On This Day / December 18, 1920
Go BackReproduced with permission from The Irish News.
19201218
Reference Date
19201218
Publication Date
Listen Along in Éamons Voice
Summary: On This Day – 18th December 1920, Nationalist MPs warned that the Partition Bill abandoned Northern Catholics, predicting intensified sectarianism as safeguards like proportional representation were stripped away. Edited by Éamon Phoenix.
Nationalists Abandoned | On This Day – 18th December 1920
IN THE House of Commons yesterday Mr Joseph Devlin (Nationalist) expressed surprise that on the last day for the consideration of one of the worst Bills which had ever been presented to Parliament, so full of extraordinary consequences to Ireland, the PM [Lloyd George] should be absent.
Did he propose to pass this measure? If so, it would be an impenetrable barrier to any prospects of peace and goodwill between the two nations because the Bill was despised by everybody.
However, Mr Bonar Law (for the government) said they were going ahead with the Bill.
Mr T P O’Connor [Nat.] referring to the need for PR, said it was notorious that sectarianism raged with a rancorous ferocity more in the North of Ireland than in any other country in the civilised world.
Why, a Catholic would have as much a chance of being elected Lord Mayor of Belfast as a Christian to be elected Caliph of Baghdad. (Laughter.)
The conditions in the North of Ireland were such that the minority were entitled to the protection which was provided by means of the system of Proportional Representation.
When this little protection for the Catholic minority was proposed, up jumped the Minotaur for Duncairn [Carson] and denounced it.
He was greatly surprised at the attitude taken up by Sir Edward because he had always regarded him as a champion of the minority, but when it was a Catholic minority then his love for minorities came to an end.
Mr Devlin declared his wholehearted detestation of the measure. He did not think anyone realised the horrible position in which the Act would place the Catholics of North East Ulster…
He had hoped that Sir E Carson would have shown some sort of conciliation and goodwill towards the Catholic minority in Ulster.
But he and his colleagues had been so successful in carrying their ideas through that House that they had made no attempt to make Catholics believe that they had any sympathy for them.
Mr Devlin prophesied that the future of Ulster would be worse than that of the rest of Ireland for this Bill would inflame the worst sectarian passions.
If, under the Imperial Parliament, they could burn down houses and throw workers out of work, what would be the future of these people under the regime of the malefactors?
(Éamon Phoenix editor’s note: The efforts of Devlin and O’Connor to extract Nationalist safeguards from the government were rejected by Lloyd George.
PR only applied to the first election and, while the Southern Senate was weighted in favour of the Protestant minority there, there was no similar protection for Northern nationalists.)
On This Day – 18th December 1920
Further Reading on Irish History:
List of other On This Day columns
Other resources: National Library of Ireland Irish News CAIN Archive
19201218
Reference Date
19201218
Publication Date
Listen Along in Éamons Voice
Listen Along in Éamons Voice
Summary: On This Day – 18th December 1920, Nationalist MPs warned that the Partition Bill abandoned Northern Catholics, predicting intensified sectarianism as safeguards like proportional representation were stripped away. Edited by Éamon Phoenix.
Nationalists Abandoned | On This Day – 18th December 1920
IN THE House of Commons yesterday Mr Joseph Devlin (Nationalist) expressed surprise that on the last day for the consideration of one of the worst Bills which had ever been presented to Parliament, so full of extraordinary consequences to Ireland, the PM [Lloyd George] should be absent.
Did he propose to pass this measure? If so, it would be an impenetrable barrier to any prospects of peace and goodwill between the two nations because the Bill was despised by everybody.
However, Mr Bonar Law (for the government) said they were going ahead with the Bill.
Mr T P O’Connor [Nat.] referring to the need for PR, said it was notorious that sectarianism raged with a rancorous ferocity more in the North of Ireland than in any other country in the civilised world.
Why, a Catholic would have as much a chance of being elected Lord Mayor of Belfast as a Christian to be elected Caliph of Baghdad. (Laughter.)
The conditions in the North of Ireland were such that the minority were entitled to the protection which was provided by means of the system of Proportional Representation.
When this little protection for the Catholic minority was proposed, up jumped the Minotaur for Duncairn [Carson] and denounced it.
He was greatly surprised at the attitude taken up by Sir Edward because he had always regarded him as a champion of the minority, but when it was a Catholic minority then his love for minorities came to an end.
Mr Devlin declared his wholehearted detestation of the measure. He did not think anyone realised the horrible position in which the Act would place the Catholics of North East Ulster…
He had hoped that Sir E Carson would have shown some sort of conciliation and goodwill towards the Catholic minority in Ulster.
But he and his colleagues had been so successful in carrying their ideas through that House that they had made no attempt to make Catholics believe that they had any sympathy for them.
Mr Devlin prophesied that the future of Ulster would be worse than that of the rest of Ireland for this Bill would inflame the worst sectarian passions.
If, under the Imperial Parliament, they could burn down houses and throw workers out of work, what would be the future of these people under the regime of the malefactors?
(Éamon Phoenix editor’s note: The efforts of Devlin and O’Connor to extract Nationalist safeguards from the government were rejected by Lloyd George.
PR only applied to the first election and, while the Southern Senate was weighted in favour of the Protestant minority there, there was no similar protection for Northern nationalists.)
On This Day – 18th December 1920
Further Reading on Irish History:
List of other On This Day columns
Other resources: National Library of Ireland Irish News CAIN Archive
19201218
Reference Date
December 18, 2020
Publication Date
Listen Along in Éamons Voice *
Summary: On This Day – 18th December 1920, Nationalist MPs warned that the Partition Bill abandoned Northern Catholics, predicting intensified sectarianism as safeguards like proportional representation were stripped away. Edited by Éamon Phoenix.
Nationalists Abandoned | On This Day – 18th December 1920
IN THE House of Commons yesterday Mr Joseph Devlin (Nationalist) expressed surprise that on the last day for the consideration of one of the worst Bills which had ever been presented to Parliament, so full of extraordinary consequences to Ireland, the PM [Lloyd George] should be absent.
Did he propose to pass this measure? If so, it would be an impenetrable barrier to any prospects of peace and goodwill between the two nations because the Bill was despised by everybody.
However, Mr Bonar Law (for the government) said they were going ahead with the Bill.
Mr T P O’Connor [Nat.] referring to the need for PR, said it was notorious that sectarianism raged with a rancorous ferocity more in the North of Ireland than in any other country in the civilised world.
Why, a Catholic would have as much a chance of being elected Lord Mayor of Belfast as a Christian to be elected Caliph of Baghdad. (Laughter.)
The conditions in the North of Ireland were such that the minority were entitled to the protection which was provided by means of the system of Proportional Representation.
When this little protection for the Catholic minority was proposed, up jumped the Minotaur for Duncairn [Carson] and denounced it.
He was greatly surprised at the attitude taken up by Sir Edward because he had always regarded him as a champion of the minority, but when it was a Catholic minority then his love for minorities came to an end.
Mr Devlin declared his wholehearted detestation of the measure. He did not think anyone realised the horrible position in which the Act would place the Catholics of North East Ulster…
He had hoped that Sir E Carson would have shown some sort of conciliation and goodwill towards the Catholic minority in Ulster.
But he and his colleagues had been so successful in carrying their ideas through that House that they had made no attempt to make Catholics believe that they had any sympathy for them.
Mr Devlin prophesied that the future of Ulster would be worse than that of the rest of Ireland for this Bill would inflame the worst sectarian passions.
If, under the Imperial Parliament, they could burn down houses and throw workers out of work, what would be the future of these people under the regime of the malefactors?
(Éamon Phoenix editor’s note: The efforts of Devlin and O’Connor to extract Nationalist safeguards from the government were rejected by Lloyd George.
PR only applied to the first election and, while the Southern Senate was weighted in favour of the Protestant minority there, there was no similar protection for Northern nationalists.)
On This Day – 18th December 1920
Further Reading on Irish History:
List of other On This Day columns
Other resources: National Library of Ireland Irish News CAIN Archive
On This Day is a daily column in the Irish News looking back either 50 or 100 years. The column was compiled by Dr Éamon Phoenix from the mid 1980s until autumn, 2022. The Foundation is very grateful to the Irish News for giving permission to reproduce Eamon’s columns. Funding gratefully received from Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs and the Magill Trust.
* The Foundation has worked hard to recreate Eamon’s distinctive voice through AI. Since this is an emerging technology, occasional imperfections may be audible.