ABSTRACT
The eve of war The partition of Ireland as a possible solution to the Ulster crisis was first mooted in June 1912 when Thomas Arar-Robartes, a Liberal backbencher in the House of Commons, proposed an amendment to the Home Rule Bill excluding from its scope the four Ulster counties with Protestant majorities-Antrim, Down, Londonderry and Armagh. The Unionists opposed the measure on principle, but Carson and his supporters voted in favour on tactical grounds.1 By November 1913, Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had won the Cabinet’s agreement to the idea of the temporary exclusion of the four ‘Protestant’ counties from the operation of the Home Rule Bill, followed by their automatic inclusion after five or six years. In February 1914, in a meeting with Redmond, the Prime Minister, Asquith, had outlined the Government’s difficulties, emphasising the risk of the King being forced to intervene and dismiss the Government. Asquith indicated that the Government intended to make an offer to the Unionists so generous that its objection would deprive them of their moral support. Redmond objected strongly, but a month later he backed down and agreed to Ulster counties voting themselves out of the home rule area for a period of three years on condition that this would be the ‘last word of the Government’. Within a week he had been pushed into agreeing that the exclusion should last for five, then six years.
