The Long Committee decided by October 1919, that two Irish parliaments should be established, including a Council of Ireland, a mechanism for the "encouragement of Irish unity", optionally in a Federation or as a Dominion, beginning with the partition of the entire nine Ulster counties.
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For Unionists the war confirmed all their pre-war suspicions that Irish Nationalists could no longer be trusted, contrasting the Easter Rising with their blood sacrifice during the Battle of the Somme, the conscription crisis providing a watershed for Ulster Unionists to withdraw securely into their northern citadel.
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The escalation of war losses suffered by Irish Divisions during the Battle of the Somme in July and the devastating German U-boat sinking of British merchant shipping, distracted all sides from striving further towards a settlement.
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The Ulster Unionist Sir John Lonsdale reiterated "that they could not and would not be driven into a Home Rule Parliament, that they relied on the pledges that they would not be coerced".
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In this capacity, he was largely responsible for the Government of Ireland Act 1920, which followed the findings of the 1917–18 Irish Convention, and created separate home rule governments for Southern Ireland and Northern Ireland, the latter he endowed with wider powers than its southern counterpart.
Britain went ahead with its commitment to implement Home Rule by passing a new Fourth Home Rule Bill, the Government of Ireland Act 1920, largely shaped by the Walter Long Committee which followed findings contained in the report of the Irish Convention.