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The 'Irish Free State' () (1922–1937) was the state comprising the twenty-six of Ireland's thirty-two counties that were separated from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland under the Anglo-Irish Treaty signed by British and Irish Republic representatives in London on December 6, 1921. The Irish Free State came into being on December 6, 1922, replacing two nominally co-existing but parallel states: the ''de jure'' Southern Ireland, which had been created by the Government of Ireland Act 1920 and which from January 1922 had been governed by a Provisional Government under Michael Collins; and the ''de facto'' Irish Republic under the President of Dáil Éireann, Arthur Griffith, which had been created by Dáil Éireann in 1919. (In August 1922, both states in effect merged with the deaths of their leaders; both posts came to be held simultaneously by W. T. Cosgrave.)

Contents

Historical background

Governmental and constitutional structures

The Representative of the Crown

Oath of Allegiance

Northern Ireland

The Irish Civil War

The "freedom to achieve freedom"

Governance

Constitutional evolution

Aftermath of the Irish Free State

See also

Further reading

Historical background

The Easter Rising of 1916, and in particular the decision of the British military authorities to execute many of its leaders after courts martial, generated sympathy for the republican cause in Ireland. But perhaps more importantly it was the republicans and some independent Nationalists who led opposition to the idea of compulsory military service for Irish men in the conscription crisis of early 1918. The Irish Parliamentary Party, who supported the Allied cause in the Great War in response to the passing of the final Third Home Rule Act 1914, was discredited by the crisis. In the December 1918 general election, the majority of Irish seats in the Westminster parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland were won by Sinn Féin, with 25 of 105 constituencies returning Sinn Féin members unopposed without contests. Sinn Féin was a previously non-violent separatist party founded by Arthur Griffith in 1905. Under Éamon de Valera's leadership from 1917, it had campaigned aggressively for an Irish republic.
In January 1919, Sinn Féin MPs (or TDs as they became known, from the Irish ''Teachta Dála'') refusing to sit in the British House of Commons at Westminster, assembled in Dublin and formed a single chamber Irish parliament called Dáil Éireann (Assembly of Ireland). It affirmed the creation of an Irish Republic and passed a Declaration of Independence, calling itself ''Saorstát Éireann'' in Irish. Although it was accepted by the overwhelming majority of Irish people, only the Soviet Union recognised the Irish Republic internationally. (Recent calculations of Sinn Féin support in 1918, based on ''actual'' electoral battles at national and local level puts party support at in the region of 45–48%, largely because many of their seats were won without being contested.)
The War of Independence was fought between the army of the "Republic," the Irish Republican Army (known now as the "Old IRA" to distinguish it from later claimants to the title), and the British Army of the United Kingdom of which Ireland was still nominally part. On 9 July 1921, a truce was declared. On October 11th negotiations were opened under British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and Arthur Griffith, who headed the Irish Republic's delegation. The Irish Treaty delegation set up Headquarters in Hans Place, Knightsbridge and on 5th December 1921 at 11.15am it was decided by the delegation during private discussions at 22 Hans Place to recommend the Treaty to the Dáil Éireann; negotiations continued until 2.30am on December 6th 1921 after which the Treaty was signed by the parties.
That these negotiations would produce a form of Irish government short of the independence wished for by republicans was not in doubt. The United Kingdom could not offer a republican form of government without losing prestige and risking demands for something similar throughout the Empire. Furthermore, as one of the negotiators, Michael Collins, later admitted (and he was in a position to know, given his role in the independence war), the IRA at the time of the truce was weeks, if not days, from collapse, with a chronic shortage of ammunition. "Frankly, we thought they were mad", Collins said of the sudden British offer of a truce, although it was likely they would have continued in one form or another, given the level of public support. The President of the Republic, Éamon de Valera, realised that a republic was not on offer. He decided not to be a part of the treaty delegation and so be tainted with what some more militant republicans were bound to call a "sell out". Yet his own proposals published in January 1922 fell far short of an autonomous all-Ireland republic.
As expected, the Anglo-Irish Treaty explicitly ruled out a republic. What it offered was dominion status, as a state of the British Empire (now called the Commonwealth of Nations), equal to Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Though less than expected by the Sinn Féin leadership of 1919–1922, it was substantially more than the initial form of home rule within the United Kingdom sought by Charles Stewart Parnell from 1880, and a serious advancement on the final Third Home Rule Act 1914 that the Irish nationalist leader John Redmond had achieved through democratic parliamentary proceedings. It was ratified by the Second Dáil, splitting Sinn Féin in the process.

Governmental and constitutional structures

The structures of the new Irish Free State were laid out in the Treaty and in the ''Constitution of the Irish Free State Act''. It provided for a constitutional monarchy, with a three tier parliament, called the Oireachtas, made up of the King and two houses, Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann (the Irish Senate). Executive authority was vested in the King, and exercised by a cabinet called the Executive Council, presided over by a prime minister called the President of the Executive Council.

The Representative of the Crown

Main articles: Governor-General of the Irish Free State

The King in Ireland was represented by a Governor-General of the Irish Free State, The office replaced the previous Lord Lieutenant, who had headed English and British administrations in Ireland since the Middle Ages. Governors-General were appointed by the King initially on the advice of the British Government, but with the consent of the Irish Government. From 1927 the Irish Government alone had the power to advise the King whom to appoint.

Oath of Allegiance

As with all dominions, provision was made for an Oath of Allegiance. Within dominions, such oaths were taken by parliamentarians personally towards the monarch. The Irish Oath of Allegiance was fundamentally different. It had two elements; the first, an ''oath to the Free State, as by law established'', the second part a promise of ''fidelity, to His Majesty, King George V, his heirs and successors''. That second fidelity element, however, was qualified in two ways. It was to the King ''in'' Ireland, not specifically to the British King. Secondly, it was to the King explicitly in his role as part of the Treaty settlement, not in terms of pre-1922 British rule. The Oath itself came from a combination of three sources, and was largely the work of Michael Collins in the Treaty negotiations. It came in part from a draft oath suggested prior to the negotiations by President de Valera. Other sections were taken by Collins directly from the Oath of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, of which he was the secret head. In its structure, it was also partially based on the form and structure used in the Dominion of Canada.
Although controversially moderate by other dominion standards, and notably indirect in its reference to the monarchy (and hence widely criticised by unionists and other dominions), it was criticised by nationalists and republicans for making any reference to the Crown, the claim being that it ''was'' a direct oath to the Crown, a fact demonstrably incorrect by an examination of its wording. But in 1922 Ireland and beyond, it was the perception, not the reality, that influenced public debate on the issue. Had its original author, Michael Collins, survived, he might have been able to clarify its ''actual'' meaning, but with his assassination in 1922, no major negotiator to the Oath's creation on the Irish side was still alive, available or pro-Treaty. (The leader of the Irish delegation, Arthur Griffith had also died in August 1922). The Oath became a key issue in the resulting Irish Civil War that divided the pro- and anti-treaty sides in 1922–23.

Northern Ireland

The Treaty provided for an all-Ireland thirty-two county state, subject to the proviso that the six Northern Ireland counties, which had their own government under the Government of Ireland Act 1920, could formally opt out of the Free State, which they duly did. (Had it remained, Northern Ireland would have been a self-governing province of the Irish Free State, with its own parliament and government as before.) Northern Ireland thus remained part of the renamed United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Treaty also allowed the United Kingdom to retain naval use of three Free State ports.

The Irish Civil War

Main articles: Irish Civil War

The compromises contained in the agreement caused the civil war in the 26 counties in June 1922 - April 1923, in which Michael Collins's pro-Treaty "Free Staters" defeated the anti-Treaty Republicans led by Éamon de Valera, who had resigned as President of the Republic on the treaty's ratification. His resignation outraged some of his own supporters, notably Seán T. O'Kelly. On resigning, he then sought re-election in an attempt to wreck the treaty. However his ploy failed as the electorate voted for pro-treaty candidates. Arthur Griffith became President. Michael Collins was chosen by the House of Commons of Southern Ireland (a body set up under the Government of Ireland Act 1920 and to which the Provisional Government was nominally answerable) to become Provisional Prime Minister. As both the House of Commons and the Dáil had almost identical members, it was academic which body was meeting. Griffith's republican administration and Collins' Crown-appointed government merged with the deaths of both men, their respective offices being held by the same man, W. T. Cosgrave.

The "freedom to achieve freedom"

Governance

Two political parties governed the Irish Free State between 1922 and 1937:

★ Cumann na nGaedheal under W. T. Cosgrave (1922-32)

★ Fianna Fáil under Éamon de Valera (1932-37)

Constitutional evolution

Michael Collins described the Treaty as 'the freedom to achieve freedom'. In practice, the Treaty offered most of the symbols, powers and functions of independence, including a functioning parliamentary democracy, executive, judiciary, a written constitution which could be changed by the Free State, etc. However, in theory, a number of limits existed:

★ The British king remained king ''in'' Ireland;

★ The British Government had a continued role in Irish governance. Officially the representative of the King, the Governor-General also received instructions from the British Government on his use of the Royal Assent, namely a Bill passed by the Dáil and Seanad could be Granted Assent (signed into law), Withheld (not signed, pending later approval) or Denied (''i.e.'', vetoed). Letters patent to the first Governor-General Tim Healy had named Bills that if passed were to be blocked, namely an attempt to abolish the Oath, etc. In reality no such Bills were ever introduced, so the issue never arose.

★ The Irish Free State, like all Dominions, had an inferior status to the United Kingdom, which meant, in theory, it could not have its own citizenship (merely a shared Commonwealth citizenship), could not have direct access to the monarch except through a ''British'' minister, and had to use the British state's Great Seal of the Realm on all of its state documents, again symbolising its inferior status to the United Kingdom within the Commonwealth.
All this changed in the 1920s. A reform of the King's title, under a Commonwealth Conference decision and given effect by the ''Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act 1927'', changed the King's role in each dominion. No more was he King ''in'' Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, etc. Instead he became King ''of'' Ireland, Australia, etc. So from that change, embodied in the Royal Titles Act, the ''British'' king had no role whatsoever in each dominion. His only role was as each dominion's ''own'' king, advised in each dominion's affairs by the dominion, ''not'' by the United Kingdom. Furthermore, the British government lost any role in either the selection of a governor-general or in advising him. In this manner, the United Kingdom lost the ability to influence internal dominion legislation.
The Free State went further. It 'accepted' credentials from international ambassadors to Ireland, something no other dominion up to then had done. It registered the treaty with the League of Nations as an international document, over the objections of the United Kingdom, which saw it as a mere ''internal'' document between a dominion and the UK. Most dramatically of all, the Statute of Westminster, again embodying a decision of a Commonwealth Conference, enabled each dominion to enact any legislation to change any legislation, without any role for the British parliament that may have enacted the original legislation in the past.
Ireland symbolically marked these changes in two mould-breaking moves:

★ It sought, and got the King's acceptance, to have an Irish minister, with the complete exclusion of British ministers, formally advising the king as ''King of Ireland'' in the exercise of his Irish powers and functions. Two examples of this are the signing of a treaty between the Irish Free State and the Portuguese Republic in 1931, and the separate (from the UK) act recognising the abdication of King Edward VIII in 1936.

★ The unprecedented abandonment of the use of the British Great Seal of the Realm and its replacement by the Great Seal of the Irish Free State, which the King awarded to his Irish Kingdom as King of Ireland, again in 1931. (The Irish Seal consisted of a picture of 'King George V of Ireland' enthroned on one side, with the Irish state harp and the words ''Saorstát Éireann'' (Irish for Irish Free State) on the reverse. It is now on display in the Irish National Museum, Collins Barracks in Dublin.)
When Éamon de Valera became President of the Executive Council (prime minister) in 1932 he described Cosgrave's ministers' achievements simply. Having read the files, he told his son, Vivion, "they were magnificent, son". All that remained was British control of a number of ports in the Irish Free State, called the Treaty Ports. However that was an issue not of constitutional law but technical requirements in the Treaty which could be and were renegotiated in 1938 to Ireland's satisfaction.
That freedom allowed de Valera, on becoming President of the Executive Council (February 1932), to go even further. With no British restrictions on his policies, he abolished the Oath of Allegiance (which Cosgrave intended to do had he won the 1932 general election), the Senate, university representation in the Dáil, appeals to the Privy Council. His one major error occurred in 1936 when he attempted to use the abdication of King Edward VIII to abolish the crown and governor-general in the Free State with the "Constitution (Amendment No. 27 Act)". He was told by senior law officers and others that, as the crown and governor-generalship existed separately from the constitution in a vast number of acts, charters, orders-in-council, and letters patent, they both still existed. He had to rush through a second bill, the "Executive Powers (Consequential Provisions) Act, 1937" to repeal all the elements he had forgotten. He retrospectively dated the second act's effect back to December 1936.

Aftermath of the Irish Free State

In 1937, Éamon de Valera replaced the 1922 constitution of Michael Collins with his own, renamed the Irish Free State to Éire, and created a new 'president of Ireland' in place of the Governor-General of the Irish Free State. His constitution, reflecting the 1930s preoccupation with faith and fatherland, claimed jurisdiction over all of Ireland while recognising the reality of the British presence in the northeast (see Articles 2 and 3). It recognised the "special position" of the Roman Catholic Church, while also recognising the existence and rights of other faiths, specifically the minority Anglican Church of Ireland and the Jewish Congregation in Ireland. Although in retrospect this provision appears sectarian, in 1937 it was viewed by leaders of non-Catholic religions as heading off a state religion and it was condemned by conservative Catholic groups as "liberal". This article was repealed in 1973.
Articles 2 and 3 were reworded in 1998 to remove jurisdictional claim over the entire island and to recognise that "a united Ireland shall be brought about only by peaceful means with the consent of a majority of the people, democratically expressed, in both jurisdictions in the island."
It was left to the initiative of de Valera's successors in government to achieve the country's formal transformation into a republic. A small but significant minority of Irish people, usually attached to parties like Sinn Féin and the smaller Republican Sinn Féin, denied the right of the twenty-six county state to use the name ''Republic'' and continued to refer to the state as the Free State. With Sinn Féin's entry in the Republic's Dáil and the Northern Ireland Executive at the close of the 20th century, the number of those who refuse to accept the legitimacy, which was already very small, declined further.

See also

★ Irish States (1171-present)

Further reading

★ Tim Pat Coogan, ''Éamon de Valera'' (ISBN 0-09-175030-X)

★ Tim Pat Coogan, ''Michael Collins'' (ISBN 0-09-174106-8)

★ Lord Longford, ''Peace by Ordeal'' (''Though long out of print, it is available in libraries'')

★ Dorothy McCardlee, ''The Irish Republic'' (ISBN 0-86327-712-8)