good ... and no interference with the boundaries ...'. The resulting Fourth Home Rule Bill, enacted as the Government of Ireland Act 1920, which closely followed the Long's committee report, received Royal Assent on 23 December 1920, and came into effect on 3 May 1921 with the elections to the two new home-rule parliaments for Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland. However, the latter parliament for the twenty-six counties never met as such. The partition of Ireland under the Act was in place months before the negotiations effecting the Anglo-Irish Treaty were struck on 6 December 1921, by which the south was granted dominion status as the Irish Free State. The inevitable "loss" of the claimed 32-county Irish Republic and the Northern Ireland six counties became catalysts in starting the Irish Civil War. The new Parliament of Northern Ireland, protégé of the Irish Convention, opened on 22 June 1921, and was portrayed as a loyalist triumph for years of patriotism and sacrifice. The paradox was that Ulster Unionists now had the Home Rule system that they had opposed since the 1840s, ideally preferring to remain within the metropolitan United Kingdom. Home Rule did not die in 1916, in 1918, or in 1921. It enjoyed a form of after-life in Northern Ireland up until 1972. In the south the former Home Ruler politicians relocated themselves within the two main parties of the new Free State, which became Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, where the old Home Rule Party's constitutional, ethnic, ideological and structural legacies continued to survive. References Reading and sources Fleming, N. C.: Old and New Unionism, War and the Irish Convention in: Boyce, D. George & O'Day, Alan: Ireland in Transition (1867–1921), Routledge (2004) Gwynn, Stephen: John Redmond's last Years Ch. VIII "The Irish Convention and the End" pp. 259–341, Edward Arnold, London (1919) Hennessey, Thomas: Dividing Ireland, World War I and Partition, Ch. 6: The Irish Convention and the conscription crisis, 1917–18, Routledge (1998) Jackson, Alvin: Home Rule, An Irish History 1800–2000, Ch. 9: Changing the Question 1916–20, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (2003) Lyons, F. S. L.: John Dillon, Ch. 12–14, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London (1968) SBN 7100 2887 3 Meleady, Dermot: Redmond the Parnellite, University Press (2008) Miller, Dr. David W.: Church, State and Nation in Ireland 1898–1921, Ch. XVII: The Irish Convention, Gill & Macmillan (1973) O'Day, Alan: Irish Home Rule 1862–1921, Attempts to implement Home Rule,