The Ulster Difficulty: Its Historical Basis.

New Zealand Tablet, 22 December 1921, Page 9

The Ulster Difficulty : Its Historical Basis.

(From the Irish -Bulletin, October 3, 1921.) Dr. Boulter, an Englishman who was Protestant Archbishop of Armagh from 1724 to 1738, writing of the agitation raised by Dean Swift against "Wood's Halfpence," said : "The worst of this is that it tends to unite Protestant with Papist, and whenever that happens, goodbye to the English interest in Ireland for ever." That sentence epitomises the so-called "Ulster difficulty." " "■ i .* The Original Plantations and Their Failure In tracing the causes of the present hostility of four counties in the North-east of Ireland to the National movement for independence one is brought back to the reign, of Queen Elizabeth, when six Irish counties were planted with settlers hostile in racial feeling and religious persuasion to the Irish people. The six counties originally planted did not include Antrim and Down which are now the centre of the "Ulster difficulty," but did include Donegal, Tyrone, Fermanagh, and Cavan, all of which are to-day Republican in majority. But these plantations—accomplished by the -'-simple expedient of massacring the Catholic population or burning their homes and driving them overseas— too well known to students of history to need detailed descripy tion here. The plantations failed in four of the six counties I and in large portions of the remaining two, Derry and Armagh. When one set of planters had lost their hostility to the mass of the Irish people others were brought over. But these also were in part absorbed by the nation, and the political distinction between North-east Ulster and the rest of Ireland had to be sustained by constant drafts of new settlers. It was in these later plantations that the Catholic families in Antrim and Down were expelled, their land confiscated and handed over to Presbyterians brought from Scotland. Within a century these Presbyterians had become -. the leading spirits of the separatist movement in Ireland, and in 1782, at Dungannon, Co. Tyrone (now part of the' Partition area), a convention of Irish Volunteers representing the majority of the Protestants declared for the legislative independence of Ireland. " Unconstitutional and Illegal " On February. 15, 1782, the Dungannon Convention resolved "That a claim of any body of" men other than the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland to make laws to bind this kingdom, is unconstitutional, illegal, and a grieyance," and later in its sittings resolved: "That we rejoice in the relaxation of the .Penal Laws against our Roman Catholic fellow-subjects, and that we conceive the measure. to be fraught with the happiest consequences for the union and the prosperity of the inhabitants of Ireland." But . this union threatened disaster to the "English interest" ' and the British Government set about to prevent it by . whatever means were available. Religious bitterness had been cultivated by false stories of massacres of Protestants _by "Papists" sedulously circulated by British agents and pamphleteers. Massacres, of which there is no historical record, but to which there is a great deal of historical reference, "occurred" whenever the Protestants and Catholics seemed about to establish friendly relations or when- - ever the British Government had no other argument with which to meet the claims of the Irish nation. Protestants were thus conveniently massacred in" 1641, when Cromwell

needed the assistance of English opinion in his Irish campaign, in E 04, in 1765, and since the latter date plots by the papists to exterminate the Protestants were “discovered ’ with indefatigable zeal by British agents in London, usually when suspicion of them existed among the Irish Protestants themselves. By such,means the British Government created in Ulster a non-Catholic minority terrorised into daily expectancy of extermination by the unarmed and disfranchised Catholic majority. The Presbyterians the largest element in the planted Protestant population were not receptive of this anti-Catholic propaganda for the very good reason that, though they were not subject to the full rigor of the Penal Laws, they were penalised for their religious beliefs. The Presbyterians, indeed, made common cause with the Catholics against the Government from which the Penal Laws emanated.

The Rising of 1798 The legislative independence which Grattan and his party had won in 1782 tended more and more towards a national union in Ireland and the disappearance of reigious differences. The Presbyterians of Antrim and Down decided to establish Ireland as a Republic and were the moving spirit of the Rebellion of 1798. They organised, in conjunction with the Catholic separatists, the three Catholic, provinces. The British Government, foreseeing that this organisation would lead to an Ireland united in the common cause of independence, decided to provoke the Insurrection before the plans had been completed and to revive violent sectarian discords wherever possible. The policy-took some time to mature but it was carried out according to plan. The Insurrection broke out prematurely and immediately the religious hatreds carefully nurtured in the North were given full rein. A Yeomanry, comparable in every particular with the Ulster Special Constabulary of to-day, was formed from the Orange lodges, which represented only a minority of the Irish Protestants, and was then used, not only against the Catholics and their Presbyterian allies in Ulster, but against the Catholics in the other three provinces. The frightful excesses which accompanied the suppression of the '9B Rebellion are traceable in many instances to this Yeomanry just as now the Ulster Special Constabulary have almost outdone the "Black-and-Tans" in their murders, assassinations and long sustained pogroms against the defenceless Catholics of the North-east. While the country was lying crushed by the ferocity with which the rising had been suppressed the Union was carried. As in-the present case of Partition no Irish party supported the policy of union with Great Britain. Even the Orange lodges protested against it as a disastrous measure. Buying off the Presbyterians

Immediately after the insurrection the British Government set about buying off the Presbyterians. “A plan for strengthening the connection between the Government and the Presbyterian Synod of Ulster” was drawn up by Lord Castlereagh. This “plan” was nothing more noble tlpm the-subsidising of the Presbyterian clergy. Dr. Killen, the historian of the Irish Presbyterians, makes it clear that the “generosity” of the British Government was purely political in its purpose. “The Government,” he says, “was chiefly actuated by those purely secular considerations which ordinarily have weight with prudent and calculating statesmen.” The royal grant, he declares, would make the Presbyterian clergy less dependent upon their flocks and consequently “less likely to give guy countenance to the spirit of faction or sedition.” Dr. Killen then quotes a British Cabinet Minister writing to the British Viceroy .that a “principal object in subsidising the Presbyterian clergy was “to make them more dependent and render them more amendable to British policy. The effect sought was achieved. .Dr. Killen reports that the subsidy was-“received with satisfaction and gratitude,” and adds, “It has been ascertained that Presbyterian ministers amply repay the State for their endowment inasmuch as the districts under their pastoral care can he 'governed without the aid of military .” By these subtle means the British Government converted the Presbyterians, who in 1798 were foremost among Irish republicans, into the fanatical anti-republicans which to-day they declare themselves to be. The subsidy was followed in 1869 by the dis-establishment of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Ireland which strengthened

the bond between the Presbyterians and the British Government.

English Leaders organise Belfast Riots By the time Gladstone introduced the Home Rule Bill of 1886 the leaven had completely worked. The Protestant papulation of Ulster had since 1798 been united by British policy into opposition to the wishes of the majority of the Irish people. Yet the riots in Belfast which synchronised with Gladstone's Home Rule campaign were not the natural expression of this opposition. They were organised then as now in England. Lord Randolph Churchill, (father of the Mr. Winston Churchill, who ten days ago predicted "civil war" for Ireland if the nation secured a recognition of her independence), went to Belfast accompanied by Sir Stafford Northcote, an ex-Cabinet Minister, to organise Ulster's resistance to Home Rule. It was he not any Ulster leader who preached the policy: "Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right." The "fight" took the form then that it takes to-day. Armed mobs attacked the Catholics in the streets, Catholics were driven from their work, Catholic homes were wrecked, and looted. The riots went on from week to week and instead of any effort to suppress them the British Government actually withdrew its forces from the city and justified the pogroms to the British public. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, then Chief Secretary for Ireland, answering the charge that the riots were instigated from England, said the Orangemen "were urged on to riot," not by English political leaders, but "by loyalty and religion." Gladstone-again brought in a Home Rule Bill in 1893, and again the policy of "Ulster will fight" was preached to the Orange mob, not by its own leaders, but by English Tories acting through a Convention of landowners held in Dublin. The bloody riots recommenced and again the British Government stood aside and gave a clear field to those unwittingly carrying out its policy. The self-same situation recurred in 1911, when Mr. Asquith's Government began the "hypocritical sham" of giving Ireland Home Rule. The Ulster Protestants armed and drilled openly. They threatened the authority of the British Parliament itself. But the British Parliament did not interfere. Sir Edward Carson, who Jater became a Cabinet Minister, attended by the present Lord Chancellor of England, reviewed the Ulster Volunteers and encouraged them in their resistance to British law; the British Unionist party provided funds for arms and made speeches of incitement. Arms bought at Hamburg, Germany, were run into Ulster under the noses of the British Admiralty and the British military officers at the Curragh mutinied in Ulster's favor. Again- it was from England and English political leaders that the Protestants of Northeast Ulster received their orders. No Irish Demand for Partition During the whole of this period the Ulster Protestants never once put forward the demand for Partition. They were opposed to the policy of Home Rule, but they never conceived an Ireland divided into two fragments to suit British policy. Even their English allies and instigators made no separate claim for them. Mr. Walter Long, who up to a few months ago was a member of Mr. Lloyd George's Cabinet committee on Irish affairs, declared in the spring of 1914, at a Convention of Unionists in Dublin:

“The (proposal to separate Ulster from the rest of Ireland was the most ignominious and cowardly, suggestion for the solution of the Irish problem that had ever been brought forward; it was not Ulslter that needed special treatment; under any settlement of Irish affairs Ulster was strong enough to protect its own interests; not Ulster but the scattered Unionist minority in the other parts of Ireland required special provisions for their protection.” , This was then and remains to-day the policy of the Unionist minority in Ireland, North and South. The Partition policy, like the Orange pogroms, had its origin in the British Cabinet. It was first proposed in 1914. It was crystallised into a British Act of Parliament in 1919. It became law in 1920 against the wishes of all the Unionists in Ireland, and in spite of the protests of the whole Unionist press. The North-east Ulster leaders to-day declare with vehemence that they would not have accepted a separate Parliament if they were not compelled by Great Britain to do.so.

The policy of Partition and the present pogroms in Belfast and elsewhere in the six-County area are the modern expression of Archbishop Boulter’s fear that whenever the Protestant and Papist united “good-bye to the English interest in Ireland forever.” “The English , interest” will alone be furthered by them and in that fact lies the explanation of the division of Ireland on religious lines and the creation of a fanatical and sectarian mob into one of the British Crown forces, Pot now as in 1798 as “Yeomanry,” but under the infinitely more inappropriate title of “Constabulary.”