Green Flag by Kee Robert

Author:Kee, Robert [Kee, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2017-02-13T05:00:00+00:00

All around the walls of the pavilion hung numerous shields and appropriate mottoes, including an unfortunate quotation from the Gladstonian Liberal Lord Spencer, dating from before his leader’s conversion to Home Rule. This ran: ‘We feel like the Americans when the integrity of their country was threatened, and if necessary we must shed blood to maintain the strength and salvation of the country.’

A number of resolutions were passed by the convention. The first asserted Ulster’s status as an integral portion of the United Kingdom and declared that the convention met ‘to protest in the most unequivocal manner against the passage of any measure that would rob us of our inheritance in the Imperial Parliament, under the protection of which our capital has been invested and our homes and rights safeguarded’.

A second resolution expressed a determination to have nothing to do with a Parliament ‘certain to be controlled by men responsible for the crime and outrage of the Land League, the dishonesty of the Plan of Campaign and the cruelties of boycotting, many of whom have shown themselves the ready instruments of clerical domination’.

A third resolution had a more positive inference. The attempt, it declared, to subject Ulster to a Parliament run by such men would ‘inevitably result in disorder, violence and bloodshed such as have not been experienced in this century’ and the convention resolved to take no part in the election of or the proceedings of such a Parliament, which they would repudiate. When the Duke of Abercorn, with upraised arm, declared ‘We will not have Home Rule’, the whole audience sprang to their feet and cheered for several minutes. But the greatest cheers of all were reserved for another speaker who in trumpet tones pronounced, ‘As a last resource we will be prepared to defend ourselves.’ At this, in the words of The Times’ man on the spot, ‘the feelings of the spectators appeared to lose all control’. It was not surprising that after attending such an impressive and enthusiastic gathering he should conclude emphatically that these were ‘men to be reckoned with’.14

Their political opponents took them less seriously. Shortly before the convention Colonel Saunderson, the parliamentary leader of the Ulstermen, whose activities had earned him a place in Mme Tussaud’s as long ago as 1888,15 invited the Gladstonian Liberal, Sir William Harcourt, over to Belfast to see for himself the stuff of which the Ulstermen were really made. Harcourt had declined in bantering tones.

I understand [he wrote] that your June review is rather in the nature of a preliminary review with a regard to future contingencies than an immediate call to arms with a view to instant hostilities. … When your hypothetical insurrection is a little more advanced and war is actually declared, I may perhaps take advantage of your offer and solicit a place as spectator on your staff. I do not know if your plan of campaign contemplates a march upon London against the Crown and Parliament; if so, I might meet you half-way at

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