1921 Anglo irish treaty, creation of Irish Free State

[lynbrown]

Why were the 32 counties divided into 26: 6 with the 6 staying part of the UK? Did all the people vote on it? I have looked at Wikipedia but was hoping for a potted reply. Thansk.

[123everton]

I don't know a huge amount about it, but I think the 6 counties were largely Protestant, which in Irish politics=British.
The phrase I heard to describe it was "it's a border based on attitude rather than latitude."

[Count-A-Strong]

A little bit more digging reveals that:

"Southern Ireland" was to be all of Ireland except for "the parliamentary counties of Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry and Tyrone, and the parliamentary boroughs of Belfast and Londonderry" which were to constitute "Northern Ireland". Northern Ireland as defined by the Act, amounting to six of the nine counties of Ulster, was seen as the maximum area within which Unionists could be expected to have a safe majority. This was in spite of the fact that counties Fermanagh and Tyrone had Catholic Nationalist majorities.

It was an act of Parliament (Home rule) which you will see, if you do a little more research, wasn't even consideredc the best choice at the time.

[jake-the-peg]

The long and the short of it is that Llyod George didn't have a big majority in fact his Liberals were in a coalition with the Tories and needed the suport of the Ulster Unionists to remain in power.

[Tweed]

No, all the people didn't vote for it. Almost all were against it. The people wanted an independant Ireland free from British interference. That accounts for the recent trouble in the six counties for the last few decades and unrest for the last 800 years. After the war of independance the Irish/British sought to find a solution to the growing resentment of British rule. The Irish wanted home rule at the very least and the Anglo-Irish treaty was drafted to accomodate it. The planted protestants in the north east of Ireland threatened violence if home rule was given. The compromise was to allow them to opt out of the 32 county Ireland and create (gerrymander) the six county "protestant state for a protestant people" we have today. The boarder was chosen to guarrantee a protestant majority indefinately. The catholic natives who lived in that part of Ireland were discriminated against in jobs, housing voting etc. until it all kicked off again in late 1960s when civil rights marches were met with brutal violence from the state.

[jake-the-peg]

No Tweed almost all were not against it.

In fact it was the split between the pro-treaty groups under Michael Collins and the anti-treaty groups under De Valera that caused the bloody civil war of 1922-23.

That cost the lives of 3,000 people or so as much as the later troubles in one year

[Tweed]

You think Collins was pro-treaty? He knew that he was signing his own death warrant, and indeed was killed eight months later. He claimed that Lloyd George threatened full scale war with Ireland if the treaty wasn't signed. Collins wanted, as most Irishmen did, for centuries independance from Britain. Collins was forced to be the fall guy for De Valera and he probably thought the treaty was a stepping stone to Irish independance - the lesser of two evils - treaty/civil war.