Southern Ireland

Southern Ireland (Irish Deisceart Éireann, English Southern Ireland) was the official name of the State, which was created by the 1920.html">Government of Ireland Act 1920 and the 26 out of 32 Irish counties included. The legislative power of the state was the südirische Parliament. The Act divided the island formally in Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland. Both countries were given a bicameral parliament and a separate executive. Two compounds there were: the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland as representatives of the king in both countries and the so-called Council of Ireland, a political body, which took over the coordination between the two governments, and that, as it was promised the Irish nationalists, the should represent the beginning of an all-Ireland parliament.

The Government of Ireland Act, also known as 4 Home Rule was intended to find a solution to the problem that vexed Irish politics since the 1880s: the dispute between unionists and nationalists. Nationalists sought for decades to a form of Home Rule because they wanted to see Ireland without British rule. Unionists, however, feared that a nationalist government in Dublin would be discriminatory act against Protestants and introduce taxes, which are mainly directed against the predominantly agricultural counties in the northeast. Extremist Unionists imported weapons then an early stage of the German Empire and founded the Ulster Volunteer Force to enforce Home Rule to prevent in Ulster. In turn, nationalists also imported weapons and founded in 1913 the Irish Volunteers. The final division by the Government of Ireland Act should only be a transition state initially.

In reality, however, Southern Ireland was never functioning everyday life - in contrast to Northern Ireland, where a working parliament was formed, which in this form until 1972 had stock. The first election to the southern Irish House of Commons in 1921, was considered by Sinn Féin as election to the Parliament of the revolutionary Irish Republic, which unilaterally proclaimed in 1918, but was never recognized. Sinn Féin won 124 of 128 votes, but at the first meeting of the Southern Irish Parliament in June 1921, only the four elected Unionists appeared, so that no question of a southern Irish government ( the elected Sinn Féin members as Second Dáil gathered instead) could.

In January 1922, the lower house südirische got a supporting role. As in British politics, the revolutionary parliament was never recognized, remained in the eyes of the British House of Commons südirische the only legal. As 1921, the Anglo -Irish Treaty was created, the question which had to agree with the two branches of government ( südirisches the House or the revolutionary parliament of the Second Dáil ) this Treaty by the Irish side presented. Since neither side wanted to give in, the contract ultimately of both bodies was (whose membership composition was almost identical) recognized.

Southern Ireland was - in retrospect - only on paper a separate state. He stood in the shadow of the Irish Republic and the newly formed Irish Free State.