The following is an excerpt from Ireland Her Own authored by TA Jackson in 1947. Jackson essentially builds upon and expands Connolly's Labour In Irish History.

The Evil of Partition

That Partition is an evil - that it was inflicted upon Ireland expressly to twart the national aspirations of the Irish people - we have in this book abundantly prove. Forced to abandon the Act of Union - and "Protestant Ascendancy" - the ruling class of England retorted by re-establishing the Pale in a new geographical location.

The excuse for Partition was the pretence that the "Protestants" of N.E. Ulster might be penalised and discriminated against by a Catholic majority. That this was a pure pretence is proved by the abandonment to the Catholic majority of the Twenty-Six Counties of a 6 per cent Protestant minority; and by the enforced inclusion in "Northern Ireland" of a 33 per cent Catholic minority which has been insultingly and injuriously discriminated against ever since.

There are many things in the constitution and practice of "Eire" which deserve drastic condemnation from the standpoint of (say) James Connolly, Patrick Pearse, or Theobald Wolfe Tone. But they are matched and surpassed at their worst by the gerrymandered representation and the all-but Fascist adminstration of "Northern Ireland".

Even if this were not so, the war-situation and its outcome shows how very much the enemies of the people of England and of their true interests have been those ruling classes who, the better to be able to exploit the people, have for nearly eight centuries sought to destroy Irish Nationality and to hold Ireland in permanent subjection, directly or indirectly.

On the ground that the English workers can never be free while they consent to the holding of the Irish people in subjection, it is our case that Partition must be ended to make possible free and fraternal co-operation between England and Ireland.

A free Ireland would have taken its rightful place in the Liberation War of Humanity as a matter of course. A partitioned and insulted Ireland was morally forced to occupy the less honourable, but necessitated, position of neutral.


**Tomorrow will include a section entitled "To End Partition" from the same text.
  ¶ 2:01 a.m.