On my 21st birthday, Dad presented me with a dusty old document – a legal brief, foolscap in size and bottle green in colour. A family heirloom written by his dad, my grandfather Thomas Logue, and now it was mine. Something about the Irish Boundary Commission and the Derry Nationalists. The whole thing had been bent in half for at least 50 years. We raised a glass of bubbly wine and suddenly I was an adult.
It was 1998, John Major was out and Tony Blair was in, the Belfast Agreement was in its seventh month, the Omagh bomb was still ringing in ears, and the Bloody Sunday Tribunal had just been established. Growing up in Derry, the war was like white noise, and the Border a normal part of life.
What a pivotal time from tension to hope, from war to peace. Despite this I was planning a trip to Australia as soon as I finished university. Before leaving, I left strict instructions to grab the legal brief in case of a house fire. “It’s very important so look after it.” It was at my mum’s house in Kinnagoe Bay, Donegal.
You can imagine the amount of attic clear-outs, house moves, and spring cleans that goes on over 25 years, so every time I visited from Sydney I always checked where it was and if it was damaged. It often travelled for various family projects, up and down the road from Kinnagoe to Derry to Burnfoot and then to Lifford to the county archivist, then to Derry and back to Kinnagoe. Over and back, and along and across, the Border that went from “provisional” to “confirmed” in 1925, 100 years ago.
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The Anglo-Irish Treaty established the Irish Free State, and the following year in 1922 partitioned the country via a provisional “six-counties” Border. The Treaty also set up the Irish Boundary Commission to recommend the final delineation of the new Border. The commission met between 1924 and 1925 and received submissions from both sides of the provisional Border for transfers of land and populations to and from the new Irish Free State and the new Northern Ireland state.
Legal briefs and evidence were prepared in good faith for submission to the Boundary Commission. At the time, there was an expectation by the nationalists and the Irish government that the final Border would be adjusted in favour of the Irish Free State. So, on November 7th, 1925, when newspapers leaked Boundary Commission recommendations which showed little adjustment to the Border, there was consternation. The Border between Derry City and Co Donegal was particularly contentious:
“… We protest with all the vehemence … that the Commission intends to ignore and flout the wishes of the inhabitants by refusing to give effect to the demand of the overwhelming majority of Derry citizens for the city’s transfer to the Irish Free State to which we are naturally united by so many precious ties and vital common interests.”
(Derry Nationalists, November 12th, 1925 submitted to the Irish Boundary Commission, National Archives CAB 61/93).
As a result of controversies, the final Boundary Commission report was suppressed, and a few weeks later the provisional Border was approved by the British, Irish Free State, and Northern Ireland governments.
Family connections
In the early 1920s, Thomas Gerard Logue (1897-1951) was an apprentice solicitor at Northern Bank Chambers in Derry. Thomas was under the tutelage of city coroner and solicitor John Tracy, who practised both in Derry and Donegal. Tracy was commissioned by the Nationalist Association of Derry to prepare a case for the inclusion in the Irish Free State. It was during this time that Thomas was delegated the task of drafting the “Brief for Counsel on behalf of Inhabitants of Derry City and District who Desire Inclusion in the Free State”.
Later in 1925, the final version of the brief was submitted to the Boundary Commission and today it can be found at the British National Archives, digitised and publicly accessible. Amazingly, a copy of an early draft, with handwritten corrections and notes by Thomas, survived in storage of another legal practice in Derry’s Castle Street until the 1980s, at which time the draft brief passed to Thomas’s son, Paddy. Tucked inside the brief were also copies of submissions from Donegal Protestants and unionists, all arguing the opposite – for inclusion in the new Northern Ireland state.
On the centenary of the Border’s confirmation, I have been revisiting this family heirloom to understand the legal arguments of those in the northwest, and it is as if I can hear Thomas - the grandfather I never met - through the pages.
Nationalists’ arguments
The nationalists of Derry city and district offer three main arguments for the transfer to the Irish Free State: historical, economic and geographical.
On the historical argument, the draft brief by Thomas provides several pages of history that talks of the deep historical connections between Derry city and Donegal: “pre-historic and pagan foundations of Derry’s past being Doire Calgais – the oakwood of Calgach, a fierce warrior rendered illustrious as Calgacus in the pages of Tacitus”. Centuries are detailed, from Roman expeditions to Caledonia, early Christian monastic landscapes, to the medieval Gaelic seats of power.
Unfortunately, this narrative didn’t make the final brief, probably because the Boundary Commission limited the considerations of Border changes to the economic and geographic only. Despite this, and with history and geography intertwined, the historical arguments permeate the document.
This included a litany of British and unionist injustices against the native population as the cause of the crisis in Ireland – “it is important that the Boundary Commission, which is probably the last British tribunal which will have any say in Irish internal affairs, realise the long history of dishonesty, oppression and extermination suffered by the nationalists”.
The nationalists insist that from “time immemorial” the River Foyle was the natural boundary of Co Donegal and therefore Derry city (that portion on the west bank of the Foyle) along with Co Donegal “must” be included in the Free State. The brief goes on, that it was only in the 17th century that the English drew an artificial semicircle around the city and connected it to the county on the east bank of the Foyle.
The strength of the nationalist case is the fact that the River Foyle is a great natural barrier and that carving Derry city off from Donegal was “unnatural”. The weakness in their argument was the existence of the Waterside, which, in the 1920s, made up roughly one quarter of the city on the east bank of the river. With no debate, the nationalists dump the Waterside, as it is “a place of very little account having no buildings of importance except the Military Barracks and the Workhouse”. However, by the time the brief was finalised, the nationalists recommended that the Waterside be retained with Derry city in the Irish Free State.
By comparison, the economic arguments are tame. Both sides cited the provisional Border, which separated the city of Derry, ports and train lines from Donegal, as an “economic frontier” and a “trade barrier”. While the economic cases by the nationalists echoed that of the unionists, they arrived at, not surprisingly, opposite conclusions.
Unionists’ arguments
The Donegal unionists argued for inclusion of Co Donegal and Derry city in the new Northern Ireland state. This was based on five considerations: ethnicity, geography, economics, education and social class.
Firstly, the unionist inhabitants of Donegal are the descendants of the Scots and English Planters and are “by race, religion, associations and sentiment” different to the local population. Secondly, Donegal is the most northerly county in Ireland and only a portion of it is connected to the Irish Free State – a strip of five miles along the Border south of Ballyshannon. So, in effect, would be geographically “easy” to partition.
Thirdly, Derry city is the market town of Donegal, its natural hinterland and the main distributing centre for the region, so they shouldn’t be separated from each other. Fourthly, the introduction of the teaching of Irish in the schools throughout the Irish Free State prejudicially affected the Protestant children of Donegal as “a great deal of school time is taken up with a subject which is of no use to them in getting jobs”.
Finally, they request the Boundary Commission to consider the wishes of the farmers and “owners of property who pay practically all the rates and who are the backbone of the community”. The migratory servant class particularly annoyed them. The unionists believed they had no interest or stake in the country; they were difficult to trace and were often entered twice on the Electoral Register and so their vote shouldn’t be considered: “it is simply unjust that the farmers and men of property are in a voting sense swamped by their labourers and hirelings”.
In short, the Donegal unionists conclude the entire county should be transferred to Northern Ireland. Failing that, east Donegal (known as “the Laggan”) and portions of north and south Donegal should be transferred. And, failing that, as a minimum, the Laggan should be transferred.
Self-determination
The remit of the Boundary Commission was to review the provisional Border “in accordance with the wishes of the inhabitants”. The opening remarks of the 1925 Derry Nationalist’s brief references this self-determination:
“the unity of all Ireland is the wish and desire of the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants … as expressed by votes on numerous occasions” … “and that to determine future re-adjustment of the frontier line, a direct vote on the matter should take place”.
It would be another 73 years until the Belfast Agreement instilled the principle of consent and self-determination for the people of Northern Ireland: a united Ireland would be “freely and concurrently given” in both the North and the South of Ireland. Today this is interpreted to mean a “Border poll” – effectively a referendum on Irish reunification.
There have been many changes over the past 100 years since the Boundary Commission, Northern Ireland demographics in particular: the nationalists are more numerous than the unionists the largest political party in Stormont. Many unionists support the status quo, many nationalists support a united Ireland and the Dublin Government promotes a shared island. One thing that hasn’t changed is that the UK government (the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland) controls the ‘if’ and the ‘when’ of a Border poll, and they continue to keep their cards close to their chest.
Reading back over historical arguments for and against where a Border should be drawn, it’s hard not to imagine another outcome. What if Derry city was included in the Irish Free State or Donegal included in Northern Ireland? Or if there was no Border at all? I wonder if Thomas, writing so diligently about the long history of this land, believed his legal brief would persuade the Boundary Commission, and how he must have felt when the Border was confirmed without change.
And then I wonder about his motivation – for his family, his city, his country, and for the future. Status quo, shared island, or a new united Ireland: which of these options suit us today and for tomorrow?
Gretta Logue is a heritage practitioner working with Derry’s Inner City Trust. After 20 years in the heritage sector in Sydney, she has recently returned home to contribute to Derry’s regeneration.
