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The 'provisional' in the 'Provisional Government'

The status and authority of this 'Provisional' administration was disputed from its inception. It should be noted that the perspective of this article is very much biased towards a particular view of Irish history and constitutional development. —Preceding unsigned comment added by RashersTierney (talk • contribs) 23:18, 17 August 2008 (UTC) RashersTierney (talk) 23:23, 17 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Title

"Provisional Government of Southern Ireland" was not its name. The Treaty made reference to "the provisional Government of Southern Ireland" (small "p"), but did not say that that was to be its designation. If I do a Google Books search on "Provisional Government of Southern Ireland", taking out phrases from the Treaty, I get 23 results on 3 pages, three of which are not books (House of Commons debates or contemporary newspapers). Of the actual books, only four can be shown to actually contain the search term, "Provisional Government of Southern Ireland", one of which has it in scare quotes, one in square brackets, and one an "e-Study Guide" probably taken from Wikipedia, leaving a grand total of one book which can be considered a reliable source for the use of that designation in practice. Searching for "Provisional government of the irish free state", surpisingly, I only get 21 results, but the first seven of those are notable history books. "Provisional government of Ireland" requires you to add "1922", because there was an earlier Fenian one. It gives 23 results, but again, some of them are House of Commons debates, several refer to something called the "Provisional Government of Ireland Committee", not to the government itself, and a couple use it as a translation of Rialtas Seadalach na hÉireann which was printed on stamps, so there are only five books – and not all of them good history books – that say that that was its designation. The balance of the reliable history sources, therefore, is "Provisional Government of the Irish Free State", and I propose to move the article to that title. Scolaire (talk) 18:07, 1 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the proposed move. Btw, should it be a wikipedia move request? Snappy (talk) 08:27, 5 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think so. RM is for potentially controversial moves. I posted the above over two months ago and nobody seems to have even seen it until I drew your attention to it last night, so I don't see any potential controversy. Scolaire (talk) 09:43, 5 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
And very clearly this is, and always was, a potentially controversial move. Actually, WP:RM is for all moves except the completely uncontroversial - it is the default. Johnbod (talk) 08:04, 7 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I've gone ahead and done the move, and fixed the incoming links. Scolaire (talk) 11:21, 5 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The wording of the Treaty is unambiguous (Art. 15):

the provisional Government of Southern Ireland hereinafter constituted...

It does not matter if others have described the Government in question inaccurately or not. I suppose this needs broader input from other editors. The change in the article name should be reverted. It was at that name for years and for good reason. Frenchmalawi (talk) 22:50, 6 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Extract from Wikipedia:Requested Moves

Anyone can be bold and move a page without discussing it first and gaining an explicit consensus on the talk page. If you consider such a move to be [[../#Requesting controversial and potentially controversial moves|controversial]], and the new title has not been in place for a long time, you may revert the move. If you can not revert the move for technical reasons then you may [[../#Requesting technical moves|request a technical move]].

Move wars are disruptive, so if you make a bold move and it is reverted, do not make the move again. Instead, follow the procedures laid out in [[../#CM|§ Requesting controversial and potentially controversial moves]].

Ignoring Wikipedia:Requested Moves is not acceptable

User:Scolaire made a bold move. He moved the title of the article without discussing it at Wikipedia:Requested Moves. I reverted his move. He then disregarded the above guidance and reverted again to his chosen new title. This is a violation of the above procedure. I will again revert the move and if Scolaire wishes to revert to his controversial move, he must raise this for discussion at Wikipedia:Requested Moves. To do otherwise is a breach of all the rules. Frenchmalawi (talk) 23:17, 6 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the move, we should use the actual name not a political overlay. I think that makes three for one against ----Snowded TALK 06:54, 7 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Take it to WP:RM. The actual title in the treaty seems correct. Johnbod (talk) 08:04, 7 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Except it's not the title in the Treaty. Note the small "p". The few words quoted above were taken from a long section dealing with talks between the two governments, North and South, not with the setting up of the PG, still less its name. If the Treaty meant to name the government, it would have said, "The provisional government shall be styled 'The Provisional Government of...'" It didn't, and in fact the Provisional Government was never styled anything but "the Provisional Government". Scolaire (talk) 08:31, 7 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]


Process debate

I suggest we abandon the process debate without resolution and go straight to the substantive debate. I have added a RM notice below and hopefully can merge the autogenerated section with this one. @Frenchmalawi: your second revert was of the content rather than the name, so now we have a mismatch. If an admin wants to move the page back and replace my RM above with another in the opposite direction I will not mind. jnestorius(talk) 10:34, 7 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Substantive debate

I suggest we move it to Provisional Government (Ireland) (or Provisional Government (Ireland, 1922) to exclude earlier republican gestures). This avoids plumping for one of the contested variants. The article section Name of Provisional Government should inform any debate; that section could be improved in any case. There are numerous possibilities:

  1. names in UK law and official documents (I find it interesting that a document signed "Provisional Government of Ireland Committee of the Cabinet" is catalogued as "Provisional Government of Southern Ireland")
  2. names in Irish law and official documents
  3. names used in 1922 by supporters, opponents, media
  4. names used in 2015 by historians

While all these are worth discussing in the article, I think #4 is most relevant for WP:COMMONNAME. I think Scolaire's survey does not establish that "Provisional Government of the Irish Free State" is sufficiently predominant. Incidentally, the Irish Free State existed in fact and in Irish law months before its Constitution came into effect. In Irish law, the Supreme Court in Reade [1927] I.R. 31 and Performing Right Society v Bray U.D.C. [1928] I.R. 512 gave 31 March 1922 (the Irish Free State (Agreement) Act 1922) as the latest date by which the state existed de jure. The "Free State forces" were already fighting the Civil War. The word "Provisional" is in the government's title precisely because its constitutional underpinnings were not in place. jnestorius(talk) 10:34, 7 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Fine with that, including the date, or say Provisional Government of Ireland (1922) or even Provisional Government of Ireland in 1922 Johnbod (talk) 10:23, 8 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 7 April 2015

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Closed for procedural reasons. I have already requested this move at Wikipedia:Requested moves/Technical requests‎, in the "revert undiscussed moves" section. It should be uncontroversial to undo the move, after whcih those supporting it can then (if they wish) open a formal RM to go from Provisional Government of Southern Ireland → Provisional Government of the Irish Free State. If that technical request fails for some reason, then this formal RM can be reopened, but until then we should list in just one place. (non-admin closure)  — Amakuru (talk) 11:40, 7 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]


Provisional Government of the Irish Free State → Provisional Government of Southern Ireland – Contesting a previous move. jnestorius(talk) 10:34, 7 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

See previous section. Note that I don't support the name Provisional Government of Southern Ireland, I am the nominator only in a formal sense. jnestorius(talk) 11:35, 7 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Requested move 8 April 2015

Provisional Government of Southern Ireland → ? – Southern Ireland is not the usual name and is misleading. jnestorius(talk) 09:45, 8 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment see #Title section above. I think Provisional Government (Ireland) is the best option, with a hatnote to Provisional Government of Ireland (disambiguation) (or to Provisional Government of Ireland if that name ought to show the dab rather than redirect to this 1922 article) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jnestorius (talk • contribs) 10:13, 8 April 2015
  • It should include the date, especially given the potential confusion "Provisional" may create in an Irish context. Provisional Government (Ireland, 1922), or say Provisional Government of Ireland (1922) or even Provisional Government of Ireland in 1922 Johnbod (talk) 10:25, 8 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Tentative oppose - I actually think that the current title is not too bad, it does a better job than many others of satisfying WP:NATURAL and WP:PRECISE. Yes, I agree that this was officially just the "Provisional Government", and also that the current title is not necessarily in massive common use, but it does describe exactly what the entity was, bearing in mind that the entity later known as Irish Free State, and now as Republic of Ireland, was at the time in question correctly titled "Southern Ireland". An alternative would be "Provisional Government (Southern Ireland)", but you lose the naturalness there. "Provisional Government (Ireland)" I'm not keen on, as it carries a connotation of applying to the North, which it clearly did not. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 10:40, 8 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Move to Provisional Government of the Irish Free State. Naming an executive based on a few words taken out of context from a treaty is original research. No reliable, modern, secondary source explicitly names it the "Provisional Government of Southern Ireland". At least a dozen modern, reliable books or articles (listed in the Discussion section below) explicitly name it as the "Provisional Government of the Irish Free State". Scolaire (talk) 11:45, 8 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. The Anglo-Irish Treaty also refers to a "Government of Northern Ireland." Despite the lawyerly overcapitalizing, this has never been understood as a proper name. It's simply a reference to whoever is running things in the North. This Michael Collins obit describes him as leader of the "Provisional Government" and of the "Irish Free State." Here (bottom of the second column) is an example of de Valera berating "the persons styling themselves as the provisional government of southern Ireland." Clearly, PGSI was not a complimentary way to describe the Collins government. As far as how the article should be renamed, the common name appears to be "Provisional Government," although that is too ambiguous to serve as an article title. I support Provisional Government of Ireland (1922), as Johnbod suggests above. This is written up as a regime article, but the period is more commonly viewed as a phase of the Irish Free State (1922-1937). Contemporary newspaper accounts call the Dublin government "Ireland" or "Irish Free State" from the time of the Anglo-Irish Treaty onward. The initializer (talk) 03:07, 9 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Sources for "Provisional Government of the Irish Free State":

The last is interesting because it is a legal journal and it explicitly says, "The British Parliament ratified the Treaty by the Irish Free State (Agreement) Act, 1922, 12 Geo. 5, c. 4, and the Government by Order in Council transferred to the Provisional Government of the Irish Free State all civil powers." Scolaire (talk) 11:48, 8 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Amakuru: I would disagree that the current title is either natural or precise. A provisional government is a government established for a state that is coming into being, not for a state that is defunct (or more precisely in this case, stillborn). Creating a provisional government for Southern Ireland while at the same time declaring that Southern Ireland – which never existed in practice – was being formally abolished would be plain silly. Scolaire (talk) 11:59, 8 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Scolaire - but surely it was not formally abolished until 6 December 1922, as mentioned in the article on Southern Ireland. And the Provisional Government was abolished on the same day, to be replaced by the actual government of the newly formed Irish Free State. Your proposed title appears to me to fail on accuracy grounds, as the Irish Free State did not exist at the time in question. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 12:09, 8 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
But that's precisely why it was a provisional government. If it was intended as the government of "Southern Ireland" it would simply have been called the "Government of Southern Ireland". It was a provisional government because the state had not been formally created yet. Note that both the Dáil government and the British government both also claimed jurisdiction during this time. Scolaire (talk) 12:14, 8 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It depends whether "Southern Ireland" is taken to refer to (A) a geographical area, "the 26 counties", or (B) a body corporate, established under the 1920 Act. Sense (B) might be interpretable in a certain British POV regarding succession of states, but it's not very natural. I think even though Southern Ireland and the Provisional Government weere abolished the same day, that does not prove that one was linked to the other. My view is that the Provisional Government was not inserted into the machinery of the 1920 Act; rather, it ran parallel to the ghostly 1920 machine. Sense (A) is natural and precise, but no more so than "Irish Free State", which is more common. Each has the problem of appearing to allude to a body corporate that did not exist in the period in question. jnestorius(talk) 12:19, 8 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Provisional Government of Ireland in 1922 is bad as it suggests one year in the history of an entity which existed across multiple years. I don't interpret Provisional Government (Ireland) as connoting "all-island", whereas Provisional Government of Ireland would do. I guess parentheses are a crude grammar open to varying interpretations. jnestorius(talk) 12:19, 8 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

In principle, the Free State did include the whole island. Northern Ireland had to formally leave after it was established. There is therefore no harm even if it is read in an all-Ireland context. Scolaire (talk) 12:29, 8 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

On a side note, you (Jnestorius) asked earlier about names used in 1922. Well, apparently the anti-Treaty IRA used "Provisional Government of Southern Ireland" in several proclamations in 1922 – see here. So if anybody wanted an anti-Treaty IRA bias, "Provisional Government of Southern Ireland" would be the one to go for ;-) Scolaire (talk) 12:39, 8 April 2015

  • Comments and reasoning: At this point I am leaning towards Provisional Government of Ireland (1922).
  1. The title would be precise enough to avoid ambiguity, while allowing issues to be covered. These issues, addressed in the article, would avoid relegating the title to a disambiguation page or stuck with an unnecessary, not to mention improper (also crude when unavoidable), parenthetical disambiguation involving more than a date.
  2. The Provisional Government of Southern Ireland, that was named by one faction (considered illegal by the other), the Provisional Government of the Republic of Ireland, and the Provisional Government of the Irish Free State can all be covered without title bias. The Irish Republic (1919 until Dec. 1922) still proclaimed authority during this time so it would seem any other names would be considered illegal from their point of view.
A second paragraph in the lead really should reflect the April date, as per the treaty, and that "power" was not "effectively" (legally from the British side or loyalists) handed over (recognized) until then. The current content in the lead gives rise to controversy.
The article Chairman of the Provisional Government of the Irish Free State could be affected by a name change. It appears to be a life-stub created in 2004 and as of today still shows no source or references. It was tagged in 2009 with an apparent career tag and a merging would be appropriate for those reasons. The date shown of January 1922, there as well as here, is not accurate since the government was not "legal" until April right? Is there a reason this "date" is avoided in both articles. Otr500 (talk) 08:58, 10 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The Irish Republic and the Provisional Government were the same people wearing different hats. Calling themselves simply "Provisional Government" neatly evaded the issue of what they were a provisional government of. They could portray themselves as either a republic or a free state as the need arose. The ROI moniker was devised in the 1940s. It is not relevant to this period. The initializer (talk) 12:18, 10 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
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