THE ULSTER PROBLEM
IL—WHY THE SIX•COUNTY AREA MUST BE MAINTAINED.
WE shall probably be asked to say why we appear to consider the Six-County Area as something sacred, and whether, even granting our principle, it would not be better to have a new Boundary Commission, formed, say, of the Speaker as Chairman, Sir Edward Carson, and Mr. Devlin, to draw an area which would best exclude that portion of North-East Ulster which refuses to go under a Dublin Parliament but wishes to remain under the Parlia- ment at Westminster. No doubt the scheme is attractive. Our answer to it is, however, that we are certain that the resultant area would not differ very materially from the Six-County Area, and yet that the attempt to deter- mine it would have an unsettling, indeed inflam- matory, effect. After all, one cannot ignore history in these matters, even if it is modern history. The Pro- testants and Covenanters in Donegal, Cavan, and Monaghan, by a magnificent act of self-sacrifice, released their fellow- Covenanters in the Six-County Area from their pledge to stand together at all costs. But it is not owing to this fact alone that the Six-County Area holds the field. The present Government, speaking for the nation as a whole, have on two occasions solemnly pledged themselves to the exclusion of the Six-County Area. They declared that under no conditions shall the Six-County Area be forced under a Dublin Parliament. Surely, that being so, it would be most unwise to rip up this settlement and start on some new division of Ireland. The Six-County Area holds the field. It is just in itself, and we believe that after due consideration any person of independent view will become convinced that everything would be thrown into confusion by deserting it, and yet very little of reason or right be gained by any new scheme. We say this quite as strongly in regard to Sir Edward Carson's swing-back to taking the whole of Ulster as the partitionable area as we do in regard to the Nationalists' demand for County option. We quite appreciate the tactical consider- ations which exist for urging the exclusion of the whole Province, and why Sir Edward Carson in his last speech went back to Ulster as a whole, but we feel sure that he would not refuse in the last resort to return to the Six- County Area, just as we are sure that the Nationalists, if they really want the settlement they are demanding, must go back to it also. It is the Area, and therefore the settle- ment, which gives least cause for unrest and violence.
The only modification that we believe will prove possible, but even this could not and ought not to be adopted except by the consent of both parties, is that any Parish or District (in the Local Government sense) in the Six-County Area which is not surrounded by Parishes or Districts in which there is a Protestant majority, but which is conter- minous with any part of the Counties of Donegal, Leitrim, Cavan, Monaghan, and Louth, should have the right to demand inclusion in the Nationalist area rather than in the Six-County Area. A similar right must of course apply to any Protestant Parish or Parishes conterminous with the North-East Ulster homogeneous area which desire to be taken out of Donegal, Leitrim, Cavan, Monaghan or Louth, and to remain under the Parliament at Westminster. As we have said, how- ever, this could only be done by consent and as a kind of afterthought. It must not be a fundamental rule of partition, but merely an exception of convenience. The fundamental rule of partition must be the clean cut of the Six-County Area, which has obtained the acceptance of the men of the North, of the late Mr. Redmond. and his chief followers, and of the Government, as representing the Imperial Parliament. The homogeneous Six-County Area is our one piece of .firm ground. Let us hold to it.
It is for the reasons given above that we cannot support the very interesting, and at first sight attractive, proposal made by Lord Robert Cecil in a speech, the Irish portion of which we admit was quite excellent in spirit and showed that Lord Robert, unlike so many of his political colleagues, has not forgotten his Unionism. He has come to believe, no doubt, that the attempt to apply self-determination is necessary; but it must be a just and not a one-sided self-determination. He declares, quite plainly, that you must not incurthe charge of deserting the people of Ulster, and that therefore you must exclude Ulster. That is satisfactory, as is also in intention, though not we think in practice, the avowal contained in the following passage : " Now, if I am asked what I mean by Ulster, I can only say that I would find out what I mean by asking the people, county by county if necessary, what they wished.."
We, like Lord Robert Cecil, should in theory be verymuch interested, from a great many points of view, to see exactly how the land lies ; and if Ireland were a quieter place, and passions were not so fierce, we should see no objection to this exploratory political operation. Things being as they are, however, we greatly fear that the plebiscite when taken would be regarded as a plebiscite not for information but simply as a plebiscite on partition, and that after it had taken place there would be the very greatest possible difficulty in arriving at the local compromises such as must be made if you are to have a peaceful settlement. The exploratory operation would certainly produce high fever In the patient, and possibly tetanus i Remember, and this is a cardinal fact, that though an anxious and hesi- tating consent was given by the Protestants of Donegal, Cavan, and Monaghan to their exclusion from the Protestant Area, and to their being forced under a Dublin Parliament, consent to a like fact has never been asked from or given by the Protestants of Tyrone and Fermanagh. But it would be quite impossible after all that has happened for the rest of the Six-County Area to unsettle the settlement on which these two Counties have been depending for the past five years. If you began to partition Tyrone and Fermanagh, you would have, as we have noted, in a previous article, very great difficulty in making a homogeneous and conterminous area, because unfortunately the Roman Catholic areas in these Counties do not border the Roman Catholic Counties, but are indeed surrounded by Protestant areas. That is a physical trouble which has met, and must meet, those who have settled or are settling the boundaries of the new States of Europe. We do not say they are difficulties which necessarily deny the right of self-determination, but they do condition it, and make it essential to apply it judicially and not mechanically. Therefore we cannot help thinking that Lord Robert Cecil's proposal, attractive as we admit it appears at first sight, will be found when it is gone into more minutely by him and by others to be too dangerous to be applied in a country like Ireland.
Once more, we hold that the only plan is to stick to the homogeneous area which is called, as we have always thought rather unfortunately, the Six-County Area—it suggests County autonomy—and to be content with the fact that in this clean-cut homogeneous area the Roman Catholic minority will bear roughly the same pro- portion to the Protestant majority as the Protestant minority in the rest of Ireland which is to be debarred from the advantages accorded to North-East Ulster will bear to the Roman Catholic majority in the South and West portion of Ireland. Still, in a matter so difficult and so dangerous we do not want to dogmatize. If for any reason it is thought impossible to adopt the Six-County Area as it stands, then we would say—Do not have a plebiscite, but let a small Commission, presided over as we have already sug- gested by an impartial person like the Speaker, be asked to consider the question of the Six-County Area, and to see what portions of it could be detached and placed within the Roman Catholic boundary, without violating the essential principle of giving to the Protestants of North- East Ulster a homogeneous, self-determined area. Further, let this Commission consider whether there are any Districts outside the Six-County Area in which there are Protestant majorities which could conveniently and justly be added to the Six-County Area. With a little good- will and an abeyance of party spirit, we do not see why such a Commission should not be able to do its work.
Before we leave the Area problem we should perhaps say something as to the Times proposals. We have refrained hitherto from criticizing those proposals beCause we desired to see what sort of reception they won in Ireland. It was clearly not worth while to go into them in detail if they were obviously not going to be acceptable to those in whose interests they were set forth. We are bound to say, with every desire to be fair to the Tunes proposals, that they do not fulfil that condition. There has not been a general enough acceptance of them to command detailed consideration by all who desire to see a sound Irish settlement. The original reception given to them in Ireland was not very cordial, and since then the tendency seems to have been one of an expanding rather than a contracting dissatisfaction. To begin with, as no doubt was expected, the Sinn Feiners on the one hand and the Protestants of North-East Ulster on the other would not look at them, because in both oases they involved giving up something which rightly or wrongly the parties primarily concerned deemed essentials. That being so, only the moderate Nationalists and Roman Catholics of the South and West, and also the moderate Unionists of those areas, could be expected to be favourable. In these categories there was at first a certain amount of what we may term, in Lord Morley's phrase, sombre acquiescence, or even, in the case of Sir Horace Plunkett, something approaching enthusiasm. That initial enthusiasm, however, seems to have cooled off, and Sir Horace Plunkett, if we rightly understand him, has withdrawn his patronage from what is the foundation- plank in the Times platform—i.e., the right of Ulster, in the case of the formation of an "All-Ireland" Parliaent, m to accept only such " All-Ireland " legislation as she deems just and suitable to herself. In his last letter to the Times we understand Sir Horace Plunkett to say definitely that what he calls the right given by the scheme to a minority in Ireland to rule the Irish majority is entirely unacceptable. But if that is so, it appears to us that all the safeguards so ingeniously offered to the people of Ulster disappear. We fear, indeed, that the Times scheme is like so many other ingenious schemes offered in cases of political exacerbation. If every one were wise and sensible, just and reasonable, and not suspicious but completely trustful of his neighbours, there would be no difficulty in getting it accepted. Unfortunately, however, these are not the conditions which prevail. That being so, if the Nationalists and Sinn Feiners insist upon self-determination, there is nothing for it but a surgical operation in the shape of partition—an operation rendered as antiseptic and as little dangerous as possible by a clean cut swiftly applied at the right place.
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