Ulster Opposition To Home Rule1912 144 Essay

Submitted By ShelbyWarne97
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Pages: 3

Ulster Opposition to Home
Rule
Organisation and Defiance
1912-1914

2 leaders
• Sir Edward Carson
• Southern Protestant lawyer
• Not traditional Ulster Unionist but described the maintenance of the
Union as “the guiding star of my political life”
• MP for Belfast University – by 1910 recognised as leaser of Ulster
Unionists in House of Commons
• 1911 – “Ulster’s cause is the cause of Empire...I dedicate myself to your service whatever may happen”
• 1912 – began to organise military opposition to Home Rule in Belfast

2 leaders
• James Craig
• Son of a Belfast distiller and fought bravely in Boer War.
• Ulster Unionist MP since 1906
• Obstinate and single-minded – determined at all costs to resist any attempt to force Ulster into a self-governing Ireland
• Strength lay in action and administration – organised provincial government in Ulster on behalf of Ulster Council
• First to begin to speak in terms of armed resistance to Home Rule

Meetings and
Demonstrations
• First signs of organised resistance in Ulster – mass meetings and militarytype demonstrations
• Easter Tuesday 1912 – great demonstration at
Belfast’s Balmoral grounds – 100,000
Ulstermen marched past platform in front of Carson and Andrew Bonar Law
(Conservative leader) and
70 Conservative MPs

Ulster’s Solemn League and
Covenant
• Signed at huge demonstration on 28
September 1912 –
Covenant Day
• Signed by 250,000 men (similar separate version signed by same number of women)
• Carson signed first – many believed to have signed in blood

Ulster’s Solemn League and
Covenant


Being convinced in our consciences that
Home Rule would be disastrous to the material well-being of Ulster, as well as of the whole of Ireland, subversive of our civil and religious freedom, destructive of our citizenship, and perilous to the unity of the
Empire, we, whose names are underwritten, men of Ulster, loyal subjects of his Glorious
Majesty King George V, humbly relying on the
God Whom our fathers...confidently trusted, do hereby pledge ourselves in solemn
Covenant throughout this our time of threatened calamity to stand by one another in defending...our cherished position of equal citizenship in the United Kingdom and in using all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a home rule parliament in Ireland...And in the event of such a Parliament being forced upon us we further and mutually pledge ourselves to refuse to recognise its authority. In sure confidence that God will defend the right..

Ulster Volunteer Force








Organised by the Ulster Council
Advised by Field Marshal Lord
Roberts
Commanding Officer – General
Sir George Richardson
Grew rapidly – organised into county divisions and regiments supported by corps of nurses and dispatch riders
Few men had weapons though
Although it was an illegal