I wrote this piece, but not for publication, to a journalist friend nearly 14 years ago.
“THE TIMES (January 3rd) carried an Obituary of the historian A.T.Q. Stewart
whom it described as ‘the foremost historian of Northern Ireland who dismissed
its accumulated myths with a scholarly, penetratingly rigour and elegant prose’
My own letter continued:-
“With such an encomium from the TIMES that Mr Stewart was appointed a Commander
of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire ‘for his contributions to the understanding of Irish History.’
Poor Lieutenant Colonel Derek Wilford of the Parachute Regiment’s contribution to that
history got him a mere OBE, a lesser Order of Chivalry.
In 1937, when THE TIMES carried the Obituary of James Bruce Ismay, ex-Chairman of
The White Star Line,it didn’t mention THE TITANIC, of which he was the most prominent survivor.
So the newspaper’s obituaries sometimes earn the motto ‘De Mortuis Nil Nisi Bunkum.’
I read, back in 1974, A.T.Stewart’s first book. ‘The Ulster Crisis. Resistance to Home
Rule 1912-1914′ which THE TIMES describes as ‘cast in the mould of a political thriller
with tales of gun-running through Ulster ports to equip militant Unionists with resisting
a Dublin government, then in prospect.’
It would been very easy for armed men to resist such a governmnt. That government under Home Rule would not have armed men (or women)
at its disposal.
As for the derring-do, the Obituarist didn’t read the book I read.
Stewart describes how the Aristocracy, ‘in one afternoon raised the sum of a
quarter of a million pounds’ and ‘the business community of Belfast’ underwrote
the Ulster Volunteer Force in 1913. The year before, that of the Titanic’s launch, the total
income tax paid by that thriving city was ninety thousand pounds.
Stewart wrote how Lord Londonderry spoke to Sir Edward Carson – ‘with tears in his eyes, the peer replied – ‘my dear Edward, if I was to lose everything in the world, I will
go with you to the end’.
Neither Londonderry nor Carson gave up anything in the world, nor their lives for their
heroics. Londonderry’s son was to host the Nazi Ribbentrop in his London Palace and
his Irish estates and was dubbed ‘The Londonderry Herr.’
As the armed anti-Home Rulers would not have to confront armed men from a prospective Home Rule parliament in Dublin, you might think they’d have to confront
the forces of the London Government.
They faced no such peril. Sir Edward Carson could boast in September 1913 –
‘We have the pledges and promises from some of the greatest generals in
the army that when the time comes, if it is necessary, they will come over
to us.’
They kept their promise, and the landing of arms for the UVF was not opposed by
the armed forces of the Crown.
Carson got a Peerage.
He died, aged 81, in 1935 but not before W.B. Allen, a formerUnionist MP for
Belfast, described him, with admiration, as ‘the leader of the
first Fascist Movement in Europe’ “
Another very interesting article.