A complicated birth: the Northern Ireland Ministry of Education, 1921-1925

Abstract

The primary purpose of this thesis is to establish the extent to which the development of the nascent Ministry of Education (M.O.E.) in Northern Ireland (N.I.) was defined by its relationship with the Roman Catholic (R.C.) Church, the Protestant Churches, and the Irish Free State (I.F.S.) Government, 1921-1925. This work’s research will argue that the refusal of the Catholic and Protestant Churches to accept the non-denominational 1923 Education Act (also known as the Londonderry Act) is critical to understanding the genesis of the state’s education policy and the perpetuation of segregated education. This thesis will in turn assess how the ministry’s relationship with these groups helped to shape northern society. The ministry’s profound influence on N.I.’s process of state building and the consequences of its fraught, and often acerbic, relationship with the Free State Government will also undergo rigorous analysis. Due to the complicated and problematic history, of education in Ireland, this study will begin with an overview of its early history to point to the important trends and developments that were repeated in N.I. after 1920. How the Free State Government’s orchestrated heel dragging on the transfer of services (staff and documents) strained cross-border relations and diminished the M.O.E.’s capacity to administrate effectively will be examined. An investigation of the I.F.S.’s illicit payment of Catholic teachers in N.I. from February to August 1922, designed to undermine the M.O.E., will demonstrate how already fractious relations would worsen. This will also allow for an examination of how the Dublin Department of Education’s (D.O.E.) Gaelicisation of education influenced education policy and state building in both jurisdictions. The extended consequences for teachers, the perennial casualties throughout this period, and the future of teacher training on the island of Ireland, will be examined. Chapter 4 will assess the rationale behind, and the consequences of, the R.C. Church’s refusal to cooperate with the new ministry, and the Lynn Committee, which was tasked with proposing future structures for education in N.I. This will also provide context for its position in post-partition Ireland. Analysis of the Unionist government’s introduction of Promissory Oaths for teachers, and rules forbidding the exhibition of religious emblems in schools, will provide an understanding of the tensions that existed between the R.C. Church and the state. How the implementation of these policies exacerbated the extant belligerence of R.C. managed schools will be investigated, thus contributing to wider understanding of the Catholic authorities’ claims that they would not be treated fairly in the northern state. The Protestant churches’ relationships with the ministry were more complex, given that they were loyal to the state and the Crown and therefore sought to fight their collective battle from within the system. This thesis will examine the rationale for the clerics’ vigorous agitation to have the 1923 act amended to allow for segregated education. This study will argue that the Lynn Committee created their recommendations knowing that they would be rejected by Lord Londonderry. This was part of a long-term strategy to facilitate their later objections to the recommendations’ omission from the bill. Their rationale for a more regular and forceful use of the Orange Order to exert their considerable power to pressurise the government on their behalf will also be considered. The intricate workings of the triumvirate, consisting of the Protestant Churches, the Orange Order and the U.U.P., will be carefully examined to determine how they were interdependent on each other, while also being central to all negotiations, and their outcomes. Finally, this will show how the battle to amend the act saw the political demise of Lord Londonderry, and with it, the lost potential that non-denominational education had to offer for future generations.