Ulster's Stand For Union. Ronald McNeill
Thomas Andrews, in moving the resolution of welcome to the leader, expressed the universal sentiment of the multitude when he exclaimed, "We will never, never bow the knee to the disloyal factions led by Mr. John Redmond. We will never submit to be governed by rebels who acknowledge no law but the laws of the Land League and illegal societies."
A great number of Addresses from representative organisations were then presented to Sir Edward Carson, in many of which the determination to resist the jurisdiction of a Dublin Parliament was plainly declared. But such declarations, although they undoubtedly expressed the mind of the people, were after all in quite general terms. For a quarter of a century innumerable variations on the theme "Ulster will fight, and Ulster will be right," had been fiddled on Ulster platforms, so that there was some excuse for the belief of those who were wholly ignorant of North Irish character that these utterances were no more than the commonplaces of Ulster rhetoric. The time had only now come, however, when their reality could be put to the test. Carson's speech at Craigavon crystallised them into practical politics.
Sir Edward Carson's public speaking has always been entirely free from rhetorical artifice. He seldom made use of metaphor or imagery, or elaborate periods, or variety of gesture. His language was extremely simple and straightforward; but his mobile expression—so variable that his enemies saw in it a suggestion of Mephistopheles, and his friends a resemblance to Dante—his measured diction, and his skilful use of a deep-toned voice, gave a remarkable impressiveness to all he said—even, indeed, to utterances which, if spoken by another, would sometimes have sounded commonplace or obvious. Sarcasm he could use with effect, and a telling point was often made by an epigrammatic phrase which delighted his hearers. And, more than all else, his meaning was never in doubt. In lucidity of statement he excelled many much greater orators, and was surpassed by none; and these qualities, added to his unmistakable sincerity and candour, made him one of the most persuasive of speakers on the platform, as he was also, of course, in the Law Courts.
The moment he began to speak at Craigavon the immense multitude who had come to welcome him felt instinctively the grip of his power. The contrast to all the previous scene—the cheering, the enthusiasm, the marching, the singing, the waving of handkerchiefs and flags—was deeply impressive, when, after a hushed pause of some length, he called attention without preface to the realities of the situation in a few simple sentences of slow and almost solemn utterance:
"I know full well what the Resolution you have just passed means; I know what all these Addresses mean; I know the responsibility you are putting upon me to-day. In your presence I cheerfully accept it, grave as it is, and I now enter into a compact with you, and every one of you, and with the help of God you and I joined together—giving you the best I can, and you giving me all your strength behind me—we will yet defeat the most nefarious conspiracy that has ever been hatched against a free people. But I know full well that this Resolution has a still wider meaning. It shows me that you realise the gravity of the situation that is before us, and it shows me that you are here to express your determination to see this fight out to a finish."
He went on to expose the hollowness of the allegation, then current in Liberal circles, that Ulster's repugnance to Home Rule was less uncompromising than it formerly had been. On the contrary, he believed that "there never was a moment at which men were more resolved than at the present, with all the force and strength that God has given them, to maintain the British connection and their rights as citizens of the United Kingdom." Apart from principle or sentiment, that was an attitude, he maintained, dictated by practical good sense. He showed how Ireland had been "advancing in prosperity in an unparalleled measure," for which he could quote the authority of Mr. Redmond himself, although the Nationalist leader had omitted to notice that this advance had taken place under the legislative Union, and, as Carson contended, in consequence of it. He laid special emphasis on the point, never forgotten, that the danger in which they stood was due to the hoodwinking of the British constituencies by Mr. Asquith's Ministry.
"Make no mistake; we are going to fight with men who are prepared to play with loaded dice. They are prepared to destroy their own Constitution, so that they may pass Home Rule, and they are prepared to destroy the very elements of constitutional government by withdrawing the question from the electorate, who on two previous occasions refused to be a party to it."
He ridiculed the "paper safeguards" which Liberal Ministers tried to persuade them would amply protect Ulster Protestants under a Dublin Parliament, giving a vivid picture of the plight they would be in under a Nationalist administration, which, he declared, meant "a tyranny to which we never can and never will submit"; and then, in a pregnant passage, he summarised the Ulster case:
"Our demand is a very simple one. We ask for no privileges, but we are determined that no one shall have privileges over us. We ask for no special rights, but we claim the same rights from the same Government as every other part of the United Kingdom. We ask for nothing more; we will take nothing less. It is our inalienable right as citizens of the British Empire, and Heaven help the men who try to take it from us."
It was all no doubt a mere restatement—though an admirably lucid and forcible restatement—of doctrine with which his hearers had long been familiar. The great question still awaited an answer—how was effect to be given to this resolve, now that there was no longer hope of salvation through the sympathy and support of public opinion in Great Britain? This was what the eager listeners at Craigavon hoped in hushed expectancy to hear from their new leader. He did not disappoint them:
"Mr. Asquith, the Prime Minister, says that we are not to be allowed to put our case before the British electorate. Very well. By that determination he drives you in the ultimate result to rely upon your own strength, and we must follow all that out to its logical conclusion. … That involves something more than that we do not accept Home Rule. We must be prepared, in the event of a Home Rule Bill passing, with such measures as will carry on for ourselves the government of those districts of which we have control. We must be prepared—and time is precious in these things—the morning Home Rule passes, ourselves to become responsible for the government of the Protestant Province of Ulster. We ask your leave at the meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council, to be held on Monday, there to discuss the matter, and to set to work, to take care that at no time and at no intervening interval shall we lack a Government in Ulster, which shall be a Government either by the Imperial Parliament, or by ourselves."
Here, then, was the first authoritative declaration of a definite policy to be pursued by Ulster in the circumstances then existing or foreseen, and it was a policy that was followed with undeviating consistency under Carson's leadership for the next nine years. To be left under the government of the Imperial Parliament was the alternative to be preferred, and was asserted to be an inalienable right; but, if all their efforts to that end should be defeated, then "a government by ourselves" was the only change that could be tolerated. Rather than submit to the jurisdiction of a Nationalist legislature and administration, they would themselves set up a Government "in those districts of which they had control." It was because, when the first of these alternatives had to be sorrowfully abandoned, the second was offered in the Government of Ireland Act of 1920 that Ulster did not actively oppose the passing of that statute.
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