Lecture 8: Unionism
Nine counties of Ulster
Why was Ulster different?
• Experienced more extensive migration
from Britain
• Religious difference
• Economic development: export-based
linen & shipbuilding industries – Ulster had
more in common with Merseyside and
Clyneside than with the rest of Ireland
• Ulster’s Protestants: not truly British, could
not completely reject their Irishness
• Two Irelands
‘In the decade before the outbreak of the Great War in
Europe the United Kingdom experienced its most
severe crisis in modern times. Around the
constitutional struggle over the reform of the House of
Lords, and the political struggle over Irish Home Rule,
welled up more diffuse but no less serious conflicts
over the rights of workers and women. The word
‘crisis’ may have been over-used in this century, but at
the time many people had a sense that the
simultaneous eruption of these multiple conflicts was
more than a coincidence…The intensity of Unionist
resistance to Home Rule was heightened by this sense
of general crisis.’
Townshend, Charles, Ireland: the 20th Century, p52.
Front cover of a
programme for a Unionist
demonstration
What is unionism?
A belief in the constitutional
connection between Britain
and Ireland.
Unionism as an organised
movement dates from the
home rule crisis of 1885-6.
Formal Irish unionist
organization emerged in
1885-6 in the wake of a
revitalized Orangeism and
Conservatism which
represented a reaction to
the Land War.
Unionist Objectives
• To preserve the union between Britain and Ireland
• Unionist leaders aimed to create a strong, united and
disciplined movement to convince the British
government that Ireland should not be granted
Home Rule
Supporters of Unionism
• Institutions: Irish Tories, the Orange
Order, the Church of Ireland (Anglican
church)
• Social groups: landed and commercial
capital, the southern gentry, Belfast
industrialists, small-town Orange brokers,
metropolitan Tories and imperialists.
Tactics
• The period 1885-1914 was a time of
confident opposition for Irish Unionists
• Confident that they would defeat the Home
Rule movement
• Two options in opposing home rule:
constitutional methods or physical force.
• Hoped that constitutional methods would
be sufficient in staving off the home rule
threat.
• Irish Protestants made up
25% of the population of
Ireland.
• 1911: 890,880 Protestants
in Ulster
• Protestants made up only
57 per cent of the 9 county
province of Ulster.
• Concentrated in certain
parts of certain counties,
particularly Antrim, Armagh,
Down and Londonderry
• A compact community
covering all social classes
• Independent of their
Catholic neighbours
Southern Unionists
• Two main strands within unionism: southern
unionism & northern Unionism
• Southern unionists: 250,000 at most
• Southern unionists: primarily landed and
Anglican
• Southern unionists provided financial &
organisational direction to unionists in all parts of
Ireland
• Southern unionism went into decline during and
after the Edwardian period
Unionist fears
• Economic prosperity of the north-east
might be undermined
• Unionists had a lot to lose – power,
privilege, land, livelihood
• ‘Home Rule is Rome Rule’
• Catholic democratic rule distasteful
Orange Order
• Played an important part in the emergence of
organised unionist response to home rule.
• Mid 1880s, before unionism became organised,
the Orange Order provided the only credible
basis for loyalist opposition to both the Land
League and the National league.
• Orangeism united members of the Church of
Ireland and Presbyterians
• In 1879 and 1880 when the Land League began
to make inroads into Ulster, even among some
Protestant farmers, the Orange Order provided
the predominant loyalist response.
Unionist response to Home Rule
• First HR Bill (1886)
• Unionists were illprepared
• Their organisation
was rudimentary
• Sectarian riots in
Belfast: 32 people
died
Unionist response to Home Rule
• Second HR Bill (1893)
• Unionist leaders better
prepared
• Unionist Clubs formed
• Central Council
elected to co-ordinate
opposition accross the
province
Unionist Organisations
• Initially attempted to unite all Irish
opponents of HR in a single national
movement – the attempt failed
• Unionists in Ulster & unionists in the other 3
provinces organised themselves separately
• 1885: Southern unionists were organised
into the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union (ILPU)
• 1891: ILPU becomes the Irish Unionist
Alliance (IUA)
•
Unionist Organisations
• From 1886 onwards Ulster unionists
developed a series of organisations
• Ulster Unionist Council (UUC): the most
enduring
• UUC formed in 1904-5
• UUC: 200 delegates from all 9 Ulster counties
• It elected a 30 man standing committee for
day to day administration
• A permanent staff of full time officials also
appointed
• UUC: a permanent organisation separate from
all other Irish unionist organisations
Unionist response to Home Rule
• Third HR Bill (191214)
• Mass political
mobilisation
• Ulster Solemn League
and Covenant signed
on Ulster Day 1912
• UVF founded
Sir Edward Carson
(1854-1935)
‘We must be
prepared…the
morning Home Rule
passes, ourselves to
become responsible
for the
government of the
Protestant Province
of Ulster’
Interior of Ulster Hall and a scene outside on
eve of Covenant Day
Carson signing Solemn League and
Covenant
Souvenir copy of Women’s Declaration
The wording of the Declaration
which women signed differed
from that of the Covenant.
It allowed women, "to associate
with the men of Ulster in their
uncompromising opposition to
the Home Rule Bill now before
Parliament".
Waiting for guns at Bangor 24 April 1914
Carson inspecting the Ulster Volunteers
c. 1913
Irish Volunteers
• Irish (National) Volunteers
founded November 1913
• IRB heavily involved
• Modelled on UVF
• Enrolled twice as many
men as the UVF
• John Redmond as leader
Irish Volunteer, Robert
Erskine Childers