Dividing Ireland: World War I and Partition

190 LOYALTY AND THE CROWN
island, inhabited by a population of common descent, and
speaking a common language. Ireland is an island, and its
people, before Strongbow, may be said to have spoken a
common language…. I am willing…to accept the popular
belief in the community of race and of tongue; what I cannot
get over is the diversity of political sovereignty. Ulster,
Munster, Leinster, Connaught and Meath were distinct
political units. It is true that every now and then some prince
or other claimed to be King of All Ireland; but not one of them
—not even Brian Boru himself—ever really exercised sovereign
power…. That is why I deny that Nationality has any claim to
be an Irish ideal. The geographical, non-political unit called
Ireland never was a nation. For seven hundred years…it has
been a dependency of England. Scotland, though not a
geographical unit, was a political unit…. Though there are
Scottish ideals, Home Rule and Repeal of the Union are not
among them. What is good enough for Mac ought to be good
enough for O’—at least, so I think; and my name will tell you
that I am Scottish by race, though Irish by birth and
residence. 100
Asking ‘what constitutes a nation?’, the Belfast News-Letter agreed
that if Ireland were to be allowed to self-determine itself out of the
United Kingdom, then why should not Ulster self-determine itself
out of Ireland? If the principle of self-determination were accepted
absolutely it would mean the break-up of every state in the world,
warned the News-Letter, and constant wars between minorities
and majorities everywhere. Thus there could be no absolute right
of self-determination, and if the right was not absolute then it did
not exist at all. Ireland, for example, had not the right to become
independent because it was not a nation but a part of a nation, the
British nation, and since Ireland’s claim to home rule depended
upon the Imperial Parliament and the United Kingdom’s electorate,
that authority and no other had the right to define the powers to
be granted. 101
J.R.Fisher claimed that too much should not be made of Ulster’s
argument for ‘self-determination’, since this had always been used
by Unionists as a ‘second line of defence’. His own view was that if
the British people in Parliament assembled accepted that Ireland,
owing to religious, racial, historical and social reasons, had a right
to separate treatment from England, then Ulster had the right to
claim separate treatment from the rest of Ireland. Previously the
argument had been used simply as a reductio ad absurdum, but
recently it had come into practical politics as an alternative to civil