1. Why did the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George decide to partition Ireland?

Question

Thankyou so much for everyone who answered!!!

Brilliant feedback xxxx

Answer 1

the Irish in the south wanted to be an independent country....enough of the people in the north 5 counties wanted to stay a part of the United Kingdom

Answer 2

The IRB (Irish Republican Brotherhood) as they then were called were carrying a campaign of violence on Britain in the hope of an independent Ireland. This was accompanied by huge political pressure from politicians such as Michael Collins and Eamon De Valera.

After a while the British government could not contain the unrest anymore and so agreed to hand over Ireland. However the province of Ulster (9 counties) was predominantly Protestant and adverse to the idea of being joined to the South which was predominantly Catholic and would therefore the laws would be influenced by Catholicism.

So as to avoid similar unrest in Ulster the British government agreed that Ulster could stay as part of the "Union" however Protestants in Ulster were wary of the huge Catholic populations in the counties of Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan and so agreed to let those join the new Irish free state. The remaining 6 counties of Ulster became Northern Ireland.

Answer 3

As an administrative division of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland was defined by the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, and has had its own form of devolved government in a similar manner to Scotland and Wales.

The Government of Ireland Act 1920 was the second act passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom to provide for Home Rule in Ireland. It is the act that partitioned Ireland and created Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland, and which led to the creation, eventually, of the Republic of Ireland.

Various attempts had been made to give Ireland limited regional self government, known as home rule, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The First Home Rule bill proposed in 1886 had been defeated in the British House of Commons following a split in the Liberal Party, while the Second Home Rule Bill, having been passed by the Commons in 1893 was vetoed by the House of Lords. The 1912 bill was stalled by the same body. However a revolutionary change in the British Constitution in 1911 had removed the Lords' ability to veto bills, replacing it with a delay of three parliamentary sessions. Though rejected by the Lords in 1912 and 1914, it was approved over the Lords' rejection in 1914, and received the Royal Assent of King George V immediately before the outbreak of the First World War. Because of the continuing threat of civil war in Ireland, King George called the Buckingham Palace Conference where Nationalist and Unionist leaders were invited to seek agreement. The conference eventually failed.

Rather than try to amend the 1914 Act, and face the same problems over its contents with the House of Lords and a possible three session delay in the enactment of the amendments, Prime Minister David Lloyd George abandoned the 1914 Act and started again with a new Bill, The Government of Ireland Act 1920.

The Act divided Ireland into two territories, Southern Ireland and Northern Ireland, each intended to be self-governing except in areas specifically reserved to the Parliament of the United Kingdom: chief amongst these were matters relating to the Crown, to defence, foreign affairs, international trade, and currency.

"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.

The reason for the division of Ireland, rather than the original intention of the First and Second Home Rule Bills of giving the whole of the island of Ireland independance as a single entity, was to appease the Unionists and the Conservative elements in the British establishment, who had threatened Civil War in the UK, by creating a Northern Irish enclave in which the Unionists, (those wishing to stay within the United Kingdom), were guaranteed a political majority and thereby a permanent link to the United Kingdom, the British Parliament and the Crown.

Answer 4

I believe that there was a vote the 6 northern counties of ulster mainly protestent did not wish to join the mainly catholic "south"
2 or 300 years of hate will not disappear overnight

Answer 5

Because the Protestant northern six counties of Ulster did not want to become part of a United Catholic Ireland.

Answer 6

http://www.inac.org/irishhistory/1921.php

Explanation enclosed.

Answer 7

He was Welsh!