CARSON, ULSTER AND OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
With the nearness of the time when Home Rule must automatically become
law, unless something happened to interfere, events began to move
rapidly. The Tory Party, largely, I believe, through political
considerations, had unalterably taken sides with Ulster. The Liberal
Party were irresolute, wavering, pusillanimous. Mr Redmond's followers
began to be uneasy--they commenced to falter in their blind faith that
they had only to trust Asquith and all would be well.
"In the Ancient Order of Hibernians," Mr Henry tells us, "all sections
of Sinn Fein, as well as the Labour Party, saw a menace to any
prospect of an accommodation with Ulster. This strictly sectarian
society, as sectarian and often as violent in its methods as the
Orange Lodges, evoked their determined hostility."
"This narrowing down," wrote _Irish Freedom_ (the organ of Mr P.
H. Pearse and his friends), "of Nationalism to the members of one
creed is the most fatal thing that has taken place in Irish politics
since the days of the Pope's Brass Band," and the Ancient Order was
further referred to as "a job-getting and job-cornering organisation,"
as "a silent, practical riveting of sectarianism on the nation."
_The Irish Worker_ was equally emphatic. "Were it not for the
existence of the Board of Erin the Orange Society would have long
since ceased to exist. To Brother Devlin and not to Brother Carson is
mainly due the progress of the Covenanter Movement in Ulster."
Though no doubt in Ireland religion exercises a considerable
influence, it is nevertheless a mistake to think that it was purely a
question of religion with those redoubtable Northern Unionists whom
Sir Edward Carson led. They attached more importance to their
political rights and independent commercial position, which they
believed to be endangered; corruption in matters of administration was
what they were most in dread of. The Irish Party used to point proudly
to the number of Protestants who had been elected as members of their
Party. The reply of Ulster was that they owed their election to their
accommodating spirit in accepting the Parliamentary policy and not
because of their rigid adherence to Protestant principles.
Then came the Lame gun-running expedition, when the _Fanny_
sailed across from Hamburg, under the noses of English destroyers and
men-of-war, and, it is said, with the knowledge and connivance of the
officers commanding them, safely landed 50,000 German rifles and
several million rounds of ammunition, which were distributed within
twenty-four hours to the Covenanters throughout the Province. It is
clear that at this time extensive negotiations were going on between
Germany and the Ulster extremists. The Ulster Provisional Government
were leaving nothing to chance. History is entitled to know the full
story of all that happened at this most fateful period--what
"discussions" took place between the Ulster leaders and the Kaiser,
how far Sir Edward Carson was implicated in these matters and how real
and positive is his responsibility for the world war that ensued. And
it should be borne in mind that these seditious traffickings with a
foreign state were going on at a time when there was no Sinn Fein army
in existence, and that the man who first showed a readiness not alone
to invoke German aid but actually to avail himself of it, was not any
Southern Nationalist rebel leader but Sir Edward Carson, the leader
and, as he was called, "the Uncrowned King" of Ulster. When critics
condemn the Nationalists of the South for their alleged communications
with Germany, let them not, in all fairness, forget Sir Edward Carson
was the man who first showed the way. To whom then--if guilt there
be--does the greater guilt belong? When the news of this audacious
gun-running expedition was published, Ireland waited breathless to
know what was going to happen. Warships were posted on the Ulster
coast, ostensibly to stop further gun-running, and the Prime Minister
announced in the House of Commons that "in view of this grave and
unprecedented outrage the Government would take appropriate steps
without delay to vindicate the authority of the law."
But in view of what _The Westminster Gazette_ termed "the abject
surrender to the Army" of the Government over the Curragh incident,
when officers were declared to have refused to serve against Ulster,
not much in the way of stern measures was to be expected now. The
Government on the occasion of the Curragh incident had declared: "His
Majesty's Government must retain their right to use all the forces of
the Crown in Ireland or elsewhere to maintain law and order and to
support the civil power in the ordinary execution of its duty. But
they have no intention whatever of taking advantage of this right to
crush political opposition to the policy or principles of the Home
Rule Bill."
As Mr Balfour was not slow in pointing out, this statement made "it
impossible to coerce Ulster." The officers who had refused to obey
orders, including General Gough, were in effect patted on the back,
told they were splendid fellows, and that they would not be asked to
march against Ulster. It was the same thing over again in the case of
the _Fanny_ exploit, Sir Edward Carson unblushingly improving the
occasion by laying stress on the weakening of Great Britain's position
abroad that followed as a consequence of his own acts. The Irish Party
leaders, who had a few months before still persisted in describing the
Ulster preparations as "a masquerade" and "a sham," were now in a
state of funk and panic. They found the solid ground they thought they
had stood on rapidly slipping from under them. There was to be no
prosecution of the Ulster leaders, no proclamation of their
organisation, nothing to compel them to surrender the arms they had so
brazenly and illegally imported.
Why was not Carson arrested at this crisis, as he surely ought to have
been by any Government which respected its constitutional forms and
authority, not to speak of its dignity? Captain Wedgwood Benn having
in the Parliamentary Session of 1919 taunted Sir Edward Carson with
his threat that if Ulster was coerced he intended to break every law
that was possible, there followed this interchange:
Sir E. Carson: I agree that these words are perfectly correct.
A Labour Member: Anyone else would have been in prison.
Sir E. Carson: Why was I not put in prison?
Mr Devlin: Because I was against it.
Well may Mr Devlin take all the credit that is due to him for
preventing Sir Edward Carson's arrest, considering that he and his
Order had been mainly the cause of bringing Carson to the verge of
rebellion, but that gentleman himself seems to have a different
opinion about it if we are to put any credence in the following
extract from Colonel Repington's _Diary of the First World War_,
under date 19th November 1915:
"Had a talk with Carson about the Ulster business. He was very amusing
and outspoken. He told me how near we were to an explosion, that the
Government had determined to arrest the chief leaders; that he had
arranged to send the one word H.X. over the wire to Belfast and that
this was to be the signal for the seizure of the Customs throughout
Ulster. He called to see the King and told Stamfordham exactly what
was going to happen and the arrest of the leaders was promptly
stopped."
Note the scandalous implication here! What does it amount to? That Sir
Edward Carson went to Buckingham Palace, held the threat of civil war
over the King, and intimidated His Majesty into using his exalted
office to screen the Orange leader and his chief advisers from
prosecution! If it does not bear this meaning, what other can it bear?
And what are we to think of its relation to constitutional authority
and right usage?
But this is not the only occasion on which Sir Edward Carson shows up
in Colonel Repington's pages. Under date 19th October 1916:
"Carson told me that a man who had been on board the _Fanny_ was
writing the story of the famous voyage and the gun-running exploit."
We have not got that story yet. When it is published it would be an
advantage if we could also have the full account of the circumstances
under which Baron von Kuhlman went over to Ireland to prospect as to
the imminence of civil war, who it was he saw in Ulster, what
arrangements and interviews he had with the Ulster Volunteers and
their leaders, who were the other prominent people he met there and,
above all, how the _Fanny's_ cargo of German rifles was arranged
and paid for? Surely these are questions vital to an understanding of
the extent of Sir Edward Carson's culpability for the outbreak of war.
Loyalist Ulster--the Ulster of law and order--was now openly defiant
of the law. Mr P.H. Pearse summed up the situation rather neatly in an
article in _Irish Freedom_:
"One great source of misunderstanding" (he wrote) "has now
disappeared; it has become clear within the last few years that the
Orangeman is no more loyal to England than we are. He wants the Union
because he imagines it secures his prosperity, but he is ready to fire
on the Union flag the moment it threatens his prosperity.... The case
might be put thus: Hitherto England has governed Ireland through the
Orange Lodges--she now proposes to govern Ireland through the Ancient
Order of Hibernians. You object: so do we. Why not unite and get rid
of the English? They are the real difficulty; their presence here the
real incongruity."
I quote this to show it was not the All-for-Irelanders alone who saw
that the Board of Erin was the real stumbling-block in the way of a
national settlement. And now when matters were to be put to the test
the Government showed a monstrous culpability. It does not avail them
to say that the Irish Party had been guilty of treachery to Ireland,
that it misled the Ministry as to the extent and depth of Ulster's
irreconcilability, and that it had betrayed its own supporters by
reposing a childish faith in Liberal promises. The Government must
bear their own responsibility for allowing Sir Edward Carson and the
Ulster Covenanters to defy and thwart them at every point, for
permitting what amounted to a mutiny in the army, for ordering the
Channel Fleet and the soldiers to Ulster "to put these grave matters
to the test even if the red blood should flow," and then withdrawing
them again, for issuing a proclamation forbidding the importation of
arms and allowing the Covenanters to spit at it in mockery, and
finally for admitting, in the famous Army Order I have quoted, the
Right of Rebellion as part of the constitutional machinery of the
State.
"The gigantic game of bluff"--as the Ulster preparations were
termed--had won outright. The political gamesters, who would not
surrender an inch to Ulster when it could be negotiated with, were now
willing to surrender everything, including the principle of an
indivisible Irish nationhood. "Conversations" between the various
leaders went on during the early months of 1914 to arrange a compromise
and a settlement, the gigantic crime of Partition as a substitute for
Irish Freedom was traitorously perpetrated by Ireland's own
"representatives" and by the so-called "Home Rule Government," and
Ireland woke up one fine morning to find that the Home Rule Act even
when on the Statute Book might as well not be there--all the bonfires
that were lighted in Ireland to hail its enactment
nothwithstanding--that "Dark Rosaleen," the mother that they loved so
well, was to be brutally dismembered, and that "A Nation Once Again" was
to mean, in the words of Sir Horace Plunkett: "Half Home Rule for
three-quarters of Ireland." The Prime Minister had proposed the
partition of Ireland--three-fourths to go to the Nationalists and
one-fourth to the Orangemen--and the Irish Party had accepted the
proposal, nay, more, they summoned a Conference of Northern Nationalists
and compelled them to pass a resolution, strongly against their
inclination, in favour of the proposal, under threat of the resignation
of Messrs Redmond, Dillon and Devlin if the resolution were not adopted.
An Amending Bill was immediately introduced into Parliament (23rd June
1914), which provided for the exclusion of such Ulster counties as
might avail themselves of it. This measure was transformed by the
House of Lords so as permanently to exclude the whole of Ulster from
the operations of the Home Rule Act.
By people forgetful of the facts, it is sometimes supposed that the
Partition was agreed to by the Irish Party under the pressure of war
conditions. This is not so. The Party have not even this poor excuse
to justify their betrayal, which was the culminating point in the
steep declivity of their downfall. The All-for-Ireland Party resisted
with all the strength at their command the violation of Ireland's
national unity. We spoke against it, voted against it, did all we
could to rouse the conscience of the people as to its unparalleled
iniquity. But though a proposal more offensive to every instinct of
national feeling could not be submitted, the Irish Party determined to
see the thing through--they seemed anxious to catch at any straw that
would save them from an irretrievable doom. On account of the deadlock
between the Lords and Commons on the question of exclusion, and with a
view to the adjustment of differences, it was announced that the King
had summoned a Conference of two representatives from each
Party--eight in all--to meet at Buckingham Palace. It is believed that
this Conference was initiated by His Majesty but taken with the
knowledge and consent of the Ministry. Messrs Redmond and Dillon
represented the Irish Party, and thus the man (Mr Dillon) who had been
for ten years denouncing any Conference with his own countrymen went
blithely into a Conference at Buckingham Palace, where the only issue
to be discussed was as to whether Sir Edward Carson should have four
or six counties for his kingdom in the North. On this point the
Conference for the moment disagreed, but nothing can ever undo the
fact that a body of Irishmen claiming to be Nationalists had not only
ignobly agreed to the Partition of their native land but, after twelve
months for deliberation, agreed to surrender six counties, instead of
four, to the Covenanters. And the time came when it was remembered for
them in an Ireland which had worthier concepts of Nationality than
partition and plunder.