5 The treaty is signed

Nationalists agree to partition – believing that the north would eventually join the south

After a shaky start, negotiations got A under way on the basis of Lloyd

George’s formula – summing up, in a sense, the whole “Irish question” – to find a way of reconciling Ireland’s “association with the British empire” with “Irish national aspirations”. This project still looked to many like squaring a circle. The British believed that they were conceding a limited freedom to Ireland, while Sinn Féin claimed that Ireland was already free but might “go back into” the British empire. Financial and defence issues were also complicated, but never as intractable as the questions of sovereignty and the unity of Ireland.

It appeared to many nationalists that Britain turned to negotiation only once partition had been wrapped up. But if it now looks as if there was no going back on it, it did not seem like that to loyalists in Ulster. There, fears of a sell-out were deeply embedded, and the open-ended process was potentially disastrous. The negotiations clearly meant that the devolved powers defined in the 1920 Government of Ireland Act (rejected by Sinn Féin) would be expanded, and the whole two-parliament framework might also be revised. Indeed, the Sinn Féin delegates went into talks planning to force a breakdown on the issue of Ulster, believing (with good reason) that British public opinion would not support “unreasonable” unionist intransigence.

Sinn Féin deputy leader Arthur Griffith, though, realised that Britain would not try to “coerce” Ulster into the new Irish Free State directly; at best it would do so indirectly, by threatening revision of the Northern Ireland border. The idea of a boundary commission, which had appeared when the 1920 Act was introduced, resurfaced when the talks were at a critical stage in mid-October. Griffith believed that Lloyd George would use it to bring the Northern government into line, and he undertook not to “queer” the prime minister’s position on it. However, this promise remained unknown to the other plenipotentiaries until the last moment.

The night of 5 December 1921, following nearly six months of tortuous negotiations, was a moment of intense political drama in London. Irish delegates headed by Griffith were confronted by Lloyd George’s theatrical statement that unless they signed his draft treaty that evening, and it was received by the Northern Ireland government next day, “immediate and terrible war” would follow within three days. Lloyd George had a courier waiting, and a destroyer with steam up at Holyhead to take him to Belfast.

Tension within the Irish delegation was still high as they battled over the two key issues of sovereignty and unity. Without the revelation that night of Griffith’s conviction – shared by Collins – that large transfers of territory from the north would follow, making the northern state unviable, the treaty might well not have been agreed. But, after an agonised discussion, the delegation signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty. According to the treaty, all 32 counties would be part of the Irish Free State, but the six counties of Northern Ireland were given the right to opt out. And when the Free State came into legal existence a year later, Northern Ireland immediately did so. Partition was complete.

Charles Townshend is professor emeritus of international history at Keele University. His latest book is The Partition: Ireland Divided, 1885–1925 (Allen Lane, 2021)