Episode 11 - Panel 3b - Outmanoeuvring the Dáil: the southern unionist political strategy 1919-1922 - Dr. Owen McGee

Southern Irish Loyalism in Context

This paper will highlight the continued leadership that southern unionists gave to the unionist position across Ireland during 1919-1922, not least by acting in an advisory capacity to the British cabinet. Highlighting the active role played by the Earl of Midleton upon replacing Sir Edward Carson as the leader of Irish unionism, it will demonstrate how continued influence over Irish financial institutions allowed southern unionists to play a critical role in the negotiation of a truce during the spring and summer 1921, in turn limiting the potential of the Dáil’s initial revolutionary programme of nationalisation. The Sinn Féin programme of consolidating the authority of the Dáil as a national government by means of affiliating local government bodies was altered in the summer of 1921 by the creation of a liaison arrangement of joint policing by the Royal Irish Constabulary and Irish Volunteers with equal responsibility for maintaining the peace. The significance of this development will be assessed according to the contrasting perspectives, or propagandas, of the Sinn Féin government and its unionist critics since 1919, while it will also be considered how it impacted upon the ‘army unity’ negotiations of 1922 when efforts were made to turn the Irish volunteer movement into a regular territorial army. Although not a party to articles of agreement for a treaty in December 1921, southern unionists continued to act as key intermediaries with the British cabinet during 1922. This paper will conclude by assessing the degree to which southern unionists were able to capitalise upon nationalist divisions during 1922 and if guaranteed southern unionist representation in the proposed Irish Free State Senate was or was not a potential significant counterbalance to the powers that the Dáil was to assume as a legislative assembly in December 1922. Dr. Owen McGee is a history graduate of UCD and the author of well-received books on Arthur Griffith (Merrion Press, 2015) and The IRB (Four Courts Press, 2005), which won the NUI Centennial Prize for Irish History. In addition to being a qualified archivist, he is currently completing a degree in digital humanities at University College Cork for which he is working on data visualisations of Irish historical records dating from 1919 to 1925.