be achieved. Home Rule for Ireland was already on the statute book, so something achievable had to be done.
(2) The war had fundamentally changed the situation unionists found themselves in, the pre-war campaign - including the Ulster Covenant - was lost. Connected here is what Carson believed, and Montgomery accepted on Carson’s word, was the role of an Irish settlement in winning the war. It was believed continuing to resist Home Rule for Ireland and in so doing delaying a resolution of the Irish Question, would harm the Empire and alienate all remaining sympathy in Great Britain. It is this reason that is emphasised in the resolution of the U.U.C.
(3) Six north east counties outside of Dublin would be in a better position to help unionists in the rest of Ulster and Ireland. So it is not the case they were or would be abandoned;
(4) Exclusion for the whole of Ulster would mean that it would have a slim Nationalist majority. The implication being that Ulster would not be in as strong a position to help Southern unionists and would itself be on shaky ground.
Of course one may doubt the quality of some or even all of this reasoning. Montgomery was right that partition of some kind was very probable the only means of preserving the union in Ireland. It was the best that could be achieved if you thought that preserving the union in Ireland was the best outcome. He was wrong, however, that six counties was the maximum that could have been excluded. The Long Committee initially recommended the nine counties of Ulster and it was unionists in the six that argued against it on the grounds that nine would have an insufficient unionist majority to make it viable. The subsequent boundary commissioning would also move away from the idea of strict county lines even if eventually to no avail.
His skimming over the pre-war ground might show a lack of concern for the Covenant as a covenant. Others took this problem with more seriousness. Fred Crawford offered a somewhat tortuous defence of how his supporting the resolution was of both the letter and spirit of the text of the Covenant. Others, with an eye for technicalities, said the Covenant was to do with the Home Rule conspiracy at the time (‘to defeat this present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule parliament’) and this had since passed. Unsurprisingly, this did not impress unionists in the other Ulster counties.
Montgomery’s view of the six north east counties ‘helping out’ the left behind unionists may seem rich given that in the eventual process of partition, Northern Ireland was so busy trying to protect and establish itself that it had little ability to help out unionists across the border. But at the time he was thinking on the fracturing politics of the South giving the north east time and space. The subsequent rise to dominance of Sinn Fein would give the issue a rather different colour, if not a different solution. The internal dynamics of the southern state were less conflicted than might have been the case under Redmond, at least for a time, and so it presented a greater threat to the Northern Irish government. At this point, also, the idea of a home rule parliament for the north east had not taken root. The eventual need to build a governing infrastructure for Northern Ireland, again, meant that in the first years after partition Northern Irish unionists had their attention primarily on this.
Of course, returning to to his letter to M.F. Headlam, all of this reasoning finds itself situated within the wider view that this was not an outcome he liked or wanted. In a very real sense, it was a failure.