December 5 1924
The Boundary Commissioners issued an interesting invitation this week: they asked “Public Bodies, Associations, or Individuals resident in Ireland” to send on to 6 Clement’s Inn, London, WC2, “written representations with reference to the work with which the Commission is charged”: at the same time Mr Justice [Richard] Feetham and his colleagues were careful to remind all concerned that –
“The work with which the Commission is charged, under the terms of Article XII, of the Articles of Agreement for a Treaty between Great Britain and Ireland, is to ‘determine in accordance with the wishes of the inhabitants, as far as may be compatible with economic and geographic conditions, the Boundaries between Northern Ireland and the rest of Ireland’.”
We hoped on Wednesday that “the Commissioners would find themselves with a great stock of bright new ideas before the close of the year”. That hope will surely be fulfilled. Public boards are often dilatory; someone said that “great bodies move slowly” – a proposition that must have been advanced by an observer of elephants, fat men, Parliaments and other earthly creations who knew nothing about the extreme velocity with which suns and planets wander in space. Mr WT Miller, MP, has decided that in response to the Commissioners’ invitation, it is distinctly the duty of the Tyrone County Council to move rapidly; he intends to move at the next meeting of the statesmen who assemble at Omagh: -
“That this Council appoint a Committee, with full Council powers, to prepare a statement for, and, if considered necessary, to arrange to give evidence before, the Irish Boundary Commission”.
Let it be understood that the Tyrone County Council is altogether Ascendancy; the Nationalist majority in the County at large were misled, tricked and gerrymandered so efficiently that they have not one representative on the governing body of Tyrone. Therefore, Mr Miller, an MP, sitting in the Northern Commons, means to recognise the Boundary Commission in the most practical way that can be suggested or imagined: and if the Ascendancy County Councillors take cognisance of the Commission’s existence, formally place their views before it, and give evidence “if necessary”, on what grounds of logic, commonsense, “loyalty”, or political expediency can the Northern Government and Parliament adhere to the (alleged) Nelsonian policy of shutting their eyes and pretending they are blind to the existence of Messrs Feetham, [Eoin] MacNeill and [Joseph R] Fisher as a Commission legally constituted under an Act – or Acts – of the British Legislature?
Irish News editorial questioning the decision of the Northern government to continue to ignore the Boundary Commission while many within Ulster unionism were prepared to meet and engage with it.
