A report on Partition of Ireland, Irish nationalism and Irish Home Rule movement

Northern Ireland was created in 1921, when Ireland was partitioned by the Government of Ireland Act 1920, creating a devolved government for the six northeastern counties.

Meanwhile, the majority in Southern Ireland (which became the Irish Free State in 1922), and a significant minority in Northern Ireland, were Irish nationalists and Catholics who wanted a united independent Ireland.

By the late 19th century, a large and disciplined cohort of Irish Nationalist MPs at Westminster committed the Liberal Party to "Irish Home Rule"—self-government for Ireland, within the United Kingdom.

In the early 20th century, moves towards Irish self-rule were opposed by many Ulster Protestants, sparking the Home Rule Crisis.

This, and the subsequent Irish War of Independence, led to the partition of Ireland.

Most Irish nationalists object to the use of Ulster in this context.

As the overwhelming sentiment of Ireland's Protestant minority, following Catholic Emancipation (1829) unionism mobilised to keep Ireland part of the United Kingdom and to defeat the efforts of Irish nationalists to restore a separate Irish parliament.

Since Partition (1921), as Ulster Unionism its goal has been to maintain Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom and to resist a transfer of sovereignty to an all-Ireland republic.

Typically Presbyterian agrarian-reform Liberals coalesced with traditionally Anglican Orange Order Conservatives in opposition to the Irish Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893.

The UVF had originally existed among loyalist Ulster Protestants before World War I to oppose Home Rule.

During the late 1980s the British Government became increasingly willing to give concessions to Irish Nationalism, such as the Anglo-Irish Agreement and extending to, the Northern Ireland Security, Peter Brooke's declaration of "no selfish, strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland.", causing uproar amongst strands of Unionism.

A variant of this is Irish republican legitimism, which also rejects the Republic of Ireland because of its tacit acceptance of partition and continuing British rule in Northern Ireland.

It is now seen as a key moment in modern Irish history because it saw the overwhelming defeat of the moderate nationalist Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), which had dominated the Irish political landscape since the 1880s, and a landslide victory for the radical Sinn Féin party.

The IPP strove for Home Rule, that is, limited self-government for Ireland within the United Kingdom, and had been supported by most Irish people, especially the Catholic majority.

This was due to the failure to have the Home Rule Bill implemented when the IPP resisted the partition of Ireland demanded by Ulster Unionists in 1914, 1916 and 1917, but also popular antagonism towards the British authorities created by the execution of most of the leaders of the 1916 rebels and by their botched attempt to introduce Home Rule on the conclusion of the Irish Convention linked with military conscription in Ireland (see Conscription Crisis of 1918).

At the outbreak of the war, most Irish people, regardless of political affiliation, supported the war in much the same way as their British counterparts, and both nationalist and unionist leaders initially backed the British war effort.

During the War of Independence, the British government partitioned Ireland.

The First World War was immediately preceded in Ireland by a major political crisis over Home Rule or Irish self-government.

Despite being divided over the issue of Irish Home Rule, the party returned to government in 1905 and won a landslide victory in the 1906 general election.

Irish nationalist reaction was mixed, Unionist opinion was hostile, and the election addresses during the 1886 election revealed English radicals to be against the bill also.

Asquith had offered the Six Counties (later to become Northern Ireland) an opt out from Home Rule for six years (i.e. until after two more general elections were likely to have taken place) but the Nationalists refused to agree to permanent Partition of Ireland.