Varadkar Calls for Apology Over Northern Nationalists Abandonment

Debate over Ireland's partition has intensified following former taoiseach Leo Varadkar's call for people in the Republic to acknowledge their historical abandonment of northern nationalists. Speaking at a constitutional change conference in Dungannon earlier this month, Varadkar argued that southern nationalists neglected their counterparts after partition, prompting renewed examination of the decisions made by successive Irish governments. Varadkar said southern nationalists had "went off and built our State and largely forgot about what happened up here for a very long time".

His remarks have raised questions about the extent of responsibility southern governments bear for the political and social consequences of partition. The historical record, however, distinguishes between creating partition and failing to challenge its consequences. Westminster introduced partition through the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, without consulting most Irish nationalists.

Northern Ireland's constitutional position was effectively settled before negotiations for the Anglo-Irish Treaty began in late 1921.

Arthur Griffith subsequently secured agreement to a Boundary Commission intended to reconsider the Border according to residents' wishes. Irish leaders expected the changes to undermine Northern Ireland's viability, but the commission ultimately failed to deliver the anticipated outcome.

The early Cumann na nGaedheal government made decisions that helped entrench the division. In 1923, it established customs posts along the Border, strengthening the practical separation of communities despite the measure's stated purpose of asserting Irish sovereignty. When the Boundary Commission's findings were leaked in November 1925, they proposed only modest adjustments and would have transferred some territory away from the Irish Free State. The government sought to suppress the findings and accepted a settlement under which Britain agreed to cancel Ireland's share of the UK's imperial debt, equivalent at the time to 80 percent of the new State's annual gross domestic product.

William T Cosgrave and Northern Ireland's leader, James Craig, had promised improved relations, but the two jurisdictions' leaders did not meet again for four decades. Their successors, Seán Lemass and Terence O'Neill, met at Stormont Castle in January 1965. Fianna Fáil pursued a different approach under Éamon de Valera, who consistently opposed partition. The 1937 Irish Constitution included Articles 2 and 3, which asserted territorial claims that rejected the division's legitimacy.

In 1938, de Valera held discussions with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain during efforts to resolve the Economic War. Chamberlain was prepared to state that Britain had "no selfish, strategic or economic interest" in Northern Ireland and would withdraw if a majority there wanted it. That possibility was derailed by the IRA's 1939 bombing campaign and the outbreak of the Second World War.

In 1940, de Valera rejected Winston Churchill's offer to end partition in exchange for Ireland entering the war, believing the proposal would not be honored. After de Valera left office, an international campaign against partition failed to produce a breakthrough. The inter-party coalition government led by John A Costello subsequently funded nationalist candidates in Northern Ireland, but the initiative instead encouraged unionists to consolidate around the Ulster Unionist Party in the 1949 Stormont elections.

Seán Lemass later sought to approach the issue through cooperation between the two communities rather than focusing exclusively on British responsibility. He described his concern in terms of the consequences for the Irish nation, saying, "I could see it as almost a disease which would ultimately destroy the nation, and I therefore began to talk about unity as a spiritual and not a political conception," Lemass said.

Cooperation between Lemass and O'Neill temporarily shifted attention toward practical issues affecting both jurisdictions. That approach was disrupted when the Troubles began in 1969. In August 1969, Jack Lynch delivered his "standing idly by" speech, raising expectations that the Irish army might intervene to protect northern nationalists from loyalist violence.

However, the Irish military lacked the capacity to confront a substantially larger British military force. Attempts to overturn partition had also failed during its earliest years. In May and June 1922, the IRA launched an offensive that achieved no lasting breakthrough.

After pro- and anti-Treaty forces captured Pettigo and Belleek in June, Winston Churchill deployed 1,000 British troops, who shelled the Irish positions.

The episode demonstrated the military imbalance confronting Irish nationalists and the limits of their ability to reverse partition by force. The historical debate surrounding Varadkar's remarks therefore encompasses not only southern Ireland's subsequent political choices but also the circumstances in which partition was imposed and consolidated.