Ulster's Stand For Union

by Ronald McNeill

In the division on Mr. Agar-Robartes's amendment the Government majority fell to sixty-nine, both the "Tellers" being usual supporters of the Ministry. Mr. F.E. Smith, in a vigorous speech to the Belfast Orangemen on the 12th of July, declared that "on the part of the Government the discussion (on Mr. Agar-Robartes's amendment) was a trap. ... The Government hoped that Ulster would decline the amendment in order that the Coalition might protest to the constituencies: 'We offered Ulster exclusion and Ulster refused exclusion—where is the grievance of Ulster? where her justification for armed revolt?'" The snare was avoided; but the debate was a landmark in the movement, for it was then that the spokesmen of Ulster for the first time publicly accepted the idea of separate treatment for themselves as a possible alternative policy to the integral maintenance of the Union.

The Government, for their part, made no response to the demand of Bonar Law and Carson that they should declare their intentions for dealing with resistance in Ulster. It was clearly more than ever necessary for the Ulstermen to "trust in themselves." The debates on the Bill occupied Parliament till the end of the year, and beyond it, and great blocks of clauses were carried under the guillotine closure without a word of discussion, although they were packed with constitutional points, many of which were of the highest moment. Over in Ulster, at the same time, those preparations were industriously carried forward which Captain Craig told the House of Commons would be necessary to cure the scepticism of the Chief Secretary.

In England and Scotland, also, Unionists did their utmost to make public opinion realise the gravity of the crisis towards which the country was drifting under the Wait-and-See Ministry. Never before, probably, had so many great political meetings been held in any year as were held in every part of the country in 1912. With the exception of those that took place in Ireland, the most striking was a monster gathering at Blenheim on the 27th of July, which was attended by delegates from every Unionist Association in the United Kingdom.

A notable defeat of the Government in a by-election at Crewe, news of which reached the meeting while the audience of some fifteen thousand people was assembling, was an encouraging sign of the trend of opinion in the country, and added confidence to the note of defiance that sounded in the speeches of Mr. Bonar Law, Mr. F.E. Smith, and Sir Edward Carson.

The Unionist leader repeated, with added emphasis, what he had already said in the House of Commons, that he could imagine no length of resistance to which Ulster might go in which he and the overwhelming majority of the British people would not be ready to give support. He again said that resistance would be justified only because the people had not been consulted, and the Government's policy was "part of a corrupt parliamentary bargain." He refused to acknowledge the right of the Government "to carry such a Revolution by such means," and as they appeared to be resolved to do so, Mr. Bonar Law and the party he led "would use any means to deprive them of the power they had usurped, and to compel them to face the people they had deceived." Mr. F.E. Smith expressed the same thought in a more epigrammatic antithesis: "We have come to a clear issue between the party which says 'We will judge for the democracy,' and the party which says 'The democracy shall judge you.'"

The tremendous enthusiasm evoked by Mr. Bonar Law's pledge of support to Ulster, and by Sir Edward Carson's announcement that they in Ulster "would shortly challenge the Government to interfere with them if they dared, and would with equanimity await the result," was a sufficient proof, if proof were needed, that the intention of the Ulstermen to offer forcible resistance to Home Rule had the whole-hearted sympathy and approval of the entire Unionist party in Great Britain, whose representatives from every corner of the country were assembled at Blenheim.

Liberals hoped and believed that this promise of support for the "rebellious" attitude of Ulster would alienate British opinion from the Unionist party. The supporters of the Government in the Press daily proclaimed that it was doing so. When Parliament adjourned for the summer recess, at the beginning of what journalists call "the silly season," Mr. Churchill published two letters to a constituent in Scotland which were intended to be a crushing indictment both of Ulster and of her sympathisers in Great Britain. The Ulster menace was in his eyes nothing but "melodramatic stuff," and he sneeringly suggested that the Unionist leaders would be "unspeakably shocked and frightened" if anything came of their "foolish and wicked words." The letter was lengthy, and contained some telling phrases such as Mr. Churchill has always been skilful in coining; but the "turgid homily—a mixture of sophistry, insult, and menace," as The Times not unfairly described it, was less effective than the terse and simple rejoinder in which Mr. Bonar Law pointed out that Mr. Churchill's onslaught wounded his father's memory more deeply than it touched his living opponents, since Lord Randolph's "incitement" of Ulster was at a time when Ulster could not be cast out from the Union without the consent of the British electors.

Mr. Churchill's epistles to Scottish Liberals started a correspondence which reverberated through the Press for weeks, breaking the monotony of the holiday season; but they entirely failed in their purpose, which was to break the sympathy for Ulster in England and Scotland. In March the Unionists had won a seat at a by-election in South Manchester; the victory at Crewe in July, which so cheered the gathering at Blenheim, was followed by still more striking victories in North-west Manchester in August, and in Midlothian—Gladstone's old constituency—in September; and perhaps a not less significant indication of the trend of opinion so far as the Unionist party was concerned, was given by the local Unionist Association at Rochdale, which promptly repudiated its selected candidate who had ventured to protest against the Blenheim speech of the Unionist leader. In an analysis of electoral statistics published by The Times on the 24th of August it was shown that, in thirty-eight contests since the General Election in December 1910, the Unionists had gained an advantage of more than 32,000 votes over Liberals. And shortly afterwards, at a dinner in London to three newly elected Unionists, Mr. Bonar Law pointed out that the results of by-elections, if realised in the same proportion all over the country, would have given a substantial Unionist majority in the House of Commons.

The Ulster people had, therefore, much to encourage them at a time when they were preparing the most significant forward step in the movement, and the most solemn pronouncement of their unfaltering resolution never to submit to the Dublin Parliament—the signing of the Ulster Covenant. Their policy of resistance, first propounded at Craigavon, reiterated at Balmoral, endorsed by British sympathisers at Blenheim, and specifically defended in Parliament both by Unionist leaders like Mr. Bonar Law and Mr. Long and by prominent members of the Unionist rank and file like Lord Hugh Cecil, had won the approval and support of great popular constituencies in Lancashire and in Scotland, and had alienated no section of Unionist opinion or of the Unionist Press. It was in no merely satirical spirit that Carson wrote in August that he was grateful to Mr. Churchill "for having twice within a few weeks done something to focus public opinion on the stern realities of the situation in Ulster."[^[27]] For that was the actual result of the "turgid homily." It proved of real service to the Ulster cause by bringing to light the complete solidarity of Unionist opinion in its support. That meant, in the light of the electoral returns, that certainly more than half the nation sympathised with the measures that were being taken in Ulster, and that Ulster could well afford to smile at the mockery which English Home Rulers deemed a sufficient weapon to demolish the "wooden guns" and the "military play-acting of King Carson's Army."