Without a Dog's Chance

Book excerpt: Without 'a Dog's Chance' is the first major study of the role of northern nationalists' in the Boundary Commission between 1920 and 1925, that they and their allies in the Irish Free State had hoped to use to end partition and destroy the new northern state. For northern nationalists, the partition of Ireland was an intensely traumatic event, not only because it consigned almost half a million nationalists to a government that was not of their choosing, but also because they regarded partition as the mutilation of their Irish citizenship and nationhood. Without 'a Dog's Chance' fills an important gap in the history of this period by focusing on the complex relationship between partition-era northern and southern nationalism, and the subordinate role northern nationalists had in Ireland's post-partition political landscape. Feeling under-valued, abandoned and exploited by their peers in the south, northern nationalists were also radically marginalised within the new Northern Irish state, which regarded them with fear and suspicion. The book also examines the critical role of the Irish News in providing a platform for Joe Devlin's unique Belfast-centred brand of anti-partitionism. With December 2020 marking one hundred years since partition, this timely book is essential reading.