Just 40 years of independence

■ A Leavy’s letter regarding the Border (‘Boris Johnson’s complaints about Irish Border are just pathetic’, Letters, June 9) is historically incorrect. The Home Rule Act 1914, as the ‘payment’ for keeping successive British parties in government, was a joke. The title of the act was to “provide self-government within the UK for Ireland, expressed as an act to provide the better Government of Ireland”. World War I caused the act to be suspended.

It became apparent to the Ulster Unionists that the idea of being regulated from Dublin – even if they were still in the UK – was not something they could countenance. On September 27, 1913, the Ulster Unionist Council proclaimed a provisional government for the province. By the end of November 1913, Lloyd George and Asquith managed to extract from John Redmond and John Dillon acceptance of partition.

In March 1914, British Army officers at the Curragh threatened mutiny if ordered into action against the Ulster unionists. The unionists had imported 25,000 rifles and three million rounds of ammunition.

The Irish Volunteers in the south also imported arms. The drift away from constitutionalism in both north and south became a tide.

Then World War I started and the British government suspended the implementation of the act.

This suited the British government as it, in the words of Ronan Fanning in his book ‘The Fatal Path’, enabled Asquith “to do what he always wanted to do about Ireland, nothing”.

All that Redmond and the IPP got for years of propping up the Liberal government and the recruitment of 150,000 young Irishmen for the war, which left 50,000 of them dead, was a dud cheque.

The act was repealed by the Government of Ireland Act 1920, which gave self-government to the six counties within the UK.

Our friends in Europe would not allow us to join the EEC until the UK joined in 1973. We did not have our own Central Bank until 1943. Up to that date, the Bank of England controlled our banks.

We have had independence for a mere 30 years in the last 1,000, from 1943 to 1973, then we surrendered it again to Brussels.

Hugh Duffy

Cleggan, Co Galway