To Dubliners last week Armistice Day was just another unpleasant reminder that Great Britain and the Irish Free State are still parts of the same Empire. They showed their feelings by dynamiting ...

But the treaty, which created an independent Irish Free State, was highly controversial and was only narrowly passed by the Dáil (Irish parliament) in January 1922 after a series of stormy debates.

The treaty, which created an independent Irish Free State within the British Empire, was signed in London in December 1921 and needed to be ratified by the parliaments in London in Dublin.