MR. CHURCHILL IN BELFAST
At the women's meeting at the Ulster Hall on the 18th of January,
1912,[14] Lord Londonderry took occasion to recall once more to the
memory of his audience the celebrated speech delivered by Lord Randolph
Churchill in the same building twenty-six years before. That clarion
was, indeed, in no danger of being forgotten; but there happened at that
particular moment to be a very special reason for Ulstermen to remember
it, and the incident which was present in Londonderry's mind--a
Resolution passed by the Standing Committee of the Ulster Unionist
Council two days earlier--proved to be so distinct a turning-point in
the history of Ulster's stand for the Union that it claims more than a
passing mention.
"Diligence and vigilance should be your watchword, so that the blow, if
it is coming, may not come upon you as a thief in the night, and may not
find you unready and taken by surprise." Such had been Lord Randolph's
warning. It was now learnt, with feelings in which disgust and
indignation were equally mingled, that Lord Randolph's son was bent on
coming to Belfast, not indeed as a thief in the night, but with
challenging audacity, to give his countenance, encouragement, and
support to the adherents of disloyalty whom Lord Randolph had told
Ulster to resist to the death. And not only was he coming to Belfast; he
was coming to the Ulster Hall--to the very building which his father's
oration had, as it were, consecrated to the Unionist cause, and which
had come to be regarded as almost a loyalist shrine.
It is no doubt difficult for those who are unfamiliar with the
psychology of the North of Ireland to understand the anger which this
projected visit of Mr. Winston Churchill aroused in Belfast. His change
of political allegiance from the party which his father had so
brilliantly served and led, to the party which his father had so
pitilessly chastised, was of course displeasing to Conservatives
everywhere. Politicians who leave their friends to join their opponents
are never popular with those they abandon, and Mr. Winston Churchill was
certainly no exception. But such desertions, after the first burst of
wrath has evaporated, are generally accepted with a philosophic shrug in
what journalists call "political circles" in London, where plenty of
precedents for lapses from party virtue can be quoted. In the provinces,
even in England, resentment dies down less easily, and forgiveness is of
slow growth; but in Ulster, where a political creed is held with a
religious fervour, or, as a hostile critic might put it, with an
intolerance unknown in England, and where the dividing line between
"loyalty" and "disloyalty" is regarded almost as a matter of faith, the
man who passes from the one to the other arouses the same bitterness of
anger and contempt which soldiers feel for a deserter in face of the
enemy.
To such sentiments there was added, in the case of Mr. Winston
Churchill, a shocked feeling that his appearance in the Ulster Hall as
an emissary of Home Rule would be an act not only of political apostasy
but of filial impiety. The prevailing sentiment in Belfast at the time
was expressed somewhat brutally, perhaps, in the local Press--"he is
coming to dance on his father's coffin." It was an outrage on their
feelings which the people of Belfast could not and would not tolerate.
If Mr. Churchill was determined to flaunt the green flag let him find a
more suitable site than the very citadel in which they had been exhorted
by his father to keep the Union Jack flying to the last.
If anything could have added to the anger excited by this announcement
it would have been the fact that the Cabinet Minister was to be
accompanied on the platform of the Ulster Hall by Mr. Redmond and Mr.
Devlin, and that Lord Pirrie was to be his chairman. There was no more
unpopular citizen of Belfast than Lord Pirrie; and the reason was neatly
explained to English readers by the Special Correspondent of _The
Times_. "Lord Pirrie," he wrote, "deserted Unionism about the time the
Liberals acceded to power, and soon afterwards was made a Peer; whether
_propter hoc_ or only _post hoc_ I am quite unable to say, though no
Ulster Unionist has any doubts on the subject."[15] But that was not
quite the whole reason. That Lord Pirrie was an example of apostasy
"just for a riband to stick in his coat," was the general belief; but it
was also resented that a man who had amassed, not "a handful of silver,"
but an enormous fortune, through a trade created by an eminent Unionist
firm, and under conditions brought about in Belfast by the Union with
Great Britain, should have kicked away the ladder by which he had
climbed from obscurity to wealth and rank. An additional cause of
offence, moreover, was that he was at that time trying to persuade
credulous people in England that there was in Ulster a party of Liberals
and Protestant Home Rulers, of which he posed as leader, although
everyone on the spot knew that the "party" would not fill a tramcar. Of
this party the same Correspondent of _The Times_ very truly said:
"Nearly every prominent man in it has received an office or a
decoration--and the fact that, with all the power of patronage in
their hands for the last six years, the Government had been able to
make so small an inroad into the solid square of Ulster Unionism is
a remarkable testimony to the strength of the sentiment which gives
it cohesion."
But a score of individuals in possession of an office equipped with
stamped stationery, and with a titled chairman of fabulous wealth, have
no difficulty in deluding strangers at a distance into the belief that
they are an influential and representative body of men. It was in
furtherance of the scheme for creating this false impression across the
Channel that Lord Pirrie and his so-called "Ulster Liberal Association"
invited Mr. Winston Churchill and the two Nationalist leaders to speak
in the Ulster Hall on the 8th of February, 1912, and that the
announcement of the fixture was made in the Press some three weeks
earlier.
The Unionist leaders were not long left in ignorance of the public
excitement which this news created in the city. A specially summoned
meeting of the Standing Committee, with Londonderry in the chair, was
held on the 16th of January to consider what action, if any, should be
taken; but it was no simple matter they had to decide, especially in the
absence of their leader, Sir Edward Carson, who was kept in England by
great Unionist meetings which he was addressing in Lancashire.
The reasons, on the one hand, for doing nothing were obvious enough. No
one, of course, suggested the possibility of preventing Mr. Churchill
coming to Belfast; but could even the Ulster Hall itself, the Loyalist
sanctuary, be preserved from the threatened desecration? It was the
property of the Corporation, and the Unionist political organisation had
no exclusive title to its use. The meeting could only be frustrated by
force in some form, or by a combination of force and stratagem. The
Standing Committee, all men of solid sense and judgment, several of whom
were Privy Councillors, were very fully alive to the objections to any
resort to force in such a matter. They valued freedom of speech as
highly as any Englishman, and they realised the odium that interference
with it might bring both on themselves and their cause; and the last
thing they desired at the present crisis was to alienate public sympathy
in Great Britain. The force of such considerations was felt strongly by
several members, indeed by all, of the Committee, and not least by Lord
Londonderry himself, whose counsel naturally carried great weight.
But, on the other hand, the danger of a passive attitude was also fully
recognised. It was perfectly well understood that one of the chief
desires of the Liberal Government and its followers at this time was to
make the world believe that Ulster's opposition to Home Rule had
declined in strength in recent years; that there really was a
considerable body of Protestant opinion in agreement with Lord Pirrie,
and prepared to support Home Rule on "Liberal," if not on avowedly
"Nationalist" principles, and that the policy for which Carson,
Londonderry, and the Unionist Council stood was a gigantic piece of
bluff which only required to be exposed to disappear in general
derision.
From this point of view the Churchill meeting could only be regarded as
a deliberate challenge and provocation to Ulster. It seemed probable
that the First Lord of the Admiralty had been selected for the mission
in preference to any other Minister precisely because he was Lord
Randolph's son. All this bluster about "fight and be right" was
traceable, so Liberal Ministers doubtless reasoned, to that unhappy
speech of "Winston's father"; let Winston go over to the same place and
explain his father away. If he obtained a hearing in the Ulster Hall in
the company of Redmond, Devlin, and Pirrie the legend of Ulster as an
impregnable loyalist stronghold would be wiped out, and Randolph's rant
could be made to appear a foolish joke in comparison with the more
mature and discriminating wisdom of Winston.
It cannot, of course, be definitely asserted that the situation was thus
weighed deliberately by the Cabinet, or by Mr. Churchill himself. But,
if it was not, they must have been deficient in foresight; for there can
be no doubt, as several writers in the Press perceived, that the
transaction would so have presented itself to the mind of the public;
the psychological result would inure to the benefit of the Home Rulers.
But there was also another consideration which could not be ignored by
the Standing Committee--namely, the attitude of that important
individual, the "man in the street." Among the innumerable
misrepresentations levelled at the Ulster Movement none was more common
than that it was confined to a handful of lords, landlords, and wealthy
employers of labour; and, as a corollary, that all the trouble was
caused by the perversity of a few individuals, of whom the most guilty
was Sir Edward Carson. The truth was very different. Even at the zenith
of his influence and popularity Sir Edward himself would have been
instantly disowned by the Ulster democracy if he had given away anything
fundamental to the Unionist cause. More than to anything else he owed
his power to his pledge, never violated, that he would never commit his
followers to any irretraceable step without the consent of the Council,
in which they were fully represented on a democratic basis. At the
particular crisis now reached popular feeling could not be safely
disregarded, and it was clearly understood by the Standing Committee
that public excitement over the coming visit of Mr. Churchill was only
being kept within bounds by the belief of the public that their leaders
would not "let them down."
All these considerations were most carefully balanced at the meeting on
the 16th of January, and there were prolonged deliberations before the
decision was arrived at that some action must be taken to prevent the
Churchill meeting being held in the Ulster Hall, but that no obstacle
could, of course, be made to his speaking in any other building in
Belfast. The further question as to what this action should be was under
discussion when Colonel R.H. Wallace, C.B., Grand Master of the Belfast
Orangemen, and a man of great influence with all classes in the city as
well as in the neighbouring counties, entered the room and told the
Committee that people outside were expecting the Unionist Council to
devise means for stopping the Ulster Hall meeting; that they were quite
resolved to take matters into their own hands if the Council remained
passive; and that, in his judgment, the result in that event would
probably be very serious disorder and bloodshed, and the loss of all
control over the Unionist rank and file by their leaders.
This information arrived too late to influence the decision on the main
question, but it confirmed its wisdom and set at rest the doubts which
some of the Committee had at first entertained. It was reported at the
time that there had been a dissenting minority consisting of Lord
Londonderry, Mr. Sinclair, and Mr. John Young, the last-mentioned being
a Privy Councillor, a trusted leader of the Presbyterians, and a man of
moderate views whose great influence throughout the north-eastern
counties was due to his high character and the soundness of his
judgment. There was, however, no truth in this report, which
Londonderry publicly contradicted; but it is probable that the
concurrence of the men mentioned, and perhaps of others, was owing to
their well-founded conviction that the course decided upon, however
high-handed it might appear to onlookers at a distance, was in reality
the only means of averting much more deplorable consequences.
On the following day, January 17th, an immense sensation was created by
the publication of the Resolution which had been unanimously adopted on
the motion of Captain James Craig, M.P. It was:
"That the Standing Committee of the Ulster Unionist Council
observes with astonishment the deliberate challenge thrown down by
Mr. Winston Churchill, Mr. John Redmond, Mr. Joseph Devlin, and
Lord Pirrie in announcing their intention to hold a Home Rule
meeting in the centre of the loyal city of Belfast, and resolves to
take steps to prevent its being held."
There was an immediate outpouring of vituperation by the Ministerial
Press in England, as had been anticipated by the Standing Committee.
Special Correspondents trooped over to Belfast, whence they filled their
papers with telegrams, articles, and interviews, ringing the changes on
the audacity of this unwarranted interference with freedom of speech,
and speculating as to the manner in which the threat, was likely to be
carried out. Scribes of "Open Letters" had a fine opportunity to display
their gift of insolent invective. Cartoonists and caricaturists had a
time of rare enjoyment, and let their pencils run riot. Writers in the
Liberal Press for the most part assumed that Mr. Churchill would bid
defiance to the Ulster Unionist Council; others urged him to do so and
to fulfil his engagement; some, with more prudence, suggested that he
might be extricated from the difficulty without loss of dignity if the
Chief Secretary would prohibit the meeting, as likely to produce a
breach of peace, and it was pointed out that Dublin Castle would
certainly forbid a meeting in Tipperary organised by the Ulster Unionist
Council, with Sir Edward Carson as principal speaker.
However, on the 25th of January Mr. Churchill addressed a letter, dated
from the Admiralty, to Lord Londonderry at Mount Stewart, in which he
said he was prepared to give up the idea of speaking in the Ulster Hall,
and would arrange for his meeting to be held elsewhere in the city, as
"it was not a point of any importance to him where he spoke in Belfast."
He did not explain why, if that were the case, he had ever made a plan
that so obviously constituted a direct premeditated challenge to Ulster.
Lord Londonderry, in his reply, said that the Ulster Unionist Council
had no intention of interfering with any meeting Mr. Churchill might
arrange "outside the districts which passionately resent your action,"
but that, "having regard to the intense state of feeling" which had been
aroused, the Council could accept no responsibility for anything that
might occur during the visit. Mr. Churchill's prudent change of plan
relieved the extreme tension of the situation, and there was much
speculation as to what influence had produced a result so satisfactory
to the Ulster Unionist Council. The truth seems to be that the Council's
Resolution had impaled the Government on the horns of a very awkward
dilemma, completely turning the tables on Ministers, whose design had
been to compel the Belfast Unionists either to adopt, on the one hand,
an attitude of apparent intolerance which would put them in the wrong in
the eyes of the British public, or, on the other, to submit to the
flagrant misrepresentation of their whole position which would be the
outcome of a Nationalist meeting in the Ulster Hall presided over by the
President of the illusory "Ulster Liberal Association," and with Lord
Randolph Churchill's son as the protagonist of Home Rule. The threat to
stop the meeting forced the Government to consider how the First Lord of
the Admiralty and his friends were to be protected and enabled to fulfil
their programme. The Irish Executive, according to the Dublin
Correspondent of _The Times_, objected to the employment of troops for
this purpose; because--
"If the Belfast Unionists decided to resist the soldiers, bloodshed
and disorder on a large scale must have ensued. If, on the other
hand, they yielded to the _force majeure_ of British bayonets, and
Mr. Churchill was enabled to speak in the Ulster Hall, they would
still have carried their point; they would have proved to the
English people that Home Rule could only be thrust upon Ulster by
an overwhelming employment of military force. The Executive
preferred to depend on the services of a large police force. And
this meant that Mr. Churchill could not speak in the Ulster Hall;
for the Belfast democracy, though it might yield to soldiers, would
certainly offer a fierce resistance to the police. It seemed,
therefore, that the Government's only safe and prudent course was
to prevent Mr. Churchill from trying to speak in that Hall."[16]
The Government, in fact, had been completely out-manoeuvred. They had
given the Ulster Unionist Council an opportunity to show its own
constituents and the outside world that, where the occasion demanded
action, it could act with decision; and they had failed utterly to drive
a wedge between Ulster and the Unionist Party in England and in the
South of Ireland, as they hoped to do by goading Belfast into
illegality. On the other hand, they had aroused some misgiving in the
ranks of their own supporters. A political observer in London reported
that the incident had--
"Caused a feeling of considerable apprehension in Radical circles.
The pretence that Ulster does not mean to fight is now almost
abandoned even by the most fanatical Home Rulers."[17]
Unionist journals in Great Britain, almost without exception, applauded
the conduct of the Council, and proved by their comments that they
understood its motive, and sympathised with the feelings of Ulster. _The
Saturday Review_ expressed the general view when it wrote:
"With the indignation of the loyal Ulstermen at this proposal we
are in complete sympathy. Where there is a question of Home Rule,
the Ulster Hall is sacred ground, and to the Ulster mind and,
indeed, to the mind of any calm outsider, there is something both
impudent and impious in the proposal that this temple of Unionism
should be profaned by the son of a man who assisted at its
consecration."[18]
The southern Unionists of Ireland thoroughly appreciated the difficulty
that had confronted their friends in the North, and approved the way it
had been met. This was natural enough, since, as the Dublin
Correspondent of _The Times_ pointed out--
"They understand Ulster's position better than it can be understood
in England. They realise that the provocation has been extreme.
There has been a deliberate conspiracy to persuade the English
people, first, that Ulster is weakening in its opposition to Home
Rule; and, next, that its declared refusal to accept Home Rule in
any form is mere bluff. It became necessary for Ulster to defeat
this conspiracy, and the Ulster Council's Resolution has defeated
it."[19]
A few days later a still more valuable token of sympathy and support
from across the Channel gave fresh encouragement to Ulster. On the 26th
of January Mr. Bonar Law made his first public speech as leader of the
Unionist Party, when he addressed an audience of ten thousand people in
the Albert Hall in London. In the course of a masterly analysis of the
dangers inseparable from Home Rule, he once more drew attention to "the
dishonesty with which the Government hid Home Rule before the election,
and now propose to carry it after the election"; but the passage which
gave the greatest satisfaction in Ulster was that in which, speaking for
the whole Unionist Party--which meant at least half, and probably more
than half, the British nation--Mr. Bonar Law, in reference to the recent
occurrence in Belfast, said:
"We hear a great deal about the intolerance of Ulster. It is easy
to be tolerant for other people. We who represent the Unionist
Party in England and Scotland have supported, and we mean to
support to the end, the loyal minority. We support them not because
we are intolerant, but because their claims are just."
Meanwhile, Mr. Churchill's friends were seeking a building in Belfast
where the baffled Minister could hold his meeting on the 8th of
February, and in the course of the search the director of the Belfast
Opera-house was offered a knighthood as well as a large sum of money for
the use of his theatre,[20] a fact that possibly explains the statement
made by the London Correspondent of _The Freeman's Journal_ on the 28th
of January, that the Government's Chief Whip and Patronage Secretary was
busying himself with the arrangement.[21] Captain Frederick Guest, M.P.,
one of the junior whips, arrived in Belfast on the 25th to give
assistance on the spot; but no suitable hall with an auspicious _genius
loci_ could apparently be found, for eventually a marquee was imported
from Scotland and erected on the Celtic football ground, in the
Nationalist quarter of the city.
The question of maintaining order on the day of the meeting was at the
same time engaging the attention both of the Government in Dublin and
the Unionist Council in Belfast. The former decided to strengthen the
garrison of Belfast by five battalions of infantry and two squadrons of
cavalry, while at the Old Town Hall anxious consultations were held as
to the best means of securing that the soldiers should have nothing to
do. The Unionist leaders had not yet gained the full influence they were
able to exercise later, nor were their followers as disciplined as they
afterwards became. The Orange Lodges were the only section of the
population in any sense under discipline; and this section was a much
smaller proportion of the Unionist rank and file than English Liberals
supposed, who were in the habit of speaking as if "Orangemen" were a
correct cognomen of the whole Protestant population of Ulster. It was,
however, only through the Lodges and the Unionist Clubs that the
Standing Committee could hope to exert influence in keeping the peace.
That Committee, accordingly, passed a Resolution on the 5th of February,
moved by Colonel Wallace, the most influential of the Belfast
Orangemen, which "strongly urged all Unionists," in view of the Ulster
Hall victory, "to abstain from any interference with the meeting at the
Celtic football ground, and to do everything in their power to avoid any
action that might lead to any disturbance."
The Resolution was circulated to all the Orange Lodges and Unionist
Clubs in Belfast and the neighbouring districts--for it was expected
that some 30,000 or 40,000 people might come into the city from outside
on the day of the meeting--with urgent injunctions to the officers to
bring it to the notice of all members; it was also extensively placarded
on all the hoardings of Belfast. Of even greater importance perhaps, in
the interests of peace, was the decision that Carson and Londonderry
should themselves remain in Belfast on the 8th. This, as _The Times_
Correspondent in Belfast had the insight to observe, was "the strongest
guarantee of order" that could be given, and there is no doubt that
their appearance, together with Captain Craig, M.P., and Lord
Templetown, on the balcony of the Ulster Club had a calming effect on
the excited crowd that surged round Mr. Churchill's hotel, and served as
a reminder throughout the day of the advice which these leaders had
issued to their adherents.
The First Lord of the Admiralty was accompanied to Belfast by Mrs.
Churchill, his Secretary, and two Liberal Members of Parliament, Mr.
Fiennes and Mr. Hamar Greenwood--for the last-mentioned of whom fate was
reserving a more intimate connection with Irish trouble than could be
got from a fleeting flirtation with disloyalty in West Belfast. They
were greeted at Larne by a large crowd vociferously cheering Carson, and
singing the National Anthem. A still larger concourse of people, though
it could not be more hostile, awaited Mr. Churchill at the Midland
Station in Belfast and along the route to the Grand Central Hotel. When
he started from the hotel early in the afternoon for the football field
the crowd in Royal Avenue was densely packed and actively demonstrating
its unfavourable opinion of the distinguished visitor; on whom, however,
none desired or attempted to inflict any physical injury, although the
involuntary swaying of so great a mass of men was in danger for a
moment of overturning the motor-car in which he and his wife were
seated.
The way to the meeting took the Minister from the Unionist to the
Nationalist district and afforded him a practical demonstration of the
gulf between the "two nations" which he and his colleagues were bent
upon treating as one. The moment he crossed the boundary, the booing and
groaning of one area was succeeded by enthusiastic cheers in the other;
grotesque effigies of Redmond and of himself in one street were replaced
by equally unflattering effigies of Londonderry and Carson in the next;
in Royal Avenue both men and women looked like tearing him in pieces, in
Falls Road they thronged so close to shake his hand that "Mr. Hamar
Greenwood found it necessary" (so the _Times_ Correspondent reported)
"to stand on the footboard outside the car and relieve the pressure."
It was expected that Mr. Churchill would return to his hotel after the
meeting, and there had been no shrinkage in the crowd in the interval,
nor any change in its sentiments. The police decided that it would be
wiser for him to depart by another route. He was therefore taken by back
streets to the Midland terminus, and without waiting for the ordinary
train by which he had arranged to travel, was as hastily as possible
despatched to Larne by a special train before it was generally known
that Royal Avenue and York Street were to see him no more. Mr. Churchill
tells us in his brilliant biography of his father that when Lord
Randolph arrived at Larne in 1886 "he was welcomed like a King." His own
arrival at the same port was anything but regal, and his departure more
resembled that of the "thief in the night," of whom Lord Randolph had
bidden Ulster beware.
So this memorable pilgrimage ended. Of the speech itself which Mr.
Churchill delivered to some thousands of Nationalists, many of whom were
brought by special train from Dublin, it is unnecessary here to say more
than that Sir Edward Carson described it a few days later as a "speech
full of eloquent platitudes," and that it certainly did little to
satisfy the demand for information about the Home Rule Bill which was to
be produced in the coming session of Parliament.
The undoubted importance which this visit of Mr. Churchill to Belfast
and its attendant circumstances had in the development of the Ulster
Movement is the justification for treating it in what may appear to be
disproportionate detail. From it dates the first clear realisation even
by hostile critics in England, and probably by Ministers themselves,
that the policy of Ulster as laid down at Craigavon could not be
dismissed with a sneer, although it is true that there were many Home
Rulers who never openly abandoned the pretence that it could. Not less
important was the effect in Ulster itself. The Unionist Council had
proved itself in earnest; it could, and was prepared to, do more than
organise imposing political demonstrations; and so the rank and file
gained confidence in leaders who could act as well as make speeches, and
who had shown themselves in an emergency to be in thorough accord with
popular sentiment; the belief grew that the men who met in the Old Town
Hall would know how to handle any crisis that might arise, would not
timidly shrink from acting as occasion might require, and were quite
able to hold their own with the Government in tactical manoeuvres. This
confidence improved discipline. The Lodges and the Clubs and the general
body of shipyard and other workers had less temptation to take matters
into their own hands; they were content to wait for instructions from
headquarters now that they could trust their leaders to give the
necessary instructions at the proper time.
The net result, therefore, of an expedition which was designed to expose
the hollowness and the weakness of the Ulster case was to augment the
prestige of the Ulster leaders and the self-confidence of the Ulster
people, and to make both leaders and followers understand better than
before the strength of the position in which they were entrenched.
FOOTNOTES:
[14] See _ante_, p. 38.
[15] _The Times_, January 18th, 1912.
[16] _The Times_, January 26th, 1912.
[17] _The Standard_, January 18th, 1912.
[18] _The Saturday Review_, January 27th, 1912.
[19] _The Times_, January 20th, 1912.
[20] See Interview with Mr. F.W. Warden in _The Standard_, February 8th,
1912.
[21] See Dublin Correspondent's telegram in _The Times_, January 29th,
1912.