Dividing Ireland: World War I and Partition

THE IRISH CONVENTION AND CONSCRIPTION 201
solution. ‘This was England’s plan to obstruct Ireland’s appeal to
the Peace Conference’ concluded Griffith. 15
Nationalist and Southern Unionist agreement at the
Irish Convention
The Irish Convention sat from July 1917 until March 1918. Sir
Horace Plunkett, the Convention’s chairman, summed up its
difficulties in two words: ‘Ulster’ and ‘Customs’. The majority of
the Convention delegates carried a series of resolutions which
together formed a complete scheme for Irish self-government.
This provided for the establishment of a parliament for the whole
of Ireland with an executive responsible to it, full powers over all
internal legislation, administration and direct taxation. Pending a
final decision of the fiscal question, it was agreed that the
imposition of customs and excise duties should remain with the
Imperial Parliament, but with the whole of these proceeds being
paid into the Irish exchequer. A Joint Exchequer Board was to be
set up to determine the true value of Irish revenue, and Ireland
was to be represented on the Board of Customs and Excise of the
United Kingdom. The principle of Irish representation in the
Imperial Parliament was resisted at first by Nationalists, but
ultimately conceded. It was also accepted in principle that there
should be an Irish contribution to the cost of imperial services but,
owing to the lack of data, it was found impossible to fix any
definite sum. 16
The issue of customs and excise proved an unbridgeable wedge
between Nationalists and the Ulster Unionists at the Convention.
Throughout the Convention’s proceedings the Nationalists had
stressed their fear that Great Britain, in her economic relations
with Ireland, would primarily consult her own economic interests,
which were overwhelmingly greater than those of Ireland; for
example, Irish agricultural interests might be sacrificed to British
industrial interests. Nationalists were apprehensive that under the
current fiscal union between Great Britain and Ireland, with no
customs barriers between the two islands, British tariff wars with
other nations might result in Ireland being denied necessary raw
mate rials, a danger which would be greatly lessened if Ireland
could make her own treaties with foreign countries. With fiscal
autonomy Ireland could protect new industries, encouraging their
growth, and preventing the ‘dumping’ of cheaper British products
on the Irish market which undermined new Irish industries. 17
Nationalists reasoned that giving an Irish parliament full control of
taxation started from the principle that a government which was