This year marks the centenary of the Boundary Commission, which operated from 1924 to 1925. The commission was tasked with surveying the provisional Border between the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland, and mapping its final demarcation. When its report recommending territorial transfer between the two jurisdictions was leaked, prompting hope and fury on either side of the Border, the British government retracted it and kept the status quo. Historian Síobhra Aiken notes that partition caused a “refugee crisis” affecting thousands, “as individuals and communities became either minorities or majorities depending on what side of the Border they found themselves on”.
Gender impacted how revolutionary events unfolded, and thus how partition was remembered. My current project is a work of all-island literary and historical recovery that investigates the gendered dimension of partition and how women chronicled its effects in their writings. How does an all-island view of women’s experiences of partition shift or displace dominant narratives?
‘Partition has also divided memory’
As journalist Susan McKay (now Press Ombudsman) observed in a 2021 Guardian article, “Partition was anything but a clean break.” It is imperative to examine partition beyond the official chronology of the Decade of Centenaries, a government programme that ran from 2012 to 2023 that aimed to remember and reflect on the significant historical events of the revolutionary period. For partition has not only resulted in the geopolitical division of this island; it has also divided memory. The late historian Éamon Phoenix maintained: “But of course, the real Border was always in people’s minds. And that is the problem that we are always grappling with.”
This division is particularly acute in the context of public commemoration. Historian Margaret Ward asks: “How do we acknowledge the imposition of partition? ... The knowledge that this occurred together with terrible sectarian violence and pogroms”, and devastation of “feminist hopes”, “challenges us when we attempt to create the conditions for calm reflection and constructive discussion”.
Sally Rooney: ‘I enjoy writing about men ... the dangerous charisma of the oppressor class’
Alzheimer’s: ‘I’ve lost my friend and my companion,’ says Úna Crawford O’Brien of fellow Fair City actor Bryan Murray
Ryan Adams at Vicar Street: A gig that nobody will forget anytime soon, but perhaps not for all the right reasons
Journalist Fergal Keane proposes that “the Decade of Centenaries has made us confront the question of violence”. We must continue to confront the structural violence inherent to dominant discourses on the Irish Revolution that habitually exclude “other” memories, such as northern narratives and female experiences.
Political partition took effect in 1921, inscribing a Border that separated Ireland into two inaccurately named territories: 26-county “Southern Ireland” (later the Irish Free State) with British dominion status, and a six-county “Northern Ireland” statelet that would remain part of the United Kingdom. Not only were the United Kingdom and the island of Ireland partitioned, but so was the historic nine-county province of Ulster; for Counties Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan were “excluded” from Northern Ireland.
A new line on the map divided this small island. At that time the constitutional prospects of these jurisdictions were uncertain and the chance for reunification hung in the air. A century later, such questions and possibilities have returned to the forefront of Irish political debate.
‘Partition is a disaster and a shame’
Addressing Dáil Éireann in 1935, Éamon de Valera professed: “Partition is a disaster and a shame.” Due to its vexed history the memory of partition became shrouded in shame, bitterness and unease in Irish society, along with scholarship. Historian Guy Beiner discerns a conspicuous lack of historiography on the “uncomfortable” topic of partition following its implementation.
Beiner comments that major scholarly texts on partition were “scant”, with only a handful published in the 20th century. These were all written by men. However, I would point out that Donegal-born Maureen Wall, who witnessed the partitioning of her native Ulster as a child, was one of the first women to publish an influential analysis of partition. Her 1966 essay, Partition: The Ulster Question (1916-1926), is a cogent case study from a northern female historian’s view.
For decades, the subject of partition was dominated by the voices of a few male historians. A gendered border was established within Irish Studies, as well as a disciplinary border. Several critics note how Ireland’s psychological partition resulted in the partitionist structure of Irish Studies, whereby Northern Ireland is treated as a separate subject. This was especially evident amid the recent Troubles. After the 1998 Belfast Agreement, Irish Studies tentatively began to soften its intellectual border – but it still remains intact.
A shift occurred in the 2010s when the confluence of the Decade of Centenaries and Brexit bestowed cachet on the Border. The Brexit referendum happened when the decade was at its apex in 2016, throwing the Border back into stark relief. “Border literatures” and “BrexLit” emerged as genres of interest in literary studies. This juncture also sparked a boom in partition history scholarly texts; but once again, these books are all by men.
‘Beg the ladies to keep quiet’
Partition was a male invention. The respective work of historians Diane Urquhart and Margaret Ward demonstrates that both major unionist and nationalist women’s organisations in Ireland rejected partition at the start. The Ulster Women’s Unionist Council (UWUC) held that partition would break the 1912 Ulster Covenant, which pledged to preserve the entire nine-county province of Ulster from Home Rule.
Urquhart clarifies that the UWUC “were not consulted on the six-county configuration” of Northern Ireland, and they “outlined the impact partition would have on women in the three excluded Ulster counties”. They asked their president, Lady Theresa Londonderry, to consult Ulster Unionist Party leader Sir Edward Carson on this matter. Despite their logical points, Carson replied to Lady Londonderry that he “begs the ladies to keep quiet as no settlement will be arrived at unless Ulster is consulted”.
[ Carson, the uncrowned King of UlsterOpens in new window ]
Similarly, Ward explains that the all-island republican women’s organisation Cumann na mBan “unanimously” denounced partition and they “did not appear to be consulted” on “[Michael] Collins’s shadowy strategy for the north”. Historian Marie Coleman identifies “a gendered division on the [Anglo-Irish] Treaty” in the Dáil debates. There was “little discussion about the partition of the island” in the Second Dáil (1921-1922), but the six female TDs were united against it.
[ Cumann na mBan and the War of IndependenceOpens in new window ]
Ward remarks that Cumann na mBan held a special convention to discuss the Treaty, which they opposed “by an overwhelming majority”. After the Treaty Cumann na mBan were labelled “trigger-happy harpies”, and viewed as a threat to the stability of the Free State and Northern Ireland. Hundreds of women were interned without trial.
The 1921 elections for the new Belfast and Dublin parliaments were, as historian Liz Curtis puts it, “partition elections”. Only two women were elected to the Parliament of Northern Ireland, dubbed “the parliament of Carsonia” by anti-partitionists. In the south, six female TDs were returned – an improvement from the First Dáil (1919-1921), when minister for labour Constance Markievicz was the sole woman elected. However, academic Claire McGing emphasises that the Dáil was a “colder house” for women after partition. Unionist and nationalist women’s concerns were largely ignored by male political leaders, North and South, initiating a gendered political pattern that became deeply entrenched.
[ Constance Markievicz: An infamous advocate for women and workersOpens in new window ]
[ Geography and destiny – Ronan McGreevy on the Boundary CommissionOpens in new window ]
This political context attests to the fact that partition is a gendered process and its memory is also gendered. Academics Rebecca Graff-McRae and Jonathan Evershed argue of the Decade of Centenaries: “Most undeniably absent from the commemorative discourse [about partition] are women. There was no acknowledgment ... that women’s experiences of partition might differ in important and valuable ways from men’s.”
‘Memories lie closely under the surface’
The Dáil accepted the Treaty in January 1922, confirming the existence of Northern Ireland. In December 1922, Northern Ireland opted out of the Irish Free State – a choice provided by the Treaty. Post-partition writings show that Northern Ireland and the Free State were unaccommodating places for women.
The late historian Margaret MacCurtain contended that women were relegated to “a secondary role with the setting-up of the northern state” and “the Free State in the south”. As Urquhart stresses: “The history of this period is incredibly difficult, causing people to lose lives, and for some people, to lose faith in the states that they had been put in. We should never forget that aspect of this history.”
In 1926, activist Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington decried partition as an “arbitrary frontier”, “presented to us by Britain as a fait accompli and in whose making the people had no voice”. The Ulster unionist government promptly served her with an “exclusion order” banning her entry to Northern Ireland. Sheehy-Skeffington was arrested for publicly violating the ban. “Gloriously defiant” at her trial, she pronounced, “I recognise no partition. I recognise it as no crime to be in my own country.”
State-building for both polities involved institutionalising the forces of statism, patriarchy and sectarianism, thereby embedding partition and excluding women and minority groups from full participation in society. Academic Laura McAtackney underscores the striking contrast between how women are represented in commemorative discourse and imagery and “the realities of how women were treated across Ireland” from “partition to the present day”.
Writing about “Partition, the border agreed by the Treaty-makers”, novelist Elizabeth Bowen insisted: “To understand Ireland, one must realise how lately she has had to absorb this past ... Memories lie closely under the surface.” Bowen posited that the “story” of the Irish Revolution “is in the blood” of the people, and “the inflammatory notion will never quite die down while Partition lasts”.
The history of women and partition not only provides a more holistic view of the Revolution, it also elucidates Ireland’s partitioned present and its potential for a reunited future. Ward asserts: “The partition of Ireland ... [has] always been presented through a male lens. What women thought, how they acted, how they were impacted, is rarely considered.” As the continued dearth of partition history scholarly texts by women shows, there is more work to be done to excavate women’s variegated memories of partition.
‘The spectre of partition continues to haunt this island’
Commemoration requires reckoning with the past in the political context of the present. The spectre of partition continues to haunt this island. Engaging with women’s experiences of partition helps to advance our perception of an enduring trauma and its postmemory. The years following political partition witnessed major aftershocks that troubled society on both sides of the Border. Those tremors continue to be felt across this island today, unsettling our everyday lives. Ireland is still partitioned. The partition of the mind must end if there is to be a new, shared island. This place must accommodate the contested memories of its past as it forges a more hopeful alternative future.
Dr Dawn Miranda Sherratt-Bado is Visiting Scholar at the Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s University Belfast. Her work is funded by the ARINS Project, the Royal Irish Academy, and a Markievicz Award from the Arts Council of Ireland and the Irish Government for her forthcoming book. This piece incorporates an adapted extract of her essay Partition, Revolution and Alternative Futures in Irish Women’s Fiction, published by Irish Studies in International Affairs. The full, open-access article is available here.
