Instead of dismantling the Border, as nationalists had envisaged, the 1925 Boundary Commission document seemed to confirm it. It was to be a defining moment in Irish history
President of the executive council of the Irish Free State, WT Cosgrave. Photo: Corbis via Getty
One hundred years ago, on December 3, 1925, the president of the executive council of the Irish Free State, WT Cosgrave, Britain’s prime minister Stanley Baldwin and Stormont premier James Craig signed an agreement that ended nearly a month of frantic negotiations which ultimately copper-fastened the 500km Irish border established nearly four years earlier in December 1921 as part of the Anglo-Irish Treaty.
To many nationalists, an arrangement like this was never envisaged when the Irish negotiating team, led by Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins at the Treaty negotiations in 1921, agreed to the insertion of Article 12 into the Treaty.