Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State, 1920-1932: A Comparative Study
nationalism(s) and economics – the key aim will be to demonstrate
the lack of significant divergence and evidence of substantive political
bi-polarity in 1920s Ireland. Designed to appease irreconcilable ideological fissures, partition failed to solve many pre-existing issues and
in many cases served as an agent of accentuation. Sir James Craig (later Lord Craigavon) and William Cosgrave (Prime Minister of Northern
Ireland and President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State
respectively), though cut from a very different cloth which eschewed
explicit contemporary comparative analysis, were both deeply conservative figures and faced remarkably similar domestic and external difficulties. Ostensibly masters of their own (though ethno-nationally split)
house, the majoritarian Governments of Dublin (the Oireachtas) and Belfast (the Parliament of Northern Ireland) secured their precarious grip on
power through a mixture of coercion and accommodation. This article
argues that although the problems faced by Northern Ireland and the Irish
Free State bear a clear degree of resemblance, the political tenor of the
strategies implemented to tackle them were ultimately more disparate
and reflective of the political, demographic and socio-economic nuances
manifest in the respective polities.
Law and Order
A fundamental prerequisite for any State is to have the monopoly of violence, something denied to both the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland
from the outset (Miller 1978: 127). Consequently, the establishment and
maintenance of law and order became the overriding concern for the governing parties of both States and a policy which formed a crucial pillar
of their electoral support. Not only were Northern Ireland’s ruling UUP
and the Irish Free State’s governing party, Cumann na nGaedheal1, unable to exercise uncontested jurisdiction over their respective territories