School of History, UCC

Mr Gabriel Doherty, School of History, UCC

Thursday 2 December 2021, 16.00 (4 PM); The paper will be delivered through MS Teams. To obtain a Teams link, please, contact Dr Jérôme aan de Wiel, School of History, UCC: j.aandewiel@ucc.ie

Paper This paper will analyse the debate that took place on the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 in the two Houses of the Westminster parliament, over three days, Wednesday 14 – Friday 16 December. Under the terms of that agreement the text was to be submitted for approval in both London and Dublin. The debate that took place on the terms of the Treaty in Dáil Éireann, between 14 December 1921 and Saturday 7 January 1922 is reasonably well-known, at least in Ireland, and has been depicted on cinema and television screens, and on stage, and has given rise to several full-length academic studies. The equivalent debate in London, however, has been almost completely forgotten, notwithstanding its enormous constitutional, political and (for some of the participants) personal significance, and the fact that, at the time, the agreement was hailed as a diplomatic triumph for the British Government. This paper will examine the principal lines of the debate, with reference both to the detailed discussion of its provisions, and its wider ramifications, not least that signified by the very notion of ratifying a ‘Treaty’ between Ireland and Britain at that time. Gabriel Doherty is a college lecturer in the School of History, University College Cork, with a research specialism in the field of the Irish revolution. Since 2012 he has been the co-ordinator of the programme of events within the School of History relating to the centenaries of the revolutionary decade in modern Irish history (1912-23), and offers an MA course in that field. He is a member of the academic advisory group to the Irish government on policy with regard to the decade of centenaries and is also a member of the equivalent group for Cork City Council. Since 2018 he has acted as the academic consultant to the Houses of the Oireachtas on matters relating to the creation of Dáil Éireann and evolution through the War of Independence and Civil War.