On This Day / October 19, 1921

Summary: On This Day – 19th October 1921, James Craig was seen as holding the key as the London Conference approached the question of partition, while the Ulster Volunteers drilled and armed. Edited by Éamon Phoenix.

Craig Holds Key | On This Day – 19th October 1921

THE Press Association learned yesterday that Sir James Craig will not be approached until the London Conference is brought up against the crucial question of a united Ireland.

The Belfast correspondent of the [London] Evening News wires: ‘The Ulster Volunteers are busily drilling and arming.

As a result of their feverish activity, the North is now being made ready for any eventuality.

Colonel Spender, the secretary of the Ulster Cabinet, is commandant of the Volunteers…

The Volunteers will be well armed, as they have kept their rifles since 1914.’

The Manchester Guardian says: ‘It is sometimes forgotten that there is a third party to be considered in any effective settlement – that the Irish minority or “Northern Ireland”, as by Act of Parliament constituted, cannot be left out of consideration.

An effort at least must be made to secure the cooperation of Ulster in any settlement.

There can be a settlement which ignores Ulster and leaves the six – or would it be only four? – Northern counties…’

‘Sir James Craig’s speech [rejecting any loss of territory], militant as it is, does not cause great anxiety in London for the facts constitute an overwhelming argument for a settlement.

Sooner or later Ulster must come to terms with the rest of Ireland…For the six counties cannot remain ‘six’ if the leaders decide to remain in hostile isolation.

It would clearly be impossible to insist, as [Britain] have insisted, on the democratic methods of plebiscites in a settlement of such questions on the continent and then refuse it in Ireland…

For there is nothing sacrosanct about the boundaries of the six counties state.

It is a purely artificial unit made by excluding three [overwhelmingly Nationalist] Ulster counties.

It may well be, therefore, that the six counties state will have before it the choice of coming into the Irish state as a unit or of taking the reduction to four counties.

It is no secret that [Ulster] could now enter the Irish state on the most favourable terms.’

(Éamon Phoenix editor’s note: AS THE London conference moved to address partition in late October 1921 it was felt that Craig held the key to a settlement.

Like Sinn Fein, the British Liberal press viewed the six counties won by unionism in 1920 as a purely ‘artificial unit’ created to ensure a permanent Protestant majority.

Collins and Griffith argued that the only alternative to Craig’s acceptance of a federal Irish state (‘essential unity’) would be the loss of Fermanagh, Tyrone, Derry and other nationalist areas.

However, Craig knew that Bonar Law and the Tories stood full square behind Unionism and began remobilising the 1913 UVF.)

On This Day – 19th October 1921

Further Reading on Irish History:

List of other On This Day columns

Other resources: National Library of Ireland Irish News CAIN Archive

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