The Anglo-Irish Treaty would most likely not have been signed by the Irish delegates but for the inclusion of the Boundary.
Article 12 of the Treaty stated that the commission would “determine in accordance with the wishes of the inhabitants, so far as may be compatible with economic and geographic conditions, the boundaries between Northern Ireland and the rest of Ireland”. This woolly phrasing – what does “compatible with economic and geographic conditions” even mean? – was nevertheless seized upon by the Irish delegation as a way of negating the impact of partition which was already a reality.
Northern Ireland had been established by the time the Treaty talks began and the British government made it clear its existence was not up for discussion.
However, nationalist Ireland expected the commission would cede the majority nationalist counties of Fermanagh and Tyrone to the Free State, along with Derry city and south Armagh, therefore making the fledging northern state “sink into insignificance”, as Michael Collins put it.
So great was the expectation that Article 12 barely featured in the Treaty debates.
Most nationalists believed the Treaty was an interim arrangement as far as the Border was concerned and they expected the commission to deliver for nationalist Ireland.
Those heady expectations had already been tempered when the first meeting of the three-member commission took place at 5 and 6 Clement’s Lane in London on Friday, November 7th, 1924.
The commission’s deliberations had been delayed by the Civil War which only ended in May 1923 and by political turmoil in the UK which had seen the fall of a minority Labour government with its replacement by a Tory government led by Stanley Baldwin, which had just taken office.
Most of those who signed the Treaty were either dead, Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith among them, or out of office, like David Lloyd George or Winston Churchill.
Nevertheless, an editorial in the Offaly Independent opined it had “every hope that in a few months we will see these two counties, as a result of the findings of the commission, reckoned to be part of the Free State”.
The commission consisted of the chairman Justice Richard Feetham, Dr Eoin MacNeill on behalf of the Free State, and Joseph R (JR) Fisher, a journalist and barrister, who was appointed by the British government to represent the interests of Northern Ireland. Sir James Craig’s Northern administration refused to send a representative or to make a submission to the commission.
From the beginning the chairman determined to take a minimalist approach to the commission and not the expansionist approach that nationalist Ireland had hoped when the Treaty was signed. Any settlement would retain Northern Ireland as a viable entity, he insisted.
Majority Catholic areas including Derry city would not be “compatible with economic conditions”, as Derry was essential to the survival of the North and majority nationalist parts of south Down were ruled out because they provided the water for Belfast.
Neither would Feetham countenance the possibilities of plebiscites, which were common in Europe at the time.
The Free State government made an early submission to Feetham.
As far as it was concerned, the Free State had jurisdiction over the North unless the inhabitants of certain areas opted out.
Any area in Northern Ireland where the majority of the inhabitants wished to be part of the Free State should be allowed to do so and the government saw its role as “trustees” of the nationalist population in the North.
MacNeill could hardly have had a clearer mandate, but he would prove to be a disastrous appointment. He was chosen because he was a northerner and held a cabinet rank as the minister for education. He was unable to devote his time exclusively to the critical task of determining the borders of his own state.
He was lacking in guile and impassively allowed Feetham to dominate proceedings. Irish nationalism needed a street fighter with a degree of cunning to fight the case. MacNeill was none of these things. He was other-worldly, with a scholarly cast of mind.
The faith placed in him by the president of the Executive Council, William T Cosgrave, was woefully misplaced.
MacNeill allowed Feetham to draw up the terms of reference and the scope of the commission without insisting, as he was supposed to do, that the Free State expected the widespread transfer of Catholic-majority areas along the Border to it.
He made no comment when leaks appeared in the unionist press which could only have come from Fisher.
After a few weeks of deliberations, the commission moved to Ireland in December to hear from communities along the Border. Only one of the three jurisdictions involved in the commission, the Irish Free State, behaved in good faith. The other two were bent on preserving the status quo.
The commission’s deliberations were leaked a year later in December 1925. It envisaged only piecemeal transfers to the Free State and, to the shock of many, and even suggested the transfer a sliver of land in east Donegal to Northern Ireland.
MacNeill had taken his oath of confidentiality and kept it to the letter. As a consequence, WT Cosgrave’s government was shocked by the findings. MacNeill resigned and issued a mea culpa. He was not the right man for the job, he admitted, but it was far too late for northern nationalists.