Ulster-Scots History http://orange-order.co.uk Wed, 02 May 2012 09:37:21 +0000 5000 http://orange-order.co.uk/topic/40009-1913-when-the-uvf-took-to-horse-power/ http://www.newsletter.co.uk/lifestyle/features/when-the-uvf-took-to-horse-power-1-3795827


William Trimble leads a procession of the Enniskillen Horse

Published on Wednesday 2 May 2012 08:50

Examining the history of the Ulster Volunteer Force, QUINCEY DOUGAN reports on the significance of the role played by one of its specialist units, the Enniskillen Horse

THE Ulster Volunteer Force that owed its origins to wide-scale mobilisation in the years prior to the third Home Rule Bill, and then official constitution in January 1913, was a body very much ahead of its time in many respects.

Overt romanticisation of the organisation isn’t helpful when looking back, however; it wasn’t a 100 per cent efficient army. There were issues with absenteeism in certain areas, for instance. However, when evaluating the Volunteers in terms of being essentially aan amateur force, there is no doubt that in many respects they were ahead of their time in terms of structure and capability.

Among the activities of the force that were in many way innovative was its wide scale use of females in what was still a very chauvinistic age; its embracing of the bike as a military tool; its signalling and dispatch corps; and of course its use of the motor car. Significantly, some historians have in fact argued very firmly that the Larne and Donaghadee gunrunning was actually the first time the motor car was used in a large scale military operation.

Of its many specialised units one not often talked about was the sole Cavalry Regiment of the Ulster Volunteers, the Enniskillen Horse. Formed in 1912, the Enniskillen Horse was not originally a unit of the UVF. Like another famous body, the Young Citizen Volunteers, the ‘Horse’ was privately formed.

Its founder was William Copeland Trimble, the owner of the Impartial Reporter newspaper, and by all accounts a very ‘headstrong’ and independent man. When Trimble became aware that Carson had scheduled his province-wide Ulster Covenant campaign to begin in Enniskillen on September 18 1912, he was determined that his town would provide something to make its display stand out from the rest. He identified the best opportunity of doing this as providing a mounted escort.

With remarkable vision as to the significance of public relations and the propaganda value of the media, he noted prior to the demonstration that ‘as the Enniskillen meeting will be the first to be addressed by Sir Edward Carson in this campaign, unusual importance is attached to it, and newspapers will be represented from all parts of the globe.’

On December 18, an estimated 40,000 people gathered in Fermanagh in what was and is arguably the largest event ever held in the county. Amongst its number was Trimble’s mounted body, consisting of an impressive and imposing 200 mounted men.

As previously stated, Trimble was a very ‘independent’ man, not much liked by many of the unionist gentry in Fermanagh, several of whom opposed the unit’s formation. As it became established, and the UVF became formalised in January 1913, with the Enniskillen Horse eventually its sole Cavalry Regiment, views from the ‘gentry’ changed. By October 1913, Major Viscount Crichton, a serving officer of the Royal Horse Guards and grandson of the Earl of Erne, was attending and addressing parades and manoeuvres.

The Enniskillen Horse became a full unit of the UVF in early 1913, its designation letters being EN, however it had the singular distinction within the 100,000 member force as not being officially or directly under the orders of any regimental or county UVF officers. It did, however, work closely in conjunction with the 3,699 men of the three battalions of the Co Fermanagh Regiment UVF.

Primarily from the farming classes, a Royal Irish Constabulary report suggested that 87 per cent were farmers or farmers’ sons, the vast majority being aged between 20 and 39. Intelligence reports on the ‘Horse’ changed substantially as the Home Rule Crisis developed, however. Initially referring to the body as just ‘local farmers’, by 1914 Irish Intelligence actually noted that ‘with the exception of half a dozen, most are members of the North Irish Horse Special Reserve’.

Three officers from English Yeomanry Regiments were engaged to command elements of the ‘Horse’, which undoubtedly contributed to levels of expertise within it.

WC Trimble was, of course, commander; indeed he was reportedly elected as such by the entire body of men. At its height it consisted of 309 ‘troopers’ with full access to quality mounts for all. Mimicking regular Cavalry conventions, the unit was broken down into three squadrons, each of which was further broken down into troops.

The commander of ‘A’ squadron was E Kerr from The Coagh, Enniskillen, with the four troops within it; Magheraboy, Springfield, Clanawley and Knockninny. The respective troop commanders were W Morrow, J Britton, R Strathearn and F Carson.

‘B’ squadron was the smallest of the three squadrons, consisting of three troops in Lurg, Tyrkennedy and Tempo. George Allingham from Aughinveer was the squadron commander, with his sub commanders Robert Law, William Campbell and James Dalton.

Finally ‘C’ squadron had four troops under the leadership of Robert Abraham of Ardmore, Brookeborough. Abraham was also the head of the Brookeborough troop, with troops in Lisnaskea under Archibald Nobel, Cornafanog under J. Boles and a further Lisbellaw troop.

The value of a mounted unit within its ranks did not escape the strategists of the UVF. Very few contingency plans were completed for the volunteers as a whole if civil war was to break out, or attempts made to enforce Home Rule, but plans were made for the Enniskillen Horse to be moved to Belfast in the event of ‘hostilities’. Upon the formation of the 36th Ulster Division, it appears that a significant number of the Enniskillen Horse became a part of the 6th Battalion Inniskilling Dragoons, one of the most distinguished Cavalry Regiments in the British Army.

Across Ulster, other UVF battalions had mounted units, with significant bodies in Ballymena (the next largest to Enniskillen), Armagh and Tyrone. None, however, remotely matched the scale or level of command as the Enniskillen Horse.

Over the coming months, Quincey Dougan will be taking a look at the anti-Home Rule movement across Ireland and beyond, focusing on different areas, organisations and personalities. If you have any images or information relating to the Ulster Volunteer Force in your area, unionist clubs or indeed the anti-Home Rule campaign in general, he would be very interested in hearing from you. He can be contacted via email kvfb@yahoo.com or telephone 07835624221.]]> Wed, 02 May 2012 09:37:21 +0000 http://orange-order.co.uk/topic/40009-1913-when-the-uvf-took-to-horse-power/ http://orange-order.co.uk/topic/39946-prime-minister-asquith-and-the-promise-of-home-rule/ http://www.newsletter.co.uk/lifestyle/features/prime-minister-asquith-and-the-promise-of-home-rule-1-3743398
Herbert Henry Asquith as Prime Minister

Published on Wednesday 18 April 2012 08:42

IN April 1912 Herbert Henry Asquith, the Liberal prime minister, was 59-years-old and, if not at the height of his powers, still impressive. At Balliol he had obtained the highest academic honours.

In the 1880s he laid the foundations of a successful practice at the Bar. He had entered the House of Commons for East Fife in 1886. As home secretary between 1892 and 1894 he had been the youngest and brightest member of Gladstone’s last administration.

Chancellor of Exchequer in Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman’s government since 1906, he succeeded Campbell-Bannerman as prime minister in April 1908.

He presided over one of the most talented Cabinets of the 20th century. Asquith’s strength lay in an executive capacity to transact business, with a mastery of exposition on paper that recalled Gladstone, and an adroitness in managing personalities that enabled him to nudge discussion towards consensus.

In situations in which consensus could not be readily or easily achieved, Asquith was apt to lose his nerve, become indolent or procrastinate. During the constitutional crisis between 1910 and 1911 he repeatedly used the phrase ‘wait and see’ in speeches.

Originally the phrase was intended to convey a hint of menace. Eventually, it dawned on his political opponents that it denoted political Micawberism. Like the character in David Copperfield, Asquith was simply waiting to see what would turn up.

In 1916 Leo Amery, the Conservative MP, concluded: ‘For twenty years he [Asquith] has held a season ticket on the line of least resistance, and gone wherever the train of events has carried him, lucidly justifying his position at whatever point he has happened to find himself’.

Liberal enthusiasm for Home Rule had largely died with Gladstone in 1898. For Gladstone Home Rule had been a moral crusade. For Gladstone’s successors, particularly Lord Rosebery, Home Rule was a subject to be avoided like the plague.

Rosebery was a Liberal Imperialist and had no enthusiasm for Home Rule at all. Asquith was a disciple of Rosebery and, along with Rosebery, a founder the Liberal League, a Liberal Imperialist ginger group.

In the general election campaign of 1906 Liberal politicians made only oblique or coded references to Home Rule. In 1907 the Liberals were unsuccessful in their efforts to persuade Irish Nationalists to settle for an Irish Council bill, which fell well short of full-blown Gladstonian Home Rule.

Asquith’s interest in Home Rule in the years before the Great War was largely the product of parliamentary arithmetic thrown up by the two general elections of January and December 1910.

The Conservatives, although they did not win either election, managed to wipe out the huge independent Liberal majority of 1906. Finding himself dependent on the votes of Irish Nationalist MPs (and the Labour Party) after the two elections, Asquith entered into a compact with John Redmond, the Nationalist leader, whereby in return for Redmond’s support in the Commons for Lloyd George’s controversial budget and the Parliament bill stripping the House of Lords of its veto the Liberal government would introduce a Home Rule bill establishing a separate Irish Parliament in Dublin.

Nationalist MPs objected to Lloyd George’s budget on a number of points, principally the increased duties on whiskey and tobacco. John Redmond even denounced old age pensions as ‘an extravagance that would not have been indulged in by an Irish parliament’, a revealing insight into the reactionary character of the Home Rule party. However, Nationalists were willing to put their objections to Lloyd George’s budget to one side in pursuit of the greater prize: the destruction of the Lords’ veto and the inevitability of Home Rule.

The third Home Rule bill was drafted by a Cabinet committee, under the chairmanship of Lord Loreburn, the Lord Chancellor, established in October 1911. The other members of the high-powered committee were Birrell (the Chief Secretary for Ireland), Lloyd George (the Chancellor of the Exchequer), Churchill (First Lord of the Admiralty), Haldane (the Secretary for War), Herbert Samuel (the Postmaster General), and Sir Edward Grey (the Foreign Secretary).

Although the chief secretary played only a secondary role, largely because of his wife’s protracted illness, Asquith took a keen interest in its deliberations. To the great irritation of the Irish Nationalists, the work proceeded very slowly. This was partly because the Cabinet committee initially gave a lot of thought to the concept of ‘Home Rule all round’ or devolution for the whole of the United Kingdom.

The Cabinet committee viewed this as a way of resolving the difficult issue of Irish representation at Westminster – the equivalent Tam Dalyell’s ‘West Lothian Question’ during the debates on Scottish devolution in the late 1970s – and a source of great difficulty in both 1886 and 1893.

The financial clauses, which were drafted by a special committee chaired by Herbert Samuel, were significantly more complex than those in the 1886 or 1893 bills because of the expansion of state-financed land purchase, the introduction of old age pensions and the fact that Irish expenditure now exceeded revenue. Because it had already passed the House of Commons, the Cabinet committee strove strenuously to keep the bill as close as possible to terms of the 1893 bill.

While very little thought was given to Ulster, a great deal of thought was given to the idea of ‘Home Rule all round’ and the financial provisions of the bill. No laws, as in the 1886 and 1893 bills, were to be passed to establish or endow any religious body but, apart from this clause, designed to protect the interests of the Protestant minority, the bill made no special provision for Ulster, despite Ulster Unionism’s obvious hostility to Home Rule.

Whereas Gladstone’s introduction of the first Home Rule Bill on April 8, 1886 was undeniably one of great occasions of British parliamentary history, the introduction of the long-heralded third Home Rule bill was something of an anticlimax.

However, it was an emotional occasion for Mary Drew, Gladstone’s daughter. Although, it was Asquith who was introducing the bill, Mrs Drew ‘saw another figure, heard another voice. There was an overpowering sense of his presence…’ Asquith declared that he and his colleagues had never underestimated the determined hostility felt by north-east Ulster to Home Rule. He also said, ‘we cannot admit, and we will not admit, the right of a minority of the people, and a relatively small minority … to veto the verdict of the vast body of their countrymen’.

Despite Asquith’s assertion, he and his colleagues took no more account of Ulster Unionist antipathy to Home Rule than Gladstone had done in 1886 or 1893. Only Winston Churchill, Lloyd George and Birrell appear to have exhibited any concern.

In February 1912 Winston Churchill and Lloyd George had pressed unsuccessfully in Cabinet for some form of Ulster exclusion but Birrell’s sympathies were with the Nationalists. The Liberal Government was inexplicably ignorant of Ulster Unionist preparations to oppose Home Rule, despite fact that Ulster Unionists had been drilling since 1911.

Ministers too readily accepted the assurances of John Redmond and Joe Devlin (the MP for West Belfast) that Ulster Unionist talk of resisting Home Rule was bluff and bluster and, therefore, ought not to be taken seriously.

Belatedly, Liberal ministers came to query this, appreciate the earnestness of Ulster Unionist resistance and face up to the implications. They only began taking the Ulster question seriously in late 1913.

After Asquith and Bonar Law, the Conservative leader, conferred in November 1913 Asquith began to lean on Redmond to take account of Ulster Unionist opposition and to be more accommodating.

In July 1912 Asquith, in a speech in Dublin, had claimed that Ireland was ‘not two nations but one’. By February 1914 Asquith was coming to terms with the reality that there were two nations on the island of Ireland. Unfortunately, by the early summer of 1914 Asquith’s procrastination had brought Ireland to the brink of civil war.
----------

From the archive, 28 April 1916: Ireland and the rising
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2012/apr/28/archive-1916-ireland-rising
As the Easter rising spreads to the west of Ireland, Dublin Castle appears isolated and martial law is proclaimed

The Guardian, Saturday 28 April 2012
Article history

Devastation in Sackville Street, Dublin, after the Easter rising in April 1916. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis.
Such news as we are permitted to receive of the troubles in Ireland does not tend to reduce their gravity. In Mr Asquith's guarded words, "there are indications of the spread of the movement in some other parts of Ireland, especially in the west," while in Dublin, so far as appears, the work of suppression is alike difficult and slow. There is some doubt whether Dublin Castle itself is not isolated or even besieged, and the street fighting needed in order to regain full control of the city must be carried out under great disadvantages.

Take it how we will, it is a deplorable as well as a wicked and wanton business which will leave its mark on Irish life for many a long day, and may affect the whole development of her internal history. There is no reason to doubt that the necessary military measures are being taken with vigour and effect. The Chief Secretary for Ireland has winged his way to Dublin, where he will no doubt be an interested spectator of the stirring events which he or his advisers failed to anticipate or to forestall; but the executive power has now passed from his hands into those of the Commander-in-Chief in Ireland, and, martial law having now been proclaimed over the whole of Ireland, Sir John Maxwell will for the present be the sole effective ruler of that country. That this step should be thought necessary is in itself sufficient evidence of the gravity in the judgement of the government, of the whole situation, as also is the great military force which they are pouring into Ireland.

There is no reason to doubt that these measures will be effectual and that within no long time the last embers of the rebellion – if this reckless and futile outbreak is to be dignified by that name – will have been stamped out. The destruction of the cargo of arms providently supplied by the German government and the capture of the chief German agent and go-between, the unhappy Sir Roger Casement, were no doubt a heavy initial blow, and the present sputterings of rebellion in the west might, with the aid these subventions were intended to supply, have easily reached dimensions a good deal more formidable.

There are in Ireland – and must be so long as her national life is thwarted and suppressed – elements of discontent ready to break out in times of excitement, or at the instigation of those who know how to play on bitter memories and the sense of ancient wrong.]]> Mon, 30 Apr 2012 13:32:16 +0000 http://orange-order.co.uk/topic/39946-prime-minister-asquith-and-the-promise-of-home-rule/ http://orange-order.co.uk/topic/39857-the-day-ulster-first-said-no/ http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/0425/1224314943956.html

Lord Charles Beresford, Frederick Smith (founder of the UVF) and Edward Carson head a protest against Home Rule at City Hall, Belfast, for the signing of the Covenant on Ulster Day, September 28th, 1912. Photographs: Hulton/Getty

JONATHAN BARDON

FEBRUARY 8TH, 1912. Denied the use of the Ulster Hall in Belfast, Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty in HH Asquith’s Liberal government, was forced to address a meeting in favour of Home Rule in a sodden marquee in Celtic Park. To avoid a hostile gathering of indignant loyalists in the city centre, he had no choice afterwards but to take a circuitous route back to get his sea ferry at Larne.

Churchill was experiencing how dangerously fractured society in Ulster had become. More clearly than ever, the inhabitants here seemed divided into two antagonistic ethnic groups with profoundly divergent aspirations. It took little to bring ancient hatreds welling alarmingly to the surface.

The government had announced that a Home Rule Bill would be introduced that session. Soon, however, it became clear that it would not happen until after the Easter recess. That gave opponents of Home Rule, led by Sir Edward Carson, time to organise an imposing display of Unionist strength. On Easter Tuesday, April 9th, at Balmoral in south Belfast, the new Conservative leader, Andrew Bonar Law, after reviewing 100,000 men marching past his platform, pledged his party’s unflinching support. He assured them of the help of the British people “and when the crisis is over men will say to you . . . you have saved yourselves by your exertions, and you will save the empire by your example”.

Two days later, on April 11th, Asquith introduced the Home Rule Bill in the Commons. In Ulster, feelings of nationalist elation were short-lived, however. In June 1912, an amendment was put forward to exclude from its terms of reference the four north-eastern counties. Though the amendment was defeated, the idea that all or part of Ulster would be excluded from the operation of Home Rule was clearly gaining favour in Westminster.

This was a matter of deep concern for Joseph Devlin, who had won West Belfast by a margin of 16 votes in 1906. The politics of his ghetto fiefdom in Belfast was narrow and tribal, its power base the Ancient Order of Hibernians, a Catholic mirror image of the Orange Order. But it was thanks to Devlin that northern Nationalists now displayed an impressive unity. Nevertheless, “Wee Joe” was already anxious that the Unionist campaign would eventually separate his northern followers from their southern brethren.

In July, Bonar Law threw caution to the wind by declaring: “I can imagine no length of resistance to which Ulster can go in which I should not be prepared to support them.” Speculation about what form that resistance would take was already stirring up vicious intercommunal hostility.

Alan Day

http://www.ulster-scots.co.uk

http://www.orange-order.co.uk

Contact me:   Aughavey  alan@ulster-scots.co.uk
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On Thursday, June 27th, children from the Sacred Heart convent in Lisburn were attacked as they departed for an outing to Ardglass. Then, on Saturday, June 29th, the Sunday school excursion from Whitehouse Presbyterian Church arrived in Castledawson. That evening, as they paraded back to the railway station with their flute band, holding aloft banners bearing texts from Scripture and a Union flag, they were assaulted by Hibernians returning from a meeting in Maghera.

Crying “Remember Castledawson!” loyalists drove thousands of Catholics out of the Belfast shipyards, engineering works and linen mills. Troop reinforcements had to be rushed to the city. On September 14th, during a soccer match at Celtic Park, between Linfield and Celtic, the ground was engulfed by rival hordes of supporters engaging each other with fists, bottles, knives and revolvers.

Meanwhile, Unionist leaders were planning “Ulster Day” with meticulous care. This was designed to demonstrate to the world, and to the people of Britain in particular, the determination of the majority in the north to oppose Home Rule. The climax was to be the signing of a covenant, a pact with God, pledging resistance to the setting up of a Dublin parliament. A rolling programme of public meetings began on September 17th when Carson addressed 40,000 at Enniskillen. More than a dozen meetings followed in provincial towns, Carson being joined by such Conservative dignitaries as Lord Salisbury, Lord Willoughby de Broke, FE Smith and Lord Charles Beresford.

Ulster Day, Saturday, September 28th, dawned bright and clear. At 9.15am, a guard of 2,500 men formed up at Belfast City Hall; at 10am, the first relief of 500 men, wearing bowler hats and white armlets and carrying white staves, began the daylong task of marshalling the crowds and protecting the flowerbeds. The Portland stone of the City Hall gleamed in the sun: formally opened six years before, this was one of the most sumptuous municipal centres in the United Kingdom, a fitting pivot of the resistance to Home Rule.

Just before 11am, Bedford Street was packed with spectators as Carson stepped into the Ulster Hall. This was a religious service: the congregation sang O God, Our Help in Ages Past, and after prayers and lessons had been read, the Rev Dr William McKean rose to deliver his sermon, taking as his text Timothy 6. 20: “Keep that which is committed to thy trust.” “We are plain, blunt men who love peace and industry,” the former Presbyterian moderator declared: “The Irish question is at bottom a war against Protestantism; it is an attempt to establish a Roman Catholic ascendancy in Ireland to begin the disintegration of the empire by securing a second parliament in Dublin.” All over Ulster similar services were being held in Protestant churches.

From the Ulster Hall Sir Edward walked bareheaded to the City Hall where he was met by a guard of honour and city dignitaries. Then Carson entered the vestibule and walked towards a circular table directly under the dome that rose 173 feet above him. He took up the silver pen presented to him the evening before and signed the Solemn League and Covenant.

When Carson re-emerged the reverential hum in the vast crowd outside changed to tempestuous cheering as he made his way, bowing and waving, to the Ulster Reform Club in Royal Avenue for luncheon. Behind him the stewards struggled to regulate the flow of men eager to sign the Covenant in the City Hall. A double row of desks stretching right round the building made it possible for 550 to sign simultaneously. Some signed in their own blood. All over Ulster men were making a pledge to use “all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland”.

At 2.30pm, a procession of bands converged on the City Hall. As each one arrived the bandsmen halted at a prearranged position, all continuing to play different tunes, creating, in the opinion of the Northern Whig, “a fine post-impressionist effect about it that should have pleased admirers of the new style of music”.

JL Garvin, reporting for the Pall Mall Gazette, wrote:

“Seen from the topmost mast outside gallery of the dome, the square below, and the streets striking away from it were black with people. Through the mass, with drums and fifes, sashes and banners, the clubs marched all day.”

It was 8pm when the last contingent entered the City Hall and signatures were still being affixed after 11pm.

Huge crowds sang Rule Britannia and God Save the King as the Unionist leaders walked round the corner from the Ulster Reform Club to the Ulster Club in Castle Place. At 8.30pm a brass band advanced towards the Ulster Club playing See the Conquering Hero Comes, its staff major and spear carriers almost having to carve a way through the surging mass. Deafening cheers greeted Carson when he came out and with 20 other dignitaries climbed into a waiting motor brake designed for 12 passengers. The vehicle was pulled down High Street by hundreds of willing hands. “With a roaring hurricane of cheers punctuated on every side by the steady rattle of revolver shots,” Garvin wrote, “onward swept this whole city in motion with a tumult that was mad.”

On Donegall Quay, Sir Edward was saluted by a fusillade of shots and prolonged cheering. Bonfires in Great Patrick Street sprang to life and a huge fire on the Cave Hill threw a brilliant glare over the sky. From the upper deck of the SS Patriotic, Carson shouted out:

“I have very little voice left. I ask you while I am away in England and Scotland and fighting your battle in the Imperial Parliament to keep the old flag flying. And ‘No Surrender!’”

All over Ulster men were still signing the Covenant and women separately signed their own declaration. Altogether 471,414 people signed. The ecstatic Unionists did not doubt the justice of their cause as they sang Come Back to Erin, and, as the Patriotic steamed into the Victoria Channel, salvoes of rockets shot up to the sky and 50 bonfires blazed from the hills and headlands.

Calm largely prevailed in Ulster for the rest of the year. However, in December the UUC dropped opposition to Home Rule for all of Ireland and limited it to Ulster. For Devlin the nightmare of partition was looming.

]]> Fri, 27 Apr 2012 17:09:38 +0000 http://orange-order.co.uk/topic/39857-the-day-ulster-first-said-no/ http://orange-order.co.uk/topic/39856-1912-home-rule-and-ulsters-resistance-an-introduction/ 1912: Home rule and Ulster's resistance - an introduction
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/0425/1224314944497.html

(a) Augustine Birrell: Chief Secretary for Ireland and friend of Home Rule. ( Edward Carson © Padraig Pearse (d) John Redmond (e) Herbert Henry Asquith (f) a protest rally against Home Rule at City Hall in 1912 (g) the House of Commons in London, 1912 (h) Naval and ambulance corps cheer at an Anti-Home Rule demonstration at Portadown, County Armagh. Photographs: Getty Images

The drama of the Home Rule Bill was to be an extraordinary curtain raiser to a decade that changed the face of modern Ireland.

WHEN THE Third Home Rule Bill was introduced to the Commons 100 years ago in April 1912 it seemed a triumphant vindication of the tradition of parliamentary constitutional nationalism. Parliamentary arithmetic gave Home Rule supporters the casting whip hand over Asquith’s Liberal government – the price, Home Rule.

“If I may say so reverently, I personally thank God that I have lived to see this day,” John Redmond, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party told fellow MPs. Within grasp, the dream . . .

But on the streets of Belfast and Dublin another story was being written that would eclipse democratic politics at its moment of supposed triumph. Carson rallied Ulster; it marched, protested, swore solemn oaths of defiance, and eventually armed itself to the teeth.

And in the founding of the Ulster Volunteers nationalists would see an excuse and legitimisation – though few doubt they would have done it anyway – for their own army, the Irish Volunteers.

In the Commons, debate would become a mere cipher, an echo, of the new contending forces on the ground in Ireland. The King became embroiled. The army mutinied. The Bill would eventually be passed, but its implementation be suspended because of world war and a rising that would change the whole picture. Home Rule would come, but, ironically only to part of Ulster; independence, to the rest of th country.

The drama of the Home Rule Bill was to be an extraordinary curtain raiser to a decade that changed the face of modern Ireland, ushering in new forces to the stage of Irish history, a new caste of characters, villains and heroes, while eclipsing old with all the tragic finality of Greek drama.

This supplement, with recent coverage in The Irish Times of the Titanic centenary, is an attempt to recapture the context and sweep of that drama, and its several conflicting narratives, an essential moment of our collective history. They are the first of many reports over a decade that will be brought together on a planned website, “Century”, with the contributions of many other groups, official and unofficial, North and South, to national commemorations.

PATRICK SMYTH

-----------


The Irish Times - Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Contrasting lives, new aspirations
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/0425/1224314943281.html

Talbot Street in Dublin, where a riot took place in 1911 during a strike. Nelson's Pillar is visible in the distance. Photograph: Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

DIARMAID FERRITER

WHEN HE introduced the Irish Home Rule Bill to the House of Commons in 1912, British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith reminded his audience that it was 19 years since one of his predecessors, William Gladstone, had introduced his second and last Home Rule bill: “I take up the narrative” he said, “where Mr Gladstone was obliged to leave it”.

While Gladstone’s Home Rule initiative had been voted down by the House of Lords, in the intervening period, other initiatives had been taken by the British government that went a considerable way towards satisfying different sections of the population. Old-age pensions gave a weekly payment to those aged over 70, for example, and most Irish farmers owned their own land, some 11 million acres having been purchased as a result of the land acts of the late 19th and early 20th century.

The underlying strength of the farming community was reflected in the stability in the number of farms over 15 acres and a decline in agrarian unrest. By 1912, Irish agriculture was producing nearly 50 per cent more than it had in the 1840s, and this production was divided among a smaller group.

The National University of Ireland Act of 1908 seemed to reflect an increasingly confident Catholic Church that had succeeded in achieving some of its demands in the area of third-level education. There was much idealism and attachment to the notion that this generation of students needed to apply itself to the promotion of Irish nationalism and the building of a new, self-governed Irish state.

Such sentiments were displayed in the National Student magazine, which was first published in May 1910. Contributors argued that students in UCD needed to prize their status as university students and direct their energies towards the regeneration of the country; that they were, in effect, Home Rule leaders in waiting. They were, of course, an elite group; the total number of students in UCD in 1910/11 was 695.

Information gleaned from the Census returns of 1911 is a reminder of the extent of poverty and premature death at the other end of the social spectrum. Overall, the death rate in Dublin in 1911 per thousand people was 22.3. In London it was 15.6. In Dublin in 1912, 26,000 families, roughly one third of the city’s population, lived in one-room dwellings. The decay of the city was epitomised by Henrietta Street, on the north side of the city, where an astonishing 835 people lived in just 15 houses.

In 1911 there were 125,783 female indoor servants in Ireland, of whom 47 per cent were under the age of 25 and 92 per cent were unmarried; domestic servants comprised the largest group of employed women outside of the manufacturing sector. They usually worked 16-hour days with just one half day per week off. In rural areas, live-in farm labourers were generally paid only twice a year and their wages were often given to parents who would give them a small amount of pocket money. A typical working-class diet in 1912 consisted of bread, rarely with butter, and stewed tea. Meat was a rarity, except for cheap bacon, and vegetables, with the exception of cabbage, were also rare. Fruit was a luxury seldom seen.

It is not as easy to get information on the lifestyles of the better off, as they were not the subject of official reports. There were in the region of 25,000 civil servants in 1912, the vast majority of them working in the post office and a career as a policeman was regarded as respectable employment for farmers’ sons.

What was particularly striking in terms of career options was the big increase in the proportion of Catholics in the professions.

In 1861, for example, 28 per cent of barristers were Catholics; by 1911 the figure was 44 per cent. The greater prosperity of Catholic communities (who in 1912 comprised 89.6 per cent of the population of the 26 counties of what later constituted the republic) was also reflected in the increase in the number of priests; in 1840 there had been an estimated 2,200; by 1911 the figure was 4,000, despite a halving of the population.

Even more striking was the increase in the number of nuns, from 2,000 in 1861 to 8,800 in 1911. Catholicism was asserting itself vigorously and sometimes aggressively in the public and private spheres. Catholic associations, sodalities and publications were thriving and confident.

Energy and agitation were also apparent in other realms. The trade union movement was beginning to make its voice heard and there were lively debates about government and politics, law and order and health and welfare.

Trade unionist Louie Bennett of the Irish Women Workers Union inaugurated the Irish Women’s Suffrage Fe deration in 1911 and in 1912 the first edition of the Irish Citizen, a weekly suffrage newspaper, appeared.

The commercial importance of towns had been enhanced by better communications and between 1891 and 1911, Belfast’s population had risen by half, an indication of the success of the city’s shipyards. There were 330 trams in Dublin, operating on lines that ran for 60 miles around the city; part of a public transport system that was one of the most impressive of any city in the world, and bicycles had become a very popular mode of transport. Social life was vibrant and varied, with a great interest in sport, music, dance, conversation, theatre and language. Fair days, race meetings and religious holidays were honoured traditions.

In rural areas house visiting was the most common form of social interaction and match-making was a priority in January and February as there was little work to be done in the fields during winter.

Then, as now, drunken brawling was a public order problem, as alcohol remained central to Irish social life. In 1910 there were 2,462 charges of drunkenness in the Dublin Metropolitan police district. The first Irish cinema, the Volta Electric Theatre, had opened in Dublin in 1909 and music hall comedy and pantomime were popular as was amateur sport. While hunting, shooting and fishing were more conspicuous displays of leisure for the better off, blood sports like cock fighting, though illegal, survived in working class areas.

Soccer was the most popular sport in Dublin and by 1912 there were 31 pitches in use in the Phoenix Park. Cricket was more popular in the wealthier Dublin suburbs. Extensive rail travel facilitated the development of national GAA competitions and the bedding down of the organisational structures of the association. It had also got stricter; in 1911 it made ineligible for membership “all who participate in dances or similar entertainments got up by or under the patronage of soldiers or policemen”.

While emigration from Ireland in the period 1901-1910 was a substantial 346,000, this was considerably less than the figure for 1891-1900, which was 434,000. There was widespread criticism of economic policies and nationalists often insisted that a Home Rule Ireland would strive to achieve a fairer distribution of the tax burden. British government expenditure on Ireland exceeded revenue, but taxation was higher in Ireland than Britain in relation to income, particularly as a result of indirect taxes on consumer goods such as tea, tobacco and whiskey.

As the poor consumed relatively large quantities of these, a contemporary observation, quoted by economic historian Louis Cullen, was that “Ireland was not poor because she was overtaxed but overtaxed because she was poor”.

Diarmaid Ferriter is Professor of Modern Irish History at UCD
]]> Fri, 27 Apr 2012 16:56:41 +0000 http://orange-order.co.uk/topic/39856-1912-home-rule-and-ulsters-resistance-an-introduction/ http://orange-order.co.uk/topic/39855-carson-the-uncrowned-king-of-ulster/ Carson, the uncrowned King of Ulster
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/0425/1224314944051.html

Edward Carson presenting "colours" to members of the UVF. Photographs: Hulton, Central and Express/Getty
In this section »

FOR UNIONISTS OF HIS TIME – and for many unionists today – Edward Carson was the uncrowned King of Ulster, a Dubliner who saved them from Home Rule. Yet, his deeply held wish throughout his life was to maintain all of Ireland within the United Kingdom.

Carson was a powerful politician, a forceful lawyer, a leader who through the Ulster Volunteer Force was prepared to bring Ireland to the brink of civil war in his desire to save the Union. He was a man of great resilience and strength, yet prone to hypochondria and pessimism. He was a Queen’s Counsel (QC) – fearsome but also theatrical at times, who could be belligerent or sensitive to witnesses, as the case demanded. He destroyed Oscar Wilde but saved the Winslow Boy.

He was born at 4 Harcourt Street in Dublin on February 9th, 1854, the son of an architect and from a family who were solid members of the Church of Ireland. His grandfather William Carson left Scotland in 1815 for the Irish capital, these Scottish roots perhaps contributing to his obdurate, resolute and combative character that was so at home in unionist Ulster.

Carson went to boarding school in Portarlington on the Laois-Offaly border and, at the urgings of his father, also called Edward, completed a BA at Trinity College, Dublin, an experience he enjoyed and cherished, going on achieve a brilliant law career. One of his contemporaries at Trinity – where he also played hurling – was Oscar Wilde, even then gifted and flamboyant in contrast to Carson, viewed as diligent but dull. They were not friends.

Aged 25, he married Annette Kirwan from Kingstown (Dún Laoghaire), against the wishes of his family. (She died in 1913 and he married again, this time to Ruby Frewen, in September 1914.) Carson and his first bride started off virtually penniless, but he gradually built up his practice, the briefs he earned in the 1880s during the Land War easing their financial worries. At first he worked for the tenants, but the landlords who spotted a legal talent had their solicitors instruct him.

It was a turbulent time, but Carson, by dint of his persuasive legal qualities and some high-profile cases that he won, progressed up the legal and social ladder. In 1889, aged 35, he became the youngest QC in Ireland. Three years later, he was appointed Solicitor-General for Ireland and the same year was returned for Trinity to the House of Commons as a Liberal Unionist.

With the demands of being Irish adviser to the then Conservative leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons and future British prime minister, Arthur Balfour, he moved his practice to England. There, he established himself as one of the top two or three lawyers of his day.

His most famous case was representing the Marquess of Queensberry against a charge of criminal libel by Oscar Wilde, whom Queensberry had described as “posing as a sodomite”. The courtroom duel between Wilde and Carson was one of contrasting styles, Wilde with his eloquence and speedy wit getting the better of the initial exchanges, but Carson steadily and remorselessly wearing down the writer until he admitted defeat. It was a broken Wilde, not Queensberry, who ended up in prison.

Carson was also in several other celebrated cases, one of which was successfully defending 13-year-old Catholic naval cadet George Archer-Shee, who was accused of stealing a five-shilling postal order from another boy – a case dramatised by Terence Rattigan in the play, The Winslow Boy.

Throughout his political career, he maintained a concerned eye on attempts to introduce Home Rule for Ireland and, in 1910, as the star of John Redmond’s Irish Parliamentary Party appeared to be rising, he accepted the invitation to become leader of the Irish Unionists, dedicating himself to their cause “whatever may happen”.

He knew too that opposition to Home Rule was likely to involve him in decidedly extra- parliamentary activity, but his attitude was that as long as Unionist Ulster was prepared to resist he would lead it. He told 50,000 unionists and Orangemen at a monster rally at James Craig’s home in Craigavon in September 1911 that the moment a Home Rule Bill would pass they must be prepared “to become responsible for the government of the Protestant province of Ulster”.

The campaign was already rolling when, in April 1912, the British Liberal prime minister H H Asquith introduced the Home Rule or, as properly titled, the Government of Ireland Bill. With Craig as the chief organiser, Carson addressed mass unionist rallies against Home Rule throughout Northern Ireland, climaxing with Ulster Day in Belfast on September 28th, 1912. This was when 237,368 men signed – some in their own blood – the Ulster Covenant pledging to use “all means” to defeat Home Rule, and 234,046 women signed a similar solemn pledge.

Through the two previous failed attempts to achieve Home Rule in 1886 and in 1892-93 the “Orange Card” of military or paramilitary resistance was proposed – as in “Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right”, as stated by Lord Randolph Churchill. This was brought a step further with the creation of the Ulster Volunteers in 1912 and the formal establishment of the Ulster Volunteer Force in early 1913. By the end of that year, the old UVF was strongly organised with more than 90,000 part-time members.

In January 1914, under the enthusiastic promptings of Craig, Carson supported the decision to import arms from Germany for the UVF, with some 25,000 guns landed at Larne in April 1914. Two months later, the Irish Volunteers responded by also importing German weapons. This was at a time when Britain and Ireland were in turmoil over Home Rule and the prospect of civil war seemed very real. But the threat receded when a much greater conflict started in July that year.

Both sets of volunteers ultimately ended up dying in their thousands, sometimes together, in the Battle of the Somme and other great battles of the first World War. That conflict brought Carson to a different form of centre-stage British politics. He was Attorney-General in 1915 and 1916, First Lord of the Admiralty in 1917-1918 and a member of Lloyd George’s War Cabinet in 1917-1918.

After the war, he was elected for Belfast Duncairn in the 1918 election, and thereafter apprehensively observed the convulsions that led to civil war and partition. He again rallied to the unionist cause, telling Orangemen on July 12th, 1920, that the UVF would be called out if there were any threat to the Union.

Carson could have lived with partition as long as Ireland remained within the United Kingdom. But he saw the severing of the 26 counties from the Union in December 1921 with the creation of the Irish Free State as a British government betrayal. Ulster Unionists, as the historian A T Q Stewart wrote in a brief biography of Carson, in achieving a government at Stormont “had won a victory of a kind”. But Carson felt no such sense of achievement, as the “guiding star” of his political life was to save all of Ireland for the Union.

Stewart added: “It was no part of his intention to dismember Ireland, or to see unionism survive in the form of a Home Rule parliament in Belfast – rather the contrary was true – but having used the resistance of the Ulster loyalists as the trump card to defeat Home Rule, he became to some degree their prisoner. Paradoxically, the very success of the Ulster cause ensured the ruin of his own.”

He politely declined the invitation to be first prime minister of Northern Ireland in 1921, leaving that job to James Craig. When he formally handed over leadership of the Ulster Unionist Council, ruling body for the Ulster Unionists, he offered them some final advice: “From the outset let us see that the Catholic minority have nothing to fear from Protestant majority. Let us take care to win all that is best among those who have been opposed to us in the past. While maintaining intact our own religion, let us give the same rights to the religion of our neighbours”.]]> Fri, 27 Apr 2012 16:42:15 +0000 http://orange-order.co.uk/topic/39855-carson-the-uncrowned-king-of-ulster/ http://orange-order.co.uk/topic/39759-sculpture-to-celebrate-ulster-aviation-expert-harry-ferguson/
http://www.lisburntoday.co.uk/news/business/sculpture-to-celebrate-magnificent-man-in-his-flying-machine-1-3758032

Published on Monday 23 April 2012 00:10

LISBURN Council has unveiled the winning design for a major public sculpture which will be placed near the A1 at Hillsborough to celebrate pioneer aviator Harry Ferguson, who in 1909 was the first Irishman to design, build and fly his own aeroplane.

Harry Ferguson was born and grew up in Growell, near Hillsborough, and became one of the outstanding engineers and inventors of the 20th century. He’s particularly famous for the iconic ‘Ferguson Tractor’ which helped to revolutionise farming all over the world.

“However, very few people are aware of his great exploits as one of the earliest pilots and makers of aircraft” explained Alderman Jim Dillon. “This striking sculpture will be a fitting legacy to celebrate his aviation achievements, and remind the public of his historic flight near Hillsborough on December 31, 1909.”

The selection panel for the scuplture included representatives from Lisburn Council, the Harry Ferguson Celebration Committee and the Ulster Aviation Society.

“We received submissions from all over the British Isles and the standard was tremendously impressive” said Mr Dillon. “We’re delighted with the panel’s choice, and we’re confident it will become a much-enjoyed and recognised public landmark on this very busy thoroughfare.”

The winning sculpture is a joint venture between top Ulster sculptor John Sherlock, and PF Copeland, one of Ireland’s leading metal fabricators.

“We’re thrilled to have been awarded this prestigious commission,” said Mr Sherlock, “It’s a happy coincidence that both Mark Copeland and myself are also qualified pilots, and we’re in awe of Ferguson for his amazing feat to get his unique creation to actually fly and land successfully.

“Our artistic concept is a creative combination of stainless steel and bronze. We believe it’s quite a dramatic piece, and that the public will enjoy and appreciate it, and the remarkable man it celebrates.

”The sculpture shows this splendid aircraft as it’s just about to make its historic landing, with Harry waving to the watching crowds in celebratory mood. The piece will present this wonderful inventor to the public as truly a ‘Magnificent Man in his Flying Machine’.”

Mark Copeland added: “This is an exciting and important commission for our company. It’s also a really challenging piece from a technical and structural point of view. However, we’re no strangers to producing complex public artwork, having completed such well-known Belfast pieces as ‘Nuala with the Hula’ in Thanksgiving Square, and the ‘Spirit of Belfast’ in Cornmarket.

“We’re certain the Ferguson sculpture will be well received by the public.”

The overall sculpture will be half-life size, and is scheduled for completion in mid-summer. It will be placed on the roundabout at the A1 Dual Carriageway, under the Hillsborough fly-over, and will be seen by up to 30,000 passing travellers each day.

The project has been supporter with grant investment from Lagan Rural Partnership under the Rural Development Programme.



]]> Mon, 23 Apr 2012 12:29:56 +0000 http://orange-order.co.uk/topic/39759-sculpture-to-celebrate-ulster-aviation-expert-harry-ferguson/ http://orange-order.co.uk/topic/39699-mystery-of-the-vanishing-county-down-village-audleys-town/ Mystery of the vanishing County Down village Audley's Town
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-17737197
By Claire Savage
BBC News

The residents of Audley's Town were tenants on the stately Castleward estate in County Down
Historians are trying to find out what happened to residents of a lost County Down village who set sail from Strangford 160 years ago.

They were from Audley's Town and lived in the shadow of the stately home of Castleward.

The villagers were put on a boat to America and one theory is, is that once evicted, their homes were torn down because their settlement was ruining the view of the then 'lord and lady' of the manor.

Up until the middle of the 19th century, about 250 people lived in Audley's Town. The 25 families were tenants on the Castleward estate.

Overgrown
Today, little is left of the village and the site is covered with woodland.


Lady Bangor had a stern reputation and was known as 'The Evictor'
Local amateur historian Brian Fitzsimmons said some stone walls remain "but they are overgrown with ivy and it is very difficult to locate them".

"Most of the village has gone completely," he added.

National Trust archaeologist Malachy Conway said Audley's Castle is all that remains of a once-prosperous domain.

"In effect the village is obliterated," he said.

The demise of the Audley's Town residents came with the death of the then-lord of the land Viscount Bangor, who lived at Castleward.

His wife Harriet, or Lady Bangor, became widowed with six children.

Autocratic
Mr Conway said she was a very autocratic lady and the scourge of the tenants on the estate.


The 1859 ordinance map shows woodland where hamlets had been 25 years previously
"She was, I think, known as Lady Bangor 'The Evictor', so it gives you a little bit of a sense of her - she was a stern lady in many respects," he said.

Harriet remarried and went on to have a further four children with Major Savage-Nugent, who lived on the Nugent estate on the other side of Strangford Lough.

Mr Conway said he "treated the Castleward estate as his domain".

"There is some suggestion from the family themselves that not everything he did here was good," he said.

Woodland
The first ordinance map in 1834 shows a few hamlets, or clachans. By 1859, they had been replaced by 100 acres of woodland.


All that remains of Audley's Town is a castle and a few stone walls
Mr Conway, who has studied the Castleward archives, said "tradition has it Major Andrew Savage-Nugent just did not like the inhabitants.

"They are referred to as being very poor and not the sort of sort you'd want as good neighbours on your property.

"So in many ways, it was seen as an act to try and remove a problem."

The other story is after Lady Bangor married Major Savage-Nugent, they decided to plant the woodland to make the two estates appear to blend into one another.

Continue reading the main story
“
Start Quote

Was the boat lost at sea, or more sinisterly, was the human cargo thrown overboard when the vessel left the lough? ”

Brian Fitzsimmons said this plan seemed to work.

"The perspective of the house up there if you do look from the rear of it, it would appear the estates merge into on another because of the narrow distance of the lough at that particular point," he said.

Whatever the case, in 1852 the families were put on boat called the Rose, from Strangford to Boston.

Was this a kind act by the major to give the poor farm-dwellers a new start elsewhere?

Or were their homes blighting the view of the local gentry?

No record
The Rose had passengers like the Hinds, Smyths and O'Connors, but there is no record of them or the boat arriving in the US.


Accounts suggest that Major Savage-Nugent treated the Castleward estate as his own personal domain
It could have sailed elsewhere, but was it ever destined for the US?

Was it lost at sea, or more sinisterly, was the human cargo thrown overboard when the vessel left the lough?

Mr Conway said it was a sad tale.

"There is an account from 1899 that a chap called Audley-Savage died unmarried in a little one-storey cottage on the hillside at Audley's Town and he in effect might be the last of the Audley male line," he said.

"This was a family that had arrived to settle after John de Courcy had arrived here and of course Anglo-Norman stock prospered

"What you can say about it is that particularly when the wards arrived here from the 1580s to 1590s onwards, it was the rise of one family and the decline in another."

Perhaps you are an ancestor of the Audley's Town residents. If you are a relation please get in touch at claire.savage@bbc.co.uk]]> Tue, 17 Apr 2012 13:58:53 +0000 http://orange-order.co.uk/topic/39699-mystery-of-the-vanishing-county-down-village-audleys-town/ http://orange-order.co.uk/topic/39639-titanic/ The woman who won the heart of Titanic's Thomas Andrews
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-17682320
By Sarah Travers
BBC Newsline

Vera Morrison has recalled the love story of her mother and Thomas Andrews
Continue reading the main story

Thomas Andrews has been immortalised as the hero of the Titanic story.

The County Down naval architect helped design the fated ship and went down with her when disaster struck.

But his actions in helping others on the night have become the stuff of legend.

Once the iceberg struck, it was Andrews who calculated how long it would take for Titanic to sink.

It is said he was instrumental in helping women and children get in the lifeboats as the icy waters filled the ship.

Survivors said he met his fate with the utmost bravery as the horror unfolded, saving other men's wives and children, while knowing he would never see his own wife and child again.

Thomas Andrews had married Helen Reilly Barbour almost four years earlier, and they had a two-year-old daughter.

He had set off on Titanic's maiden voyage along with a group of skilled men called "the guarantee group".

They were brought on board to look for any snags to make sure the sailing was up to the standards expected. All lost their lives.

Helen was left heartbroken at the loss of her brilliant husband.

'Devastated'
She would eventually remarry and have four more children, but she always kept letters, photographs and mementos of her courtship and love for her first husband.

This legacy has been kept alive by her daughter Vera Morrison, who has been speaking exclusively to BBC Newsline.

"She never really spoke about it and she never mentioned the tragedy," Vera said.

"But on one occasion I was talking to her and she said that she hoped that the wreck would be left as a memorial to all the people who died on the ship.

"I think she was totally devastated - and she was so very fond of Tommy's parents.

"She described them as being her second mother and her second father. She was just trying to console them when she herself must have been devastated."


Vera has the engagement ring which was given to her mother by Thomas Andrews
One hundred years on, Vera has revealed wonderful memories and stories about the woman who captured not only the heart of Thomas Andrews, but also of her father, Henry Harland, who her mother married five years after Thomas' death.

Vera said both men would have known each other well through the shipyard.

Both were privileged apprentices - which meant they paid to learn every job and skill needed to build ships.

And during their apprenticeship, both men would have known Helen, who was also called Nellie. All three of them came from some of the most prosperous families in Northern Ireland at that time.

"In those days a lot of the families knew each other very well, and of course both Tommy Andrews and my father worked in the shipyard, they would have seen each other very, very frequently," Vera said.

"I think she probably was very amusing and very good company.

"Maybe that's the reason that she did have two young men who were obviously very fond of her. She had a great sense of humour and I'm sure that she was great fun."

Vera said she has found it hard to believe the story that has been passed down - that her mother was in fact forced to choose between Thomas and Henry.

She believes her mother truly loved Thomas and that he was always the favourite.

"She was obviously very, very fond of him," she added.

"I think it was a true love match. He must have been brilliant.

"But the other thing that comes out so often is his real affection for the workers.

Proposal
"He told Nellie when they were driving out of the shipyard one day together that all the workers who were coming out were his mates. He was so very popular and dearly loved I think by so many people."

Vera also has the engagement ring that Thomas gave to her mother - a square cut sapphire surrounded by small diamonds, which to her is priceless in sentimental value.

Her mother wore it after his death.

But apparently Thomas' proposal to Helen didn't quite go as he had planned.

Vera has a letter from Thomas, dated Saturday 25 March 1906, in which he apologised to Helen for shocking her by asking her to marry him the night before.


Thomas wrote to Nellie following his marriage proposal
However, she eventually got over her shock, and she and Thomas were married in Lambeg Parish church, outside Lisburn, on 23 June 1908.

After a honeymoon trip to Switzerland, the couple took up residence at "Dunallan," at 12 Windsor Avenue in Belfast, which is now home to the Irish Football Association.

It was where they had their daughter, who was nicknamed Elba.

"I've often been asked why wasn't my mother on the Titanic with her husband. I never knew if it was because my mother was ill or Elba was ill," Vera said.

Five years after the tragedy, Nellie married her old suitor Henry Harland.

She went on to have four more children, including Vera who was her youngest child.

Now we can reveal for the first time the personal and private life of the public hero, who sacrificed his own life to save other men's wives and children.

Titanic's hero was a gentleman - but he was also a romantic and loving husband and father.

You can see more of this story and watch the interview with Vera Morrison on BBC Newsline at 18:30 BST on Thursday.

An extended version of the interview will be broadcast in a special commemorative programme on the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic on BBC Two NI at 06:20 BST on Sunday 15 April.]]> Mon, 16 Apr 2012 14:44:06 +0000 http://orange-order.co.uk/topic/39639-titanic/ http://orange-order.co.uk/topic/39457-the-first-union-flag/ http://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/first-union-jack
By Richard Cavendish | Published in History Today Volume: 56 Issue: 4 2006

Richard Cavendish marks the anniversary of King James I's creation and proclamation of a union flag, on April 12th, 1606.

The Union Flag flying beside the Flag of England.
When James VI of Scots rode south to London in 1603 to be crowned as James I of England, he called himself King of Great Britain. He hoped for a union of his two realms and tried to sell the idea to both the English and the Scots, without success.

There were too many vested interests against him and the kingdoms remained separate as South Britain and North Britain. For a time their ships continued to fly their own 'jacks' to indicate their nationality: the jack being a small flag flown from the jack-staff at the vessel's bow. The English flew the cross of St George, their patron saint, and the Scots theirs of St Andrew.

Unable to achieve the union of the kingdoms, King James found some consolation in the creation of a union flag and issued a proclamation about it in 1606. Devised by the royal heralds, the new flag combined the crosses of St George and St Andrew, and was to be flown from the top of the mainmast of all British ships. English ships would additionally fly their St George's cross at the top of the foremast, and Scottish ships their St Andrew's cross in the same way.

In designing the new flag the heralds took the blue of the St Andrew's cross as the background colour with the white saltire on top of it. Super-imposed on top of that was the red cross of St George, whose original white background almost disappeared. It was reduced to a narrow white border or 'fimbriation', to prevent the red colour of the cross touching the blue background, which would have broken one of the arcane rules of the heralds' mystery.

Some English seamen were not comfortable with the new flag, but it was used all through the reigns of James I and Charles I. The Commonwealth created a new ensign for English warships, which dropped the cross of St Andrew altogether and added a yellow harp for Ireland. In 1658 Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector put out a Great Union flag, which combined the crosses of St George and St Andrew with the Irish harp. It was displayed at his funeral, but the restoration of Charles II also restored the Union Jack of James I, which continued in use until the formal union with Ireland in 1801 made it necessary to add the cross of St Patrick.]]> Thu, 12 Apr 2012 15:07:16 +0000 http://orange-order.co.uk/topic/39457-the-first-union-flag/ http://orange-order.co.uk/topic/39372-the-loyal-dublin-volunteers-a-forgotten-organisation/ http://www.newsletter.co.uk/lifestyle/features/the-loyal-dublin-volunteers-a-forgotten-organisation-1-3719467
Loyal Dublin Volunteers Badge
By Quincey Dougan
Published on Wednesday 11 April 2012 08:37

IN June 1935, a Dublin Board of Works employee was among a group working at part of the Dublin GPO (General Post Office), the men having been assigned to remove presses from the cellar of the GPO Customs Parcels Section, located at 10 Parnell Square.

When several presses were removed however, some mortar appeared insecure, and when touched, collapsed. Upon further investigation the employee realised he had uncovered a large cavity several feet long. Within it, in perfectly dry conditions, lay a massive arms cache. He had discovered over 90 rifles and over 2000 rounds of ammunition.

The GPO, was of course, the iconic central location for the failed Easter Rising of 1916. Number 10 Parnell Square wasn’t a part of the main GPO building, but given the history of central Dublin in 1916, and indeed 1921, when the anti-treaty faction of the IRA occupied the building, the automatic conclusion would be that the weapons had belonged to Irish Republicans.

However the rifles found in the cellar were the UVF favoured weapons of Lee-Enfield and Martini-Henri, and were accompanied by packages of Bible tracts and cap badges. In actual fact, the weapons had belonged to the men of Dublin’s ‘Ulster Volunteer Force’, the Loyal Dublin Volunteers.

Number 10 Parnell Square (originally called Rutland Square) was known as Fowler Hall, named after Robert Fowler, the Archbishop of Dublin from 1779 until 1801. Prior to being forced out by the IRA it also was one of Dublin’s several Orange Halls. Dublin’s Orange history is well documented; even in 1914 there were still 11 lodges based in Fowler Hall. What is lesser known is the extent of how the city’s Protestant, Orange and Loyal community rallied against Home Rule.

In February 1912 at an anti-Home Rule meeting in Fowler Hall, Mr H.T. Barrie MP stated to a massive crowd of Dublin Orangemen that ‘the Loyalists of Ireland were going to stand or fall together’. All of the depth of feeling against Home Rule in Ulster was replicated in many areas further south, and with that feeling came the same determination to resist by all means necessary. The Ulster Volunteer Force had deliberately been constituted to consist solely of those of Ulster birth, it initially being a prerequisite that all members had to have signed the Ulster Covenant. This limitation meant that units outside it’s boundaries would be difficult to form. The Dublin answer was to form their own anti-Home Rule corps, the Loyal Dublin Volunteers.

At its peak the LDV boasted a membership of some 2000 men. Many were of Ulster birth, some 768 men and women signed the Ulster Covenant and Declaration within the city, but the vast majority were Dublin born and bred. From mid 1913 right up until the outbreak of the First World War the unit was drilling weekly under its commander Colonel Henry McMaster, also Dublin Grand Master of the Orange Order. Its commitment to opposition against Home Rule was every bit as staunch as its comrades in Ulster. As late as July 1914, a meeting in the Metropolitan Hall heard resolutions from the city’s Orangemen to ‘risk all in defence of their rights’ and calling on their leaders to take whatever steps they considered necessary. The same meeting heard how Dublin had a large body of ‘disciplined and armed’ Orangemen, full of ‘grim determination’. Those in attendance were told in no uncertain terms that the Loyal Dublin Volunteers would back up the Orange resolutions.

The same series of events unfolding in Ulster also affected Dublin however, and with the outbreak of war, massive numbers of the corps enlisted. Up to members joined the Dublin ‘Pal’s Battalion’ almost immediately. What’s more interesting is despite the considerable distance to travel to enlist, many Loyal Dublin Volunteers joined their fellow ‘volunteers’ within the ranks of the 36th Ulster Division. A considerable number joined the 9th Battalion Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers (County Tyrone Volunteers), it having one entire platoon consisting of Dublin men. A William Crozier from St Stephen’s Green in Dublin applied for a commission to the 9th Battalion on the basis that he had drilled for 11 months with the Loyal Dublin Volunteers. Brigadier General Hickman endorsed the application, stating that: “This gentleman is quite the right stamp. If appointed he will be serving with and commanding some of the men he has trained during the last year.”

In September 1914 alone, 60 men are recorded as leaving Fowler Hall for Ballykinlar Camp to join the ‘Tyrones’.

The war signalled significant developments in the corps, with an estimated 600 of its 2000 members enlisting. As the emergence of an ‘Ulster’ solution to the Home Rule crisis became apparent, the determination of the men to ‘fight’ Home Rule understandably took a major blow. However the focus for their ‘fight’ simply changed, and at a general meeting of the organisation in August 1915, it was proposed that they affiliate themselves with the Irish Association of Voluntary Training Corps. To this end, 200 immediately signed up, effectively making the men a reserve army unit. They saw active service a lot quicker than they anticipated, and upon the outbreak of the Easter Rising they assisted troops from the Curragh in suppressing the violence. On the first day of the rising several Loyal Dublin Volunteers lost their lives.

When the Civil War between pro-treaty and anti-treaty elements of the IRA erupted in 1921, the Orange Order were forced out of Fowler Hall. Anti-treaty IRA seized the building as their headquarters, in the process destroying many important documents relating to both the Order and the Loyal Dublin Volunteers. This was to signal a de-facto Orange exodus from the city, with the last Orange procession in 1938 attacked as they made their way to board trains to Northern Ireland Twelfth demonstrations. Today the Loyal Dublin Volunteers are a relatively unknown organisation. The arms find of 1935 however, indicates very clearly the scale, professionalism and determination of these Dublin citizens some 20 years earlier.]]> Wed, 11 Apr 2012 17:45:53 +0000 http://orange-order.co.uk/topic/39372-the-loyal-dublin-volunteers-a-forgotten-organisation/