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A Revolution in UlsterGuns and Drums: Revolution in Ulster by Martin Wallace; Ulster 1969 by Max Hastings; Fireover Ulster by Patrick Riddell; Divided Ulster by Liam de Paor; Holy War in Belfast byAndrerw BoydReview by: Nini RodgersFortnight, No. 1 (Sep. 25, 1970), p. 22Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25543102 .

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Books 1

A Revolution

in Ulster Guns and Drums: Revolution in Ulster,

Martin Wallace (Geoffrey Chapman). Ulster 1969, Max Hastings (Victor Gollancz). Fire over Ulster, Patrick Riddell (Hamish

Hamilton). Divided Ulster, Liam de Paor (Penguin). Holy War in Belfast, Andrerw Boyd (Anvil

Books).

In times gone by I used sometimes to read what then passed as popular non fiction about Ulster

? folksie accounts of fairies and three-legged pots, or tributes to

pet tracts of countryside written in sentimental 19th century prose. It all seemed further removed from reality than

more professional descriptions of countries which Pd never seen.

Earlier this year, when the first books about a quite different Ulster began to

appear in the shops, I could not face them.

Living through the Ulster crisis was bad

enough; reading about it seemed pure masochism. But underneath this aversion lay curiosity

? so I began to glance at reviews, people started talking about the books, asking me if Pd read them, insisting on discussion them with me even when I said I hadn't. So I gave in.

The first book I read was Martin Wallace's "Guns and Drums: Revolution in Ulster" (Geoffrey Chapman, 1970)

? and I read it with mounting surprise, because

though it had been described to me as

'journalistic,' it seemed to me to be an

attempt to remove Northern Ireland's difficulties into the positively academic

atmosphere; here the speeches of Jack

Lynch and Chichester-Clark or the state ments of the Westminster Government are

laid before us like pages from a work on constitutional history, and the Unionist

Party and the Civil Rights Movement are

presented as static forces with over

simplified aims. Wallace's main and final, conclusion is that the situation in Ulster cannot be improved within the existing constitutional framzwork, and that a pos sible solution would be some form of federalism ? but though he has certainly

written a fair-minded and responsible book, I cannot help feeling that in intention it

was misconceived. It is based on the same

assumption as the Scarman Tribunal, the Riot Commission of 1886, and all the other riot commissions before that again

? that once the facts are established and universal

ly accepted the situation will improve. And it has been proved time and time again that the facts are not enough. An

examination of the society which furnished the facts in the first place would surely be

more valuable. The other books I read, although very

different from one another, seemed to me to penetrate more deeply into the realities of life in Ulster. In his book Ulster 1969 (Victor Gollancz) Max Hastings

? perhaps

because he is addressing himself to an

English audience and is himself an

Englishman ? feels both freer and more

obliged to investigate the background and

analyse the feelings of the various

participants in the struggle which he

describes. Though he offers no solution to Northern Ireland's problems (beyond the

implementation of the Hunt Report on the R.U.C) his sympathetic treatment of the

subject may at least persuade some of his

compatriots not to dismiss it as just another

example of "the Irish at it again." Patrick Riddell's Fire over Ulster (Hamish

Hamilton, 1970), Liam de Paor's Divided Ulster (Penguin, 1970), and Andrew Boyd's Holy War in Belfast (Anvil Books, 1969) all

adopt a more historical attitude. Riddell

begins his book with the Battle of the Somme! , De Paor with the Flight of the

Earls, and Boyd examines the course of the Belfast Riots in the second half of the 19th

century. But Riddell's view of history causes

him simply to report or manifest the attitudes which have created the Northern Ireland problem, while De Paor dissects and

analyses them in terms of class and culture.

Boyd's copious documentation of the riots

suggests that no amount of tinkering with the constitution or the police force is likely to produce a remedy, and in this respect endorses De Paor's class analysis. But

though De Paor's approach naturally leads him to a scornful, rejection of federalism, his own solution ?

the ending of division within Ireland, North and South, by the

uniting of the working class ?

seems, at the moment, to be a rather remote

possibility.

NINI RODGERS

The Story of Partition Report of the Irish Boundary Commission.

Introduction by Geoffrey J. Hand (Irish University Press) 65s.

The contemporary relevance of Geoffrey Hand's scholarly edition of the Irish

Boundary Commission's Report is immediate ly striking. Here lie the origins of many of our present discontents. It was the

mishandling of this 1925 Report that finally fenced off the Northern Ireland that we know to-day, however different were the intentions of the Boundary Commissioners, and however opposite were the hopes of those Irishmen who signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921.

It was out of the 'Treaty' that the

Boundary Commission arose. Article Twelve

provided the opportunity for the Govern ment of Northern Ireland, newly established the previous year, to opt out of the

jurisdiction of the Free State Parliament, but only on condition that a three member Commission be established to:

"Determine in accordance with the wishes of the inhabitants, so far as may be

compatible with the economic and geogra phic conditions, the boundaries between Northern Ireland and the rest of Ireland."

There is little doubt that the Irish team which negotiated the Treaty assumed that such a Commission would reduce 'Northern Ireland' to the unviable dimensions of 'Belfast and its backyard'. Their hopes for Irish unity, frustrated immediately through their own military weakness and the

political deviousness of their opponents, would be realised, they felt, once the Commission had proved the infant Partition unworkable.

The events which doused such hopes provided a striking preamble to the tragedy of the Commission itself, and Geoffrey Hand's introduction not only sets the scene well but also fills in many backstage details. Dissension in the South breaking into civil war, followed by astute delaying tactics by the Craigavon government, prevented the Commission getting down to work until 1925. And the dramatic content of the final

act was stranger than fiction, worthy of an historical exercise which retains to this day so many aspects hardly credible in the

world of reality. The Commission's Chairman, Mr. Justice

Feetham of the South African Supreme Court, was by no means the first choice for the job. He brought a narrow legalism to the admittedly vague terms of Article

Twelve, and envisaged only marginal adjustments of territory.

Eoin MacNeill, the Representative of

Cosgrave's Free State Government, a

scholarly man of single-minded dedication, had lost interest it seems, in the Commission's work by the time it began its

operations. His lack of application served his country ill and his high integrity kept his superiors in ignorance.

J. R. Fisher, former editor of The Northern Whig, was appointed by the British Government to represent Northern

Ireland, Stormont having refused its co

operation in an agreement to which it had not been a party. He did not, as Dr. Hand

maintains, regard his obligation to secrecy as binding. It may thus have been he who leaked the findings of the Commission on the eve of completion. The uproar resulting from the disclosure in the Morning Post on

November 7, 1925 of details of territorial transfers from the South as well as from the North precipitated a crisis in Dublin sufficient to undo all the Commission's work and to cement the existing six-county boundary established by the 1920 Govern

ment of Ireland Act. The Report was not

published and a hurried Financial Agree ment was concluded in December 1925 to

assuage Southern wrath. Dr. Hand however is now able to publish

the full text and a complete list of associated documents, with the Commissions two main maps (and the Morning Post map too), the one showing the proposed boundary revisions, the other the 1911 Census figures of religious persuasion upon which the revisions were largely based.

The changes recommended were not substantial. Only some 183,290 acres were added to the Free State, containing 31,319 persons, whilst the Northern territory was to acquire 49,242 acres with 7,594 inhabi tants. This latter transfer, of land and

people out of the jurisdiction of Dublin, was too much for a frustrated nationalism to swallow. The Cosgrave Government, in the inflamed circumstances of the time, had little choice but to keep the temperature

down, talk of a future unity through consent alone, and seek immediate compen sation in lieu of the operation of Article

Twelve.

Inevitably, such a book as The Report of the Irish Boundary Commission, full as it is

of the bickering of division, close as it is to

the intransigent narrowness upon which Stormont was founded provokes thoughts of

what might have been. It is perhaps only in

appreciating what we have lost that we can

put in perspective what we hae done and what we yet might with effort achieve. A

United Ireland remains but the distant dream of the nationalist. A united Ulster could still become a practical reality if men

of goodwill combine to put policy before

politics, conscience before dogma and action before cricical inaction.

DAVID HARKNESS

22 FORTNIGHT

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