History Glossary
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George V
he succeeded Edward VII as King in 1910. He invited the main Irish and British political parties to Buckingham Palace in 1914 to see if they could agree a compromise settlement for Ireland’s future (they did not agree). Against advice, he went to Belfast in June 1922 to open the Northern Ireland Parliament, where he made a famous plea to all Irishmen to ‘forgive and forget’. He died in 1936.
Government of Ireland Act
passed in December 1920, this act partitioned Ireland – the six north-eastern counties became Northern Ireland and the 26 remaining counties became Southern Ireland. Each were to send some MPs to Westminster but there were to be two parliaments with limited powers in Belfast and Dublin. The 1921 Treaty abolished Southern Ireland which became the Irish Free State.
GPO
the General Post Office. The GPO in Dublin, built in O’Connell Street at the beginning of the 19th century, was seized on Easter Monday 1916 and it became the headquarters of the insurrection. Though badly burned at the close of the fighting, the building still stands.
Griffith, Arthur
born in Dublin in 1871, he became a printer and journalist. He founded Sinn Féin as a non-violent separatist party in 1905. Sinn Féin was revived in 1917 as a republican party which became Ireland’s main nationalist party in 1918. Griffith led the delegation which signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and died as the Irish Free State’s first premier in August 1922.