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The Irish Free State, also known by its Irish name Saorstát Éireann, was a state established in December 1922 under the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921. The treaty ended the three-year Irish War of Independence between the forces of the Irish Republic – the Irish Republican Army (IRA) – and British Crown forces.
Éire is Irish for "Ireland", the name of both an island in the North Atlantic and the sovereign state of the Republic of Ireland which governs 84% of the island's landmass. The latter is distinct from Northern Ireland, which covers the remainder of the northeast of the island. The same name is also sometimes used in English.
William Thomas Cosgrave was an Irish Fine Gael politician who served as the president of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State from 1922 to 1932, leader of the Opposition in both the Free State and Ireland from 1932 to 1944, leader of Fine Gael from 1934 to 1944, founder and leader of Fine Gael's predecessor, Cumann na nGaedheal, from 1923 to 1933, chairman of the Provisional Government from August 1922 to December 1922, the president of Dáil Éireann from September 1922 to December 1922, the minister for Finance from 1922 to 1923 and minister for Local Government from 1919 to 1922. He served as a Teachta Dála (TD) from 1921 to 1944. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) for the Kilkenny North constituency from 1918 to 1922.
The president of Dáil Éireann, later also president of the Irish Republic, was the leader of the revolutionary Irish Republic of 1919–1922. The office was created in the Dáil Constitution adopted by Dáil Éireann, the parliament of the Republic, at its first meeting in January 1919. This provided that the president was elected by the Dáil as head of a cabinet called the Ministry of Dáil Éireann. During this period, Ireland was deemed part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in international law, but the Irish Republic had made a unilateral Declaration of Independence on 21 January 1919. On 6 December 1922, after the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the Irish Free State was recognised as a sovereign state, and the position of the President of Dáil Éireann was replaced by that of President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State but, as a Dominion of the British Empire, King George V was head of state.
The Constitution of Dáil Éireann, more commonly known as the Dáil Constitution, was the constitution of the 1919–22 Irish Republic. It was adopted by the First Dáil at its first meeting on 21 January 1919 and remained in operation until 6 December 1922. As adopted it consisted of five articles. Article 1 declared that the Dáil had "full powers to legislate" and would consist of representatives elected in elections conducted by the British government. For the exercise of executive power it created a cabinet, answerable to the Dáil, called the Ministry, headed by a prime minister called the "Príomh Aire". The constitution was limited to an outline of the functions of the legislature and the executive; the Dáil later established a system of Dáil Courts, but there was no provision in the constitution on a judiciary. The final article of the constitution declared that it was intended to be a provisional document, in the sense that it was subject to amendment. As adopted the constitution came to only around 370 words. In comparison, the modern Constitution of Ireland has approximately 16,000 words. Overall, the structure of the document was as follows:
The 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, commonly known in Ireland as The Treaty and officially the Articles of Agreement for a Treaty Between Great Britain and Ireland, was an agreement between the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and representatives of the Irish Republic that concluded the Irish War of Independence. It provided for the establishment of the Irish Free State within a year as a self-governing dominion within the "community of nations known as the British Empire", a status "the same as that of the Dominion of Canada". It also provided Northern Ireland, which had been created by the Government of Ireland Act 1920, an option to opt out of the Irish Free State, which the Parliament of Northern Ireland exercised.
The Irish Republic was an unrecognised revolutionary state that declared its independence from the United Kingdom in January 1919. The Republic claimed jurisdiction over the whole island of Ireland, but by 1920 its functional control was limited to only 21 of Ireland's 32 counties, and British state forces maintained a presence across much of the north-east, as well as Cork, Dublin and other major towns. The republic was strongest in rural areas, and through its military forces was able to influence the population in urban areas that it did not directly control.
The Government of the 9th Dáil was successively the 8th Executive Council of the Irish Free State and the 1st Government of Ireland. They were led by Éamon de Valera, first as President of the Executive Council and then as Taoiseach. It was formed after the 1937 general election held on 1 July, the same day the new Constitution of Ireland was approved in a plebiscite. Fianna Fáil were continuing in office as a single-party government as they had since the 1932 general election.
The Provisional Government of Ireland was the provisional government for the administration of Southern Ireland from 16 January 1922 to 5 December 1922. It was a transitional administration for the period between the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the establishment of the Irish Free State. Its legitimacy was disputed by the Anti-Treaty members of Dáil Éireann.
The Parliament of Southern Ireland was a Home Rule legislature established by the British Government during the Irish War of Independence under the Government of Ireland Act 1920. It was designed to legislate for Southern Ireland, a political entity which was created by the British Government to solve the issue of rising Irish nationalism and the issue of partitionism, while retaining the whole of Ireland as part of the United Kingdom.
According to the Constitution of Ireland, the names of the Irish state are Ireland (English) and Éire (Irish). From 1922 to 1937, its legal names were the Irish Free State (English) and Saorstát Éireann (Irish). The state has jurisdiction over almost five-sixths of the island of Ireland. The rest of the island is Northern Ireland, a part of the United Kingdom. In 1948 Ireland adopted the terms Republic of Ireland (English) and Poblacht na hÉireann (Irish) as the official descriptions of the state, without changing the constitutional names.
Following the establishment of the Irish Free State, three deep water Treaty Ports at Berehaven, Spike Island, and Lough Swilly were retained by the United Kingdom in accordance with the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 6 December 1921.
The current Constitution of Ireland came into effect on 29 December 1937, repealing and replacing the Constitution of the Irish Free State, having been approved in a national plebiscite on 1 July 1937 with the support of 56.5% of voters in the then Irish Free State. The Constitution was closely associated with Éamon de Valera, the President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State at the time of its approval.
The Anglo-Irish Trade War was a retaliatory trade war between the Irish Free State and the United Kingdom from 1932 to 1938. The Irish government refused to continue reimbursing Britain with land annuities from financial loans granted to Irish tenant farmers to enable them to purchase lands under the Irish Land Acts in the late nineteenth century, a provision which had been part of the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty. This resulted in the imposition of unilateral trade restrictions by both countries, causing severe damage to the Irish economy.
The Irish Land Commission was created by the British crown in 1843 to "inquire into the occupation of the land in Ireland. The office of the commission was in Dublin Castle, and the records were, on its conclusion, deposited in the records tower there, from whence they were transferred in 1898 to the Public Record Office". It took on the role of a rent fixing commission in 1881 under the Land Law (Ireland) Act 1881. For a century it was the body responsible for re-distributing farmland in most of Ireland. It was formally abolished in 1999.
The partition of Ireland was the process by which the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland divided Ireland into two self-governing polities: Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland. It was enacted on 3 May 1921 under the Government of Ireland Act 1920. The Act intended both territories to remain within the United Kingdom and contained provisions for their eventual reunification. The smaller Northern Ireland was duly created with a devolved government and remained part of the UK. The larger Southern Ireland was not recognised by most of its citizens, who instead recognised the self-declared 32-county Irish Republic. On 6 December 1922, a year after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the territory of Southern Ireland left the UK and became the Irish Free State, now the Republic of Ireland.
The Irish Boundary Commission met in 1924–25 to decide on the precise delineation of the border between the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland. The 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, which ended the Irish War of Independence, provided for such a commission if Northern Ireland chose to secede from the Irish Free State, an event that occurred as expected two days after the Free State's inception on 6 December 1922, resulting in the partition of Ireland. The governments of the United Kingdom, of the Irish Free State and of Northern Ireland were to nominate one member each to the commission. When the Northern government refused to cooperate, the British government assigned a Belfast newspaper editor to represent Northern Irish interests.
Comhairle na dTeachtaí was an Irish republican parliament established by opponents of the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty and the resulting Irish Free State, and viewed by republican legitimatists as a successor to the Second Dáil. Members were abstentionist from the Third Dáil established by the pro-Treaty faction. Just as the First Dáil established a parallel Irish Republic in opposition to the British Dublin Castle administration, so Comhairle na dTeachtaí attempted to establish a legitimatist government in opposition to the Provisional Government and Government of the Irish Free State established by the Third Dáil. This legitimatist government, called the Council of State, had Éamon de Valera as president. In 1926 de Valera resigned as president, left the Sinn Féin party and founded Fianna Fáil, which in 1927 entered the Fourth Dáil. Comhairle na dTeachtaí, never more than a symbolic body, was thereby rendered defunct.
The Eire Act 1938 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed on 17 May 1938. It was the British implementing measure for the 1938 Anglo-Irish Agreements which were signed at London on 25 April 1938 by the governments of Ireland and the United Kingdom. There were three agreements in total: one to rescind Articles 6 and 7 of the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the transfer of British Admiralty property to Ireland; a second for the settlement of outstanding financial claims against the Irish Government; and the third, an important trade agreement putting an end to an "economic war" between the two countries.
Martin John Corry was an Irish farmer and long-serving backbench Teachta Dála (TD) for Fianna Fáil. He represented various County Cork constituencies covering his farm near Glounthaune, east of Cork city. He was described by Michael Leahy, his IRA commandant as the Cork No 1 Brigade's 'Chief Executioner' and is believed to have been responsible for at least 27 killings, mostly in the neighbouring parish of Knockraha. He was a founder member of Fianna Fáil in 1926, and among its first TDs after the June 1927 general election. He was returned at every election until he stood down at the 1969 general election.
References
- ↑ Irish Treaty Series, No. 1 of 1938, "Agreements between the Government of Ireland and the Government of the United Kingdom, London, 25 April 1938."
- ↑ Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister (5 May 1938). "EIRE (CONFIRMATION OF AGREEMENTS) BILL". Parliamentary Debates (Hansard) . United Kingdom: House of Commons. col. 1079.
- ↑ "British-Irish tripartite agreement on trade, finance and defence from Text of British-Agreements". Documents on Irish Foreign Policy. 25 April 1938. Retrieved 19 April 2020.