Partition of Ireland

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The Partition of Ireland took place in May 1921, following the enactment of the Government of Ireland Act 1920 and ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty that ended the Anglo-Irish War.

The partition created two territories on the island of Ireland. Northern Ireland, which remained part of the United Kingdom, and the Irish Free State, which was at that stage a Crown Dominion, later to become a republic.

The Government of Ireland Act 1914, which was never implemented, would have given home rule to the island of Ireland, but six counties in Ulster were to be excluded "temporarily" from the territory of the new Irish parliament and government and to continue to be governed as before from Westminster and Whitehall. The Government of Ireland Act 1920 created two Home Rule parliaments: a Parliament of Northern Ireland which functioned and a Parliament of Southern Ireland which did not. The Anglo-Irish Treaty laid the basis of the Irish Free State but allowed the Parliament of Northern Ireland to opt out, a power it used immediately.

While the Partition of Ireland came to be one of the most contentious issues in Anglo-Irish relations and in the internal politics of both Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State and its successor states, it was not the most controversial aspect of the Anglo-Irish treaty in the Irish Free State in 1921. Anti-Treaty opposition was mostly focused on the retention of the British monarch as the Irish head of state and the Oath of Alliegience, which included a pledge of fidelity to him and his heirs. The Anglo-Irish Treaty contained a provision that would establish a boundary commission that could adjust the border as drawn up in 1920. Most leaders in the south of Ireland, both pro- and anti-Treaty, assumed that the commission would award largely nationalist areas such as County Fermanagh, County Tyrone, South Derry, South Armagh and South Down, and the City of Derry to the Free State, and that the remnant of Northern Ireland would not be economically viable and would eventually opt for union with the rest of the island as well. In the event, the commission's decision was delayed until 1925 by the Irish Civil War and opted to retain the status quo.

Later, the new Constitution of Ireland in 1937 and the declaration of the Republic of Ireland in 1949, when combined with the UK responses, tended to reinforce the feeling of partition. The impact was reduced when both countries joined the European Economic Community in 1973.