{"id":317332,"date":"2025-08-04T14:21:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T14:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/317332\/"},"modified":"2025-08-04T14:21:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T14:21:11","slug":"the-unbroken-covenant-could-ulster-unionists-have-controlled-a-nine-county-northern-ireland-1920-1945-maiden-city-festival-launch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/317332\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Unbroken Covenant: Could Ulster Unionists have controlled a nine-county Northern Ireland, 1920-1945?\u2019 Maiden City Festival launch"},"content":{"rendered":"

A book whose title poses the intriguing question \u2018The Unbroken Covenant: Could Ulster Unionists have controlled a nine-county Northern Ireland, 1920-1945?\u2019 is being launched in Derry as part of the Maiden City Festival<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Written by historian Dr Samuel Beckton, it commemorates the centenary of the 1925 Irish Boundary Commission.<\/p>\n

The launch is taking place in The Siege Lounge of the Memorial Hall in Bishop Street on Tuesday, August 5 at 7.00pm and admission is free.<\/p>\n

Speaking to The Derry News, Dr Beckton said he had been writing \u2018The Unbroken Covenant\u2019 for the past decade.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI was writing my PhD thesis on the Protestant Associations of Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan. Formerly Unionist Associations, they became Protestant after Partition [1921] and elected their own independent candidates in local and general elections up until 1999 \/ 2004. These would have included Alex Haslett in Monaghan, Major James Myles and William Sheldon in Donegal and John James Cole in Cavan.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr Beckton, who is originally from Leeds in Yorkshire in England, came to Trinity College Dublin in 2015 to study International Peace Studies, where he met his wife and moved to Belfast in 2017 to study his PhD.<\/p>\n

\u201cProtestants in these three counties felt abandoned following partition. There was a sense of the broken covenant, referring back to the 1912 Ulster Covenant [signed by more than 470,000 in Ulster in opposition to the British Government\u2019s Third Home Rule Bill for Ireland], he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s why I thought \u2018The Unbroken Covenant\u2019 would be a good title for a book examining the \u2018what if\u2019 scenario – a counterfactual history – just to answer the question, \u2018What could have been?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd there are two sides to that coin, as my book illustrates. Had things been different, the Protestants in Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan might have gotten some things they wanted but not other things.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnionists in those counties might have been part of the new northern state because originally the British Government wanted nine counties to ensure Irish reunification might happen much later with demographic change bringing about a peaceful resolve.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, the majority of Ulster Unionists decided they wanted a six county option not a nine county option.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow supposing they had gone for a nine county option, yes the economy would have been bigger, yes areas such as East Donegal for instance or some elements of the border counties would not have problems with tariffs going into traditional markets such as Belfast, Derry \/ Londonderry and Strabane.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it also would have meant, in the long run, with the abolition of STV [single transferable vote] voting in Northern Ireland in 1929, they would not have necessarily had that much representation in Stormont in a nine county Ulster. They might have actually had more representation, ironically, in the long run as happened in our timeline, compared to what might have happened with the change to first-past-the-post in Northern Ireland.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Dr Samuel Beckton, author of\u00a0\u2018The Unbroken Covenant: Could Ulster Unionists have controlled a nine-county Northern Ireland, 1920-1945?\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dr Beckton also postulated, when compared to the Six Counties, historically there was a \u201clot more healing\u201d in the 26 Counties \u201ccompared to what happened in Northern Ireland\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo relations could have been much worse at the start of the Troubles compared to what we have seen,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of things that could have happened. I focused \u2018The Unbroken Covenant\u2019 on the years 1920 to 1945 because when you talk about counterfactual history, it is like a shotgun. When you go close range, most of the pellets will hit the target, go further away and fewer of those pellets will hit the target.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is the same with academic assumptions. Counterfactual history is different from alternate history because it is based on actual documents.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have been using census records, archives from PRONI [Public Records Office of Northern Ireland], and I have even consulted with the curator of the Museum of Free Derry,\u201d said Dr Beckton.<\/p>\n

Giving an opinion on the contemporary situation in the 26 Counties, Dr Beckton said people tend to be content with what they know.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think [the Protestants in Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan] have grown up to know what is normal. They are settled now as anyone after several generations. You are talking about something which affected their grandparents and great grandparents,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, there might be an element of disgruntlement about what happened to their ancestors but you are now talking about something which happened so many generations ago, they have moved on from it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think a lot of peacebuilding has gone on, especially since the Good Friday Agreement [1998] that has definitely built a lot of bridges. In addition, there is a lot of free movement across the border, and there are a lot of North-South relations. I think things are far, far improved.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018The Unbroken Covenant: Could Ulster Unionists have controlled a nine-county Northern Ireland, 1920-1945?\u2019 is published by Peter Lang and costs \u20ac37.10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A book whose title poses the intriguing question \u2018The Unbroken Covenant: Could Ulster Unionists have controlled a nine-county…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317333,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[16767,1817,104252,1144,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-317332","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-derry","9":"tag-derry-news","10":"tag-derry-post","11":"tag-northern-ireland","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114970944534606980","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}