1943 in Northern Ireland

The Craigavon years: 1921-1940

The leader of the Unionists in Ulster in 1921 is James Craig, who has been Carson's loyal and able assistant in the political struggles of the previous ten years. After the war Carson devotes himself to his legal career, as a lord of appeal in the house of lords, so Craig is the natural choice for prime minister in Stormont, the new parliament of northern Ireland.

He has a large majority, with forty Unionist seats and only twelve on the nationalist side (six representing Dillon's Nationalist party and six Sinn Fein). This already commanding position is made absolute when the nationalist side refuse to take their seats. They also boycott the northern Irish police force, now to be known as the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

The nationalists are pinning their hopes on the Boundary Commission, promised by Lloyd George and set up in 1924 by Ramsay MacDonald. They assume it will result in their main areas of strength, adjacent to the border but on the wrong side, becoming part of the new Irish Free State. However the Commission turns out to be ineffectual, merely serving to reinforce the status quo.

The result is that northern Ireland settles into a rigid pattern, symbolized by the long term of office of James Craig. He serves as Unionist prime minister in an unboken spell of nineteen years (from 1927 as Viscount Craigavon) until his death in 1940.

A sense of unchanging rigidity in northern Ireland derives from the impression (hard to avoid in the circumstances) that the Unionists are the natural ruling party. In the inevitable nature of power, this results in discrimination - much of it real, and even more perceived - against the large nationalist minority within the established borders.

There are many extra factors to add to the discontent which would be inherent anywhere in the world in this scenario. One is that the ruling Unionists originate, centuries back, from England and Scotland - nations which have combined in history to persecute Ireland and to seize Irish land.

Another, even more corrosive, is the fact that the communities are divided along sectarian lines - Protestant majority, Catholic minority. Religion, historically the most divisive form of idealism, can be relied on to accentuate any element of hostility. Finally, though this applies only to relatively few among the minority, there seems to be a more desirable nation just over the border - and one which, under de Valera's new constitution of 1937, specifically includes the six northern counties within Eire.

However on this particular issue, for most Catholics, the greater economic strength of northern Ireland makes union with Eire unappealing. The industrial clout of Belfast is particularly evident in the years of World War II.

World War II: 1939-1945

Belfast is of enormous importance to Britain during the war, for both strategic and industrial reasons. Strategically its port compensates for the neutrality of Eire and the recent loss of British rights in the deep water harbours of southern Ireland. A naval base in Belfast means that both sides of the Irish Sea are protected, enabling the vital estuaries of the Mersey and the Clyde to function without danger of attack from the sea.

Belfast itself is in their league for its shipbuilding potential. During the war its yards (and in particular Harland and Wolff) produce 123 merchant ships and 140 warships, including six aircraft carriers and three cruisers.

The Brookeborough years: 1943-1963

Another long unbroken spell, reinforcing the sense of an inflexible Unionist grip on northern Ireland, begins in 1943 when the mantle of prime minister passes to Basil Brooke (from 1952 Viscount Brookeborough). He outdoes by a year even the previous Craigavon record, remaining in power for an unbroken twenty years until his resignation in 1963.

Known from his speeches for an anti-Catholic attitude, and deeply distrustful of Ulster's minority, Brookeborough's prejudices are reinforced between 1956 and 1962 by the first sustained campaign of IRA terrorist violence north of the border.

The border itself has in 1949 received reassuring support from Westminster. In that year Eire finally severs its last link with the British crown and Commonwealth. The Attlee government, needing to tidy up the loose ends, introduces an Ireland bill. It declares roundly in one of its clauses that 'in no event will Northern Ireland or any part thereof cease to be part of His Majesty's Dominions and of the United Kingdom without the consent of the Parliament of Northern Ireland'.

In the event it is the parliament itself which proves vulnerable after Brookeborough's departure