A different view of the causes of partition for Trevor to consider
05 February, 2021 00:59
Given Trevor Ringland’s comment (January 22) I thought he might consider a different view of the causes of partition.
All threat of civil war and Armageddon came from Ulster unionists who Trump-ishly refused to accept an all-island majority’s democratic entitlement to see a home rule parliament in Ireland.
Home rule, as envisaged by John Redmond and the British government, was to be firmly ensconced within the imperial order and more importantly there was to be no diminution of Westminster’s supremacy. Ulster unionists, however, would under no circumstances countenance any variant of home rule in which Catholics would be the pre-eminent power holders. Against this background, unionists demanded a framework of six counties, judged sufficiently Protestant enough, to meet their sectarian calculations, for the raising of a Protestant fiefdom. Downsizing the province of Ulster from nine to six counties required the abandoning of a substantial body of their own kith and kin to meet their sectarian need of ensuring a Protestant dominated framework was unassailable. The thorough Protestantisation of all the avenues of power and control were already blueprinted when Carson launched his strategy of orchestrated menace and armed muscle to resist parliamentary majorities and to turbo-charge their own democratic deficit in Ireland. With the Ulster Covenant in one hand and German rifle in the other, unionist enforced what Churchill correctly described as, ‘The bully’s veto’. The Orangefication of much of the state apparatus of their fiefdom was to assure the Catholic minority that there was no hope of deliverance from a future of Orange domination. So zealously did the Orange regime pursue the alienation of the minority, they succeeded in building a massive reservoir of disaffection, from which conflict was embraced by many as the only means to escape the egregious consequences of the Government of Ireland Act 1920 and its empowerment of a Williamite cult who proved themselves totally unfit to govern any fragment of Ireland.