Dividing Ireland: World War I and Partition

NATIONAL IDENTITY, HOME RULE AND ULSTER 5
married the state with national consciousness, viewing the British
people as a community bound together by a common historical
experience and mission, possessing a unique genius for the
creation and preservation of constitutional liberty.
In terms of identity there were two evident strands within Irish
Unionist concepts of Britishness. The first was a British imperial
patriotism which placed a greater emphasis on Irishness as a
‘national’ identity and Britishness as an ‘imperial’ identity. This did
not automatically mean that the Irish identity would be the primary
one, for imperial patriotism might easily provide the greater
emotional attachment for an individual. The question as to
whether the growing nationalisms in the white settler British
Dominions could be accommodated within the British Empire was
a problem which alarmed many early-twentieth-century British
imperialists. A.J.Balfour, a former Chief Secretary for Ireland, had
defined the problem as how to reconcile the principle of
nationality, by which he meant the feeling of nationality or the
consciousness of a separate history which had been developing
among the white settlers in the British Dominions, with an imperial
patriotism, not more ardent, but larger in scope, which included
not only Great Britain but the whole of the Empire. ‘It is only by
following the example that we have set that the future of this
Empire can be made absolutely secure’, Balfour concluded:
A Canadian, an Australian, a New Zealander, a citizen of South
Africa…must have, and they will have, their own feelings of
separate nationality. The Canadian is a Canadian. He wants,
and ought to want to feel that Canada has its own principles
of development and its own future…. Do not let us
discourage this feeling of local patriotism. 11
In Ireland this perception was summed up by ‘An Ulster Imperialist’,
in the Irish Review of March 1911, who attempted to find a linkage
between Irishness on the one hand and Britishness on the other.
‘Ulster Imperialist’ highlighted the differences between the various
territorial communities which made up the British Empire, and
sought to define the meaning of the words ‘Imperialism’ and
‘Nationalism’ and to separate their real, permanent implication
from the temporary accidents of existing party politics. Taking the
‘Least Common Denominator as being local patriotism’, ‘Ulster
Imperialist’ linked them up with ‘other forms of the same
sentiment’ setting out the four most common and best understood
varieties of local patriotism in a series comprising parochialism,
provincialism, nationalism, and imperialism.