THE 'MORNING POST' LINE
BY J. H. ANDREWS
Trinity College, Dublin
The appended map and text were introduced in the Morning
Post of 7th November 1925 as a ' special forecast of the findings of the Irish Boundary Commission, which the Morning
Post is able to publish today.' The boundary commission had
spent a year in delimiting a new frontier for Northern Ireland,
and its forthcoming report was1 already the subject of widespread speculation and rumour. By appearing to anticipate
this report, the Morning Post precipitated a political crisis
that threatened to overthrow the government of the Irish
Free State: 2the proposed boundary was debated in the Dail
and Senate ; there were protests against its3 injustices from
several communities in the north of Ireland ; the Free State
representative resigned from the boundary commission amid
a storm of criticism; the commission was dissolved by agreement of the governments concerned and its report was suppressed ; and on 3rd December a new agreement was concluded
with the British government, securing certain financial
concessions for the Free State but leaving the border exactly
where it had been since 1920. In the space of four weeks, an
unofficial newspaper report had opened a new chapter in Irish
history.
The Morning Post line, as it was called by the Free State
president, William Cosgrave, is obviously of some interest to
students of Irish political geography. Unfortunately it is impossible to say for certain how accurately it represented the
views of the boundary commission : the commission's report
was not published, and according to the British prime minister
it was not to be published until such time as the Irish border
aroused no more excitement than Offa's dyke or Hadrian's
wall.4 While awaiting this eventuality, the political geographer
must be content with indirect and second-hand evidence of
the type reviewed below.
Before considering this evidence, it may be useful to give a
brief summary of the events leading up to the boundary crisis.
The history of the boundary commission
began in 1921 with
Article XII of the Anglo-Irish treaty.5 Before the treaty was
signed, the Government of Ireland Act (1920) had already
established the six counties of Northern Ireland as a separate
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political entity, with frontiers wholly composed of pre-existing
county boundaries. Article XII provided that if this separation
was reaffirmed by the Belfast parliament (as of course it was)
a three-man commission was to ' determine in accordance
with the wishes of the inhabitants, so far as may be compatible
with economic and geographic conditions, the boundary between Northern Ireland and the rest of Ireland.' The commission was to consist of one representative from each part of
Ireland and a chairman appointed by the British government.
Article XII was obviously open to many different interpretations. The prevailing interpretation in the Free State
was based not so much on the exact words of the treaty as on
other statements made from time to time by the leading Irish
signatories. Both Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins appear
to have been satisfied that any boundary commission would
inevitably deprive Northern Ireland of Co. Tyrone, Co. Fermanagh,
and parts of Co. Londonderry, Co. Armagh, and Co.
Down.6 Other Free State authorities expressed the view that
Article XII entailed the holding of a plebiscite in the border
regions,' and Griffith was reported as saying that such a
plebiscite would be conducted on the basis of poor law unions,
cities and large towns.8 Considerable areas of Northern Ireland
were expected to vote for inclusion in the Free State. It was
also likely that small districts of the Free State would elect
for transfer to Northern Ireland ; but Free State lawyers found
reasons for arguing that although the commission was authorised to transfer territory from north to south, it 9had no power
to make any changes in the opposite direction. Interpreted
in this optimistic fashion, the boundary clause was widely
regarded in the Free State as the most satisfactory part of
the treaty.
The Belfast government on the other hand was strongly
opposed to Article XII and refused to recognise the boundary
commission, making it necessary for the British prime minister to appoint a member to represent Northern Ireland.
Privately, however, influential unionist opinion was not adverse to a strictly limited ' rectification' of the frontier and
several eminent politicians sympathetic to the Northern
^government predicted with confidence that the commission
would not and could not authorise anything more than very
minor changes.10
The commission held its first meeting on 5th November
1924.11 Dr. Eoin MacNeill, an eminent Celtic scholar, represented the Free State; the Northern Ireland member was
a well known Ulster unionist politician, Mr James Fisher;
d the chairman, whose appointment was welcomed at
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the time as a sign of British impartiality, was Mr Justice
Feetham, a South African judge. In December the commissioners made an extensive preliminary tour of the existing
border ; and between March and June 1925 they held a number
of sittings at Armagh, Rostrevor, Enniskillen, Londonderry
and Omagh, hearing evidence from about a thousand witnesses,
including local councils, political organisations, industrial
firms and manufacturers' associations, water and drainage
authorities and customs officials.
Having assembled a large mass of evidence (according to
Fisher,12 enough maps and documents to fill a pantechnicon),
the commissioners returned to London to work out their award.
Their interpretation of Article XII was later outlined
by
Feetham in a letter to the British prime minister.13 Its main
points, shortened and slightly re-arranged, may be listed as
follows : (1) The commission was to confine itself to the words
of the treaty and to disregard statements made by the signatories on other occasions. (2) It was empowered to move the
boundary in either direction. (3) It should treat the existing
boundary as holding good where no sufficient reason had been
shown for altering it. (4) Its duty was not to reconstitute the
two territories but to settle the boundary between them;
neither territory should be changed out of recognition or
rendered incapable of surviving as a separate entity with its
own parliament and government. (5) The commission was
free to decide its own methods of ascertaining the wishes of
the inhabitants. If the signatories to the treaty had envisaged
the holding of a plebiscite, the treaty would have provided
the commission with the extensive special powers that this
would have entailed.11 (6) Both parties to the boundary
controversy had agreed that local opinion could be gauged
with sufficient accuracy by assuming that Roman Catholics
wished to belong to the Free State and that non-Catholics
wished to belong to Northern Ireland, and the commission's
own studies had inclined it to accept this view. The religious
statistics of the 1911 census could therefore be used as a guide
to the wishes of the inhabitants. (7) The commission could
not be committed, however, to any mechanical interpretation
of the census figures. A ' substantial' and not just a ' bare'
majority would be needed to justify a movement of the boundary, the terms ' bare ' and ' substantial' being left undefined.
(8) The territorial unit for the study of local opinion should
be not the county or the poor law union, but ' the smallest
unit which can fairly be entitled, having regard to its size
(sic) and situation, to be considered separately, and for which
separate data are available.'
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MacNeill's resignation speech16 revealed that he had disagreed with the third and fourth of these principles and perhaps with most of the others. At the time, however, he agreed
to waive these differences and co-operated with his colleagues
in fixing the new boundary. This process of delimitation
was never officially described, but Fisher, writing from the
Northern Ireland standpoint, supplied a private correspondent
with a revealing summary of the commission's progress:
' All is going smoothly, and the more extravagant claims have
been practically wiped out. It will now be a matter of border
townlands for the most part, and no great mischief will be
done if it is worked out on ' fair give and take ' lines, even if
the ' religious' figures involve rather more give than take.
The outer fringe of Fermanagh, the Clones region, Aughnacloy
and south Armagh, have all been perambulated from end to
end, and although we may have to go pretty deep in some
places, the result will, I think, be a stronger and
more compact
territory, with not inconsiderable bits added.'16
On 17th October the commissioners agreed on their award.
Three weeks later the Morning Post published its forecast, with
the consequences already described. Of the many people
who expressed opinions about the forecast in the weeks that
followed, only two had actually seen the commission's unpublished findings. One of these was the British prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, who told the House of Commons that
' the map that has appeared and the statements that have
been made are, in many respects, far from accurate.'17 To
this assertion we may add the following statement by President Cosgrave: ' I was informed by the prime minister of
Great Britain, that the award was somewhat better—much
better I believe he said—than the published forecast.'18 The
other first-hand comment came from MacNeill, who was reported to have said that ' the Morning Post forecast was
substantially accurate. It was inaccurate in details, but, where
it was inaccurate, the difference most frequently was against
rather than 19in favour of the hopes of this nation' (i.e. the
Free State).
In evaluating these vague and apparently contradictory
statements, the following considerations seem relevant.
(1) According to the reports just quoted, MacNeill regarded
the award as less favourable to the Free State than the forecast while Baldwin regarded it as more favourable. This
disagreement suggests that the real difference may have
been quite small.
(2) Besides telling Cosgrave that the truth was ' better'
than the forecast, Baldwin stated the approximate area
102
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(200 square miles) and population (20,000) of the Free State's
net gains under the award; these totals in fact agree closely
with figures estimated from the Morning Post map.
(3) The forecast was accepted as genuine by the great bulk of
public opinion, including the political correspondent of The
Times and at least one Free State cabinet minister ; if it had
been seriously inaccurate, one would have expected it to be
repudiated at once by the commissioners themselves.
(4) In suppressing the commission's report, Baldwin's aim
was to lower the temperature of the border controversy;
he could obviously serve the same purpose by emphasising
and perhaps exaggerating the inaccuracy of the forecast.
In fact no knowledge of the commission's findings is needed
to find fault with the Morning Post forecast as a geographical
document. The text certainly appears to have been derived
from an exact statement of some kind, since it mentions
places that can be found only on a large scale map. But this
statement seems to have suffered both loss and distortion in
the course of its mysterious journey to the printed page. The
Morning Post itself admitted that its information was incomplete : on 9th November it drew attention to an ambiguity
in the forecast's reference to Drumully, pointing out that there
is one Drumully in Co. Fermanagh and another in Co. Monaghan. In fact the ambiguity is hardly a serious one: the
village of Drumully is in Fermanagh, whereas in Monaghan
the name refers only to an electoral division. But it is hard
to know what to make of ' Blacklun ' and ' Rossmore.' There
is no such place as Blacklun ; the word looks like a corruption
of ' Black Lion,' the name of a place near Belcoo. And there
is no Rossmore within twenty miles of the FermanaghMonaghan border, though there is a summit called ' Eshmore '
in the district referred to. The deficiencies of the Morning
Post map are even more obvious: it makes the gross mistake
of showing Lifford as already in Northern Ireland, and it
evades the Drumully problem by generalising the Drumully
salient out of existence. No explanation is given for the map's
omission of changes at Moville and in the Inishowen peninsula
where the text of the forecast mentions a transfer.
Since the Morning Post kept no record of its sources,20 the
provenance of the forecast and the relation between the map
and the text must remain a matter of speculation. Perhaps
the most plausible hypothesis is that both were derived by
some indirect and not very reliable process from a longer and
more detailed verbal statement that was not available for
publication. The evidence reviewed in the foregoing para103
graphs suggests that this statement cannot have been far
from the truth.
It is not the purpose of this note to discuss the merits of the
Morning Post line or the wider historical significance of its
disclosure. However small the merits and however minor the
significance, the map seems worth republishing if only because
of the misleading fashion in which its contents have been
stated in later publications. The following quotations, for
example, provide an interesting study in political map-reading.
' The newspaper forecast indicates that the Free State will
lose more than it will gain' (leading article, Irish Times,
20th November 1925). ' No territory was to be transferred to
the Free State except strips of land in Fermanagh and Armagh.
The Northern government was to retain the Nationalist city
of Deny and towns of Newry and Enniskillen, the greater
part of Fermanagh, the whole of Down, and the whole of
Tyrone; and was to receive, in addition, a tract of the richest
land in the overwhelmingly Nationalist county of Donegal'
(D. Macardle, The Irish Republic, 1937, pp. 919-20). ' The
new boundary line was to be a mere minor rectification of the
existing one, and an important strip of Irish Free State
territory in County Donegal was to be transferred' (D.
O'Sullivan, The Irish Free State and its Senate, 1940, p. 176).
' It showed various minor adjustments of the existing frontier
and it included in Northern Ireland a considerable area of
East Donegal' (D. Gwynn, A history of partition (1921-5),
1950, p. 233). ' It proposed to take populous and prosperous
territory from free Ireland and add it to the partitioned area
in exchange for rough unpeopled land' (F. Gallagher, The
Indivisible Island, 1957, p. 176). None of these writers reproduces either the text or the map of the forecast.21 It is obviously dangerous to attempt measurements of area on such
a map as this, but on an approximate reckoning the Morning
Post line gives Northern Ireland a probable 55 square miles,
with a 1911 population of about 7,600, or 8,000 including
Lifford, The Free State's probable gains amounted to 194
square miles and about 24,500 people, together with an
additional doubtful area of 53 square miles and about 3,400
people.
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THE TEXT OF THE FORECAST
(The headlines and introductory summary have been omitted from
the following transcript. It should be remembered that the policy of
the Morning Post was strongly hostile to Free State aspirations ; it
sugars the pill for its readers by including a number of misleading
comments about the ' wildness ' etc. of the Free State's new territories).
' In the map published below the heavy black line denotes the existing boundary. The dot and dash line the most probable changes, and
the broken line changes that are still a matter of discussion.
If the present intentions be carried out Ulster would receive : A
section of the coast along Lough Foyle in North-east Donegal from
Carrowkeel to a point on the old boundary about two miles inland from
Muff, and also a section on the west bank of the Foyle as far as Strabane.
This gives a good deal more room round Londonderry to Ulster, and
should be of great commercial assistance. It is also suggested that the
quarantine station for Derry harbour at Moville and part of the Inishowen peninsula might be transferred to Ulster.
The important towns of Pettigoe and Beleek with enough territory
round them to make them accessible from Ulster.
The Free State would receive :
A pocket about ten miles deep from Raws Hill to a point five miles
south of Killeter about ten miles in length. This is mostly wild country
and contains no towns of any importance.
In Fermanagh there is a suggested straightening of the boundary
for about 20 miles in favour of the Free State. This runs from Blacklun
nearly to Drummully, and only cuts out some wild and sparsely inhabited country.
From here to Rossmore there may be another cut about 10 miles
long to the west of Clones. This gives the town of Rosslea to the Free
State.
in Armagh a strip of boundary ending on the East coast of Carlingford Lough about 20 miles long may be lifted northwards about five
miles. This would give the Free State some wild and very beautiful
country, leaving the principal towns in Ulster, including the much
discussed Newry. The present boundary joins the Newry River just
above Warrenpoint, but the new line may be placed some two miles
farther to the North-west higher up the river.'
REFERENCES
1
An earlier and much less precise forecast had appeared in the
Sunday
Express on 23rd August 1925.
2
Bail debates, XIII, 609-41 (19 November 1925). Senate debates.
V,3 955-9 (12 November 1925).
Irish Times, 10 and 14 November 1925.
4
Times, 9 December 1925.
5
The earlier stages of the boundary commission's history are documented in Correspondence between H. M. government and the governments
of the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland relating to Article XII
of the Articles of Agreement for a treaty between Great Britain and Ireland
and Extracts from parliamentary debates, command papers, etc., relevant
to questions arising out of Article XII of the Articles of Agreement
for a treaty between Great Britain and Ireland, Parliamentary papers,
1924, XVIII.
6
F. Pakenham, Peace by ordeal, 1935, pp. 204, 274, 323.
105
7
North-eastern boundary bureau, Handbook of the Ulster question,
1923, pp. 149-50. A further statement by the bureau was published
in 1924 (Times, 9 September 1924).
8
Berry People, 1 November 1924.
9
W. Cosgrave, Dail debates, XIII, 113-4 (11 November 1925).
10
e. g. Lord Birkenhead's ' secret letter' of 3 March 1922 to Lord
Balfour (Times, 8 September 1924), and speeches by Austen Chamberlain (ibid, 11 August 1924), Lloyd George (ibid, 11 September 1924)
and Winston Churchill (ibid, 26 September 1924).
11
The following summary of the commission's work is based on a
series of contemporary reports in the Irish Times, together with
MacNeill's resignation statement (Dail debates, XIII, 796-804 (24
November 1925)) and a joint statement by Fisher and Feetham (Irish
Times, 24 November 1925).
12
Quoted in St. J. Ervine, Craigavon, Ulsterman, 1949, p. 499.
13
Times, 18 December 1925.
14
As early as December 1924, Feetham was reported as having told
a witness in Londonderry that the commission had no power to hold a
plebiscite (Irish Times, 22 December 1924). This report lends colour to
MacNeill's later contention that the chairman's remarks to witnesses
prejudged matters of principle that had not yet been formally debated
by the commission.
15
Dail debates, XIII, 800. MacNeill resigned before the commission's
report had been signed. His own views on the partition question had
been stated in his essay, Shall Ireland be divided ? 1915.
16
Written in June or July 1925 and quoted by Ervine, loc. cit.
17
Times, 9 December 1925.
18
Dail debates, XIII, 1762 (10 December 1925). Baldwin admitted
that the award would have deprived the Free State of a portion of
Donegal.
19
Reported by the Free State vice-president, K. O'Higgins, ibid,
1565. As it stands, this statement is hopelessly ambiguous, but from
its context in O'Higgins' argument, it seems clear that he intended to
convey that the commission's award was less favourable to the Free
State than the forecast.
20
Daily Telegraph & Morning Post, private communication, 18
March, 1960.
21
D. Macardle (loc. cit.) quotes what purports to be the text of the
forecast, but her version omits more than half of it, including all reference to two of the projected transfers to the Free State.
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