i DEATH OF LORD CRAIGAVON

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21821, 26 November 1940, Page 6

i DEATH OF LORD CRAIGAVON

Service To Northern Ireland By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright LONDON, November 24. The death has occurred of Lord Craigavon, Prime Minister of North 'rn Ireland. He was 69 years of age, and had been Prime Minister of Northern Ireland for over 18 years. Lord Craigavon collapsed at his home Glencraig and died soon afterwards. He attended Parliament last Tuesday. James Craig, first Viscount Craigavon, was born in County Down, Ulster, and educated at Merchiston Castle School, Edinburgh. He took up the study of naval architecture, but after a few years devoted much of his time to politics in Ireland as an ardent Orangeman (Ulster Protestant). He also joined the Royal Irish Rifles and served in the South African war in the Irish Horse and the Imperial Yeomanry. In 1906, as a Unionist, he won a seat in County Down from a Nationalist. He co-operated with Edward Carson (afterwards Lord Carson) in fierce opposition to the Nationalist agitation for self-government for Ireland. When, in 1913, the Home Rule Bill introduced by the Liberal Government was passing through the Commons, they declared that Ulster would oppose it with arms. They organised meetings in Belfast at

which a covenant was signed pledging the signatories “to stand by one another in defending our cherished position of equal citizenship in the United Kingdom and to defeat the conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland.” They then enlisted an armed force to resist any attempt to bring Ulster within the scope of the measure. In the organisation of this force both Craig and the Earl of Birkenhead took a very active part. The Bill was passed by the Commons and the situation in Ireland had become critical when the outbreak of the war changed the outlook. Craig at once turned his energies to recruiting the 36th (Ulster) Division for service at the front. In 1916 he accepted from the Coalition Government the office of Treasurer of the Household and two years later was made a baronet. Then, after being Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions for a time, he was for a year Financial Secretary to the Admiralty. Meanwhile the Home Rule Bill had been adopted in an amended form by which Ulster remained politically part of Great Britain, but had a parliament of its own. When this Parliament was formed in June, 1921, Craig resigned his seat in the Imperial Parliament and was made Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. There followed a difficult period in which differences between the two new states over frontier and other matters threatened serious trouble, but tact on the part of Craig and the southern leaders smoothed them all over. In 1927 he was raised to the peerage as Viscount Craigavon and in January, 1928, he offered to resign the Premiership but, yielding to strong pressure, remained in office.