Ulster Unionism

The 'Red hand of Ulster' - a popular Unionist slogan

Ulster Unionism is the belief that Northern Ireland should remain in the United Kingdom and as an ideology first found prominence as far back as the Ulster Plantation in the early seventeenth century, when Scottish and some English colonists travelled to the counties of Ulster to establish communities, towns and farms. They mainly settled in Tyrone, Donegal, Armagh, Fermanagh, Londonderry and Cavan. Unlike previous waves of invaders had done, the new colonists did not integrate into the indigenous culture and they left a legacy of loyalty to the crown in an otherwise rebellious island. The southern Unionist movement dominated by Sir Edward Carson lost steam with the formation of the Irish Free State in 1922.

Origins

Ulster Unionism as a political force has its origins rooted in opposition to the Home Rule Movement, which Charles Stewart Parnell had organised throughout the country with his Home Rule Party, and which had swept through Ireland and even took a seat in Liverpool in the 1885 elections. The concerted aims of the Home Rule Party was a form of national self determination. The Home Rule movement wished to have an independant parliament capable of legislating for Irish interests, and although they had won the balance of power several times in the Liberal Party's British House of Commons, with whom they had an on and off alliance with, their Home Rule Bill never progressed further than the Conservative dominated House of Lords.

Unionists throughout the country detested the thought of Irish Home Rule, considering it to be Rome Rule, as in, rule by the Roman Catholic

Leading Unionists, circa 1912

majority. Another concern was of potential economic costs. This all culminated in a series of rallies in Ulster. 237,368 men, and 234,046 women signed the Ulster Covenant on 28 September, 1912, in opposition to Home Rule, which made the region much more volatile and eventually led to the formation of the Ulster Volunteer Force in 1913. Eoin Mc Neill and many other leading Nationalists then founded the Irish Volunteers in November 1913 in retaliation. Both sides smuggled arms into the country, but the Ulster Volunteer force was able to exploit an old statute which allowed citizens to drill and train with weapons so long as it was in the expressed defence of the monarchy. The Irish Volunteers, on the other hand, had no such luxury and any weapons they imported, such as in the Howth gun running incident, were strictly illegal. The Civil War that many predicted didn't happen, however, largely because of the advent of World War I in 1914, which caused hundreds of thousands of Unionists and Nationalists to go and fight for Britain. This also stalled John Redmond's third Home Rule Bill from progressing into law until the end of the war.

The Easter Rising of 1916, however, ensured that Home Rule would not be enough for the now radicalised Irish population, as many Irish nationalists now regarded complete independance as being the only viable result of any dealing with Britain. At the height of the Irish War of Independence the British parliament passed the Government of Ireland Act, 1920 which officially partitioned the island into Southern Ireland (Éire) and Northern Ireland. The war continued on nonetheless, and the rebels largely ignored the Act as being irrelevant to their war effort. The ensuing years saw the beginning of the Irish Troubles a conflict that had its roots in the pre-World War II era but is considered to have lasted from 1969-1998.

Ulster Unionist political theory

Ulster Unionism as an ideology or political theory possesses three pillars - political, economic and religious.

Political

One of the key arguments made by Ulster Unionists is that they are citizens of the United Kingdom and that they share a British or Ulster-Scots identity. Scotland is within visual distance along much of the Northern Ireland coastline and some of the islands are only a few kilometres away from the Irish mainland. They relate their identity with the United Kingdom and the British monarchy the same way that Irish nationalists and Republicans relate their identity with an independant, soverign republic. They also feared that their rights as a people would be under-represented in a majority Catholic parliament. Unionist objections were further strengthened by support from the Conservative Party. A prominent conservative, Lord Randolph Churchill. addressed Unionists in Belfast where he urged them to resist the implementation of Home Rule. He referred to this as playing the Orange card as he too was strongly opposed to Home Rule. He declared at a rally in Belfast, "Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right." This was the beginning of an alliance between the Conservative and Unionist Party, which lasted into the next century.

Unionism in Northern Ireland was unified in 1905 with the formation of the Ulster Unionist Council, which linked the Orange Order and other Unionist groups together in one bloc. In 1910 Ulster Unionism came under the leadership of prominent Dublin University MP Edward Carson who told the Unionists of Northern Ireland to take over the institutions of government in Northern Ireland if Home Rule came to pass in 1911. The increasingly militant attitude of the Unionist leadership was confirmed by the formation of the Ulster Volunteer Force in 1913. In April 1914, 35,000 rifles and five million rounds of ammunition were smuggled into Larne Harbour and swiftly distributed throughout the province. With the Outbreak of the First World War, The Ulster volunteer Force comprised many of the troops in the 36th Ulster Division and lost many lives, particularly at the Battle of the Somme, which has entered into Ulster-Scots folklore.

Economic

North east Ireland was traditionally the most industrialised area of Ireland. Most of the island escaped the industrial revolution and employed an agrarian economy based largely on large landholders (usually British in ethnicity) and poor peasants who rented farmland from landlords, although land reform had transformed land ownership from large landlords into that of smaller, usually Catholic farmers. Belfast was a major centre of the textile and shipbuilding industries, with Harland and Wolff employing many thousands in the shipyards. This argument was further reinforced with the advent of the Welfare State in Britain following World War II, with Northern Irish Catholics and Protestants receiving much superior benefits than their southern conterparts.

The economy of the Republic of Ireland has exploded in the last two decades, however, with the Celtic Tiger economy, and now is more developed than that of Northern Ireland, and the Unionist economic argument has stagnated.

Religious

Many Unionists feared a Roman Catholic majority legislating against Protestant interests in a Dublin based parliament. They summed this up with the old adage: "Home Rule is Rome Rule". Unionists also feared the widespread dominance of the Roman Catholic Church in Irish society and the political power it possessed. As the South gained its independence this did indeed come to pass to a large extent. Legislation approved by or prompted by the Catholic Church was quickly introduced, and included a ban on contraception and the outlawing of divorce. The Roman Catholic Church was recognised as having a "special position" in the 1937 Constitution of Ireland. An innovative social welfare scheme, the "Mother and Child Scheme", was discontinued in the 1950s largely at the behest of the Catholic Church.

However, the Republic of Ireland has gradually become much more secular in recent years, with contraception and divorce now legalised and the practice of homosexuality being decriminalised. Religion has begun to play a much lesser role in people's lives, as the number of nominal Catholics proves.

Unionist control of Northern Ireland (1921-1972)

Subsequent Unionist parties controlled politics in Northern Ireland following the 1920 Government of Ireland Act. This act formally partitioned the island in the midst of the Anglo-Irish War, causing seperate parliaments to be established in both Belfast and Dublin. The Dublin parliament that was established was ignored by the southern rebels, who continued the conflict nonetheless until the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921. Northern Ireland, on the other hand was more than willing to exercise its newfound political rights and limited devolution style government.

Ulster in 1921

The Craigavon era (1921-1940)

While Edward Carson had led the Unionist movement throughout Ireland, his right hand man, James Craig was more than able to take his place as leader of the Unionist movement in Northern Ireland, as Carson looked to pursue his legal career in the House of Commons. Craig became the Prime Minister of the entity now known as Northern Ireland and spearheaded the first Unionist government of that country. His first government was helped by a weak Nationalist opposition - the Republicans and their more moderate Nationalist colleagues had been divided on how to deal with the new entity, which neither party wanted to be associated with. This division was contrasted starkly with Unionist unity, who won a strong majority in the parliament (winning forty, compared to twelve seats combined for Nationalist and Republican candidates. The two major Republican and Nationalist parties - Sinn Féin and The Northern Irish Nationalist Party, respectively, were however united on the issue of policing, as both boycotted the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The two parties were pinning their hopes on the success of the Boundary Commission in bringing Catholic-dominated lands in Northern Ireland under the control of the Irish Free State, though this aspiration fizzled out during negotiations (which Craig did not appear for).

One of the many controversial aspects of Craig's rule was the alledged policy of Gerrymandering, i.e., re-aligning the borders of constituencies so as to increase one group's political representation at the expense of anothers. In 1929, the Unionists abolished the policy of proportional representation, set up by the Government of Ireland Act. The new legislation modeled the election procedures on the first past the post system used in Britain, which tended to give less representation to smaller parties, although the two Republican and Nationalist parties lost only one seat, going down from twelve seats to eleven in 1929, being compensated for a loss of seats in Antrim and Armagh by a one seat gain in Belfast. The new system hit the smaller parties the hardest, with Labour and Independent Unionists losing four seats in the election, despite their share of the popular vote actually increasing.

The difference was more noted in the area of local government, where boundries were redrawn and changes to voting legislation ensured formerly Nationalist Council areas were to be replaced by Unionist ones. Noted in this was the local voting acts which brought 25% of voters (Mainly nationalists) out of the electorate as it was based on property ownership rather than democratic rights . Opposition to discrimination in voting, and other local council measures such as anti-Catholic discrimination in allocating social housing etc. was at the very heart of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960's. Craig confirmed the largely blatent discrimination in voting rights when he said that Northern Ireland was a Protestant State for a Protestant people and I am an Orangeman first and a politican afterwards . Nowhere was this more evident than in the massive Orange Order marches held in Belfast in 1926, where 100,000 people marched and 50,000 people watched on

James Craig served as Prime Minister for an unbroken period of nineteen years, making this period popularly known as the 'Craigavon era', as he later became 'Lord Craigavon'.

Northern Ireland during World War II

Northern Ireland was a vital strategic area of control for Britain during the war; its ports compensating for the loss of Éire's ports under Éamon de Valera. The fact that Belfast, Larne and other ports were protected by the British forces meant that the strategically and materially vital estuaries of the Mersey and the Clyde were protected.

Belfast itself as a vital industrial city played a major role in the war providing ships, weapons, ammunition, army clothes, parachutes and a host of other equipment to the war effort. While Unionists in Northern Ireland were deeply and personally involved in the war effort, the Nationalist/Republican communities regarded it as not being 'their' war at all - a parallel perhaps to the sentiment of the Easter Rising rebels who regarded World War I as being England's war, and not Ireland's.

Modern Ulster Unionism

Modern day Ulster Unionism has reached a consensus, favouring dialogue and peace with Republicans. Many of Northern Ireland's most famous Unionists, such as Ian Paisley have advocated and taken part in negotiations with Sinn Féin. Following the most recent Northern Ireland Assembly elections, the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Féin agreed to go into government together, with Ian Paisley as First Minister and Martin Mc Guinness - a former Provisional IRA bomber - as the Deputy First Minister. The Cabinet is a mixed Republican/Unionist one.

In the runup to the 2007 Assembly elections, both parties campaigned on issues such as water charges and business development, issues that could appeal to both sides of the community. Sectarianism and partisan politics, usually a frequent occurance in a Northern Irish election were minimised and in some cases avoided. Since the IRA had decommissioned its weapons years earlier and Sinn Féin had recognised the PSNI, the Democratic Unionist Party reluctantly agreed to consider going into government with Sinn Féin, who won a considerably large minority in the election.

The early months of the government has seen frequent shows of unity between First Minister Paisley and Deputy First Minister Mc Guiness. Both men have appeared at many sites and places and are trying to rebuild Northern Ireland following generations of sectarian warfare. Parallels to this have been drawn with the South African Peace and Reconciliation Tribunals following the end of apartheid.

List of Unionist political and social organisations

• Democratic Unionist Party
• Ulster Unionist Party
• Progressive Unionist Party
• United Kingdom Unionist Party
• Orange Order
• Imperial Grand Black Chapter of the British Commonwealth

Bibliography

• Martin Mc Guinness's 'reformation'
• The Northern Ireland Assembly
• Mitchel, Patrick; Evangelicalism and National Identity in Ulster, 1921-1998
• Bew, Paul; Ideology and the Irish Question: Ulster Unionism and Irish Nationalism 1912-1916
• Hostettler, John; Sir Edward Carson: A Dream Too Far
• Spellman, Cathy Cash; An Excess of Love
• Churchill, Sir Winston; Lord Randolph Churchill
• Arthur, Paul; Government and Politics of Northern Ireland