The royal visit for the opening of the Northern Ireland parliament in 1921 was of great significance to Ulster unionists, though the target audience may have been Sinn Féin
BBC News
By Luke Sproule
image captionThe Northern Whig made its feelings clear on polling day
When voters across Ireland went to the polls on 24 May 1921 to elect two new parliaments, the stakes were high and the atmosphere tense.
The War of Independence was still raging and just weeks earlier the Government of Ireland Act had come into effect, creating two new entities - Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland - both with their own parliaments.
In Northern Ireland the newspapers of the period reflected the tension.
The language of the unionist papers was of fighting for the religious and civil liberty of Ulster and saving the new country from IRA violence, while nationalists were urged to strike a blow against the partition of Ireland.
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Worst week of unrest since Rising, and Michael Collins insists: No partition in Ireland
What was in the news 100 years ago today? Read our Echoes of Our Past, a weekly column by Richard Forrest, Cork City Library
Paper cuttings from 1921
Richard Forrest
IN the week of May 14-20, there were 60 attacks on Crown forces and the number of police and military casualties was 55, with 23 deaths, the Echo reported on May 21, 1921.
It was the highest weekly figure since the Rebellion in 1916.
Nearly half the casualties occurred on May 14, the day after the elections for the Southern Parliament. There seems no doubt they were the outcome of a pre-arranged plan to demonstrate Sinn Féin’s political strength and power to maintain armed resistance to British law.
Book review: Danny Morrison looks at the story of Irish partition How (author, Ivan) Gibbons can claim that although partition was messy and a second-best solution, it was pragmatic and avoided mass civil strife baffles me - given the thousands who died overall
King George arriving to open the new parliament of Northern Ireland in Belfast, 1921.
Sun, 02 May, 2021 - 14:00
Danny Morrison
Ivan Gibbons
Haus Publishing, H/B £12.99
Its one-hundredth birthday falls on May 3, yet no unionist or revisionist historian has ever written a book titled, The Success of Partition. Doubts over its future are now part of mainstream and popular discourse. A democratic and peaceful way forward was established in the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) in 1998, including the mechanism of a referendum for bringing about constitutional change.