Ulster Will Fight
Within Ireland, the strongest opposition to home rule
came from the Protestants of Ulster. They formed a majority in the northern
province, but a minority within the island. The 1641 rebellion had induced a
siege mentality which was reinforced during the struggle between William of
Orange and James II. Secret societies, agrarian crime and faction fighting
became common in the eighteenth century, with Protestant Peep o' Day Boys
pitted against Catholic Defenders. In 1795, a pitched battle in County Armagh
led to the formation of the Orange Order, which soon mustered enormous support
among Protestant labourers and small farmers. In 1798, reports of sectarian
atrocities in County Wexford confirmed most northern Protestants, even those
who had risen in Antrim and Down, in a distrustful hostility towards Catholics.
Since the Union, Ulster had become much more
prosperous than the other provinces. Tenant farmers had geater security than
elsewhere, had a valuable cash crop in flax, and escaped the worst of the
potato famine. Industry flourished, and Belfast was a thriving port. However,
after Catholic emancipation, it was apparent that Protestants would be in a
minority in any all-Ireland parliament.
When Gladstone introduced his Home Rule Bill in 1886,
his Conservative opponents formed a political alliance with the Ulster
Protestants which was to last almost a century. "The Orange card was the one to
play", wrote a leading Conservative, Lord Randolph Churchill, who also coined
the watchword "Ulster will fight, and Ulster will be right." The bill was
greeted by severe rioting in Belfast. Sectarian violence was no novelty in the
city, but the 1886 riots were the worst the city had seen. There were further
disturbances in 1893, in response to Gladstone's second bill.
The Ulster Unionist Council was formed in 1905,
linking the Orange Order and Unionist associations throughout the province. It
marked their determination to keep the province within the Union, even if
Protestants in the rest of Ireland were ultimately forced to yield to
nationalist aspirations. In 1910, Irish Unionism gained a new leader in Sir
Edward Carson, an eminent barrister and MP for Dublin University. Carson was
prepared to defy the British government and parliament. In 1911, he told a
large rally on the outskirts of Belfast to prepare to take over the government
of Ulster if a Home Rule Bill passed. On 28 September 1912, he was among almost
half a million men and women who signed a "solemn league and covenant" pledging
themselves to use "all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present
conspiracy to set up a home rule parliament in Ireland".
In 1913, the Ulster Unionist Council announced the
formation of the Ulster Volunteer Force. Some military drilling had already
begun, and before long 90,000 men had been recruited under the command of Sir
George Richardson, a distinguished soldier. They were poorly equipped until the
council commissioned a Belfast businessman, Major Fred Crawford, to purchase
arms secretly in Germany. In April 1914, 35,000 rifles and five million rounds
of ammunition were smuggled into Larne Harbour and swiftly distributed
throughout the province.