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‘Ulster will Fight and Ulster will be Right’: The Protestant Churches and Ulster’s Resistance to Home Rule, 1912–14

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

R. F. G. Holmes
R. F. G. Holmes*
Affiliation:
Union Theological College and the Queen's University, Belfast
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Extract

Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right’. Randolph Churchill may never have uttered these emotive words during his visit to Ulster in 1886—they appeared in a public letter to a Glasgow Liberal unionist—but they undoubtedly expressed the belligerence and self-righteousness of the Ulster protestant resistance to the prospect of home rule for Ireland. Joseph Lee has observed correctly that ‘Orangemen did not need to be told that they were right or that they would fight’, but after 1886 it was not only Orangemen who made such claims, nor even opportunist tory politicians like Churchill, but protestant churchmen and solid middle class citizens and farmers who would previously have distanced themselves fastidiously from Orangeism. In this paper we shall examine the encouragement and support given by protestant churches and churchmen—Presbyterians in particular—to the movement to resist home rule by force in the period 1912–14.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 20: The Church and War , 1983 , pp. 321 - 335
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1983

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References

1 Churchill, W.S., Lord Randolph Churchill 2 vols (London 1906) 2 pp 64-5Google Scholar.

2 Lee, [J.], [The Modernization of Irish Society, 1848-1918] (Dublin 1973) p 133 Google Scholar.

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7 Witness 19 July 1912.

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24 Witness 16 February 1912. Editorial articles in The Witness 1912-14 returned often to this problem.

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26 Witness 9 February 1912.

27 B[elfast] N[ews] L[etter] 10 April 1912.

28 Ibid.

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36 Ibid.

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38 Lee p 135.

39 Stewart pp 61-2.

40 Witness 30 August 1912.

41 McDowell, p 104.

42 Witness 13 September 1912.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid. 20 and 27 September 1912.

45 Ibid 4 October 1912.

46 Ibid.

47 Ibid.

48 Stewart p 66.

49 Witness 4 October 1912.

50 Ibid 25 October 1912.

51 Ibid 6 December 1912.

52 Ibid.

53 eg Ibid 25 October 1912; 31 January, 31 March, 2 May 1913.

54 Ibid 28 March 1913.

55 Ibid.

56 M.G.A. 12 p 636, and Armour p 273.

57 300 Years of Presbyterianism in Ireland 1613-1913 (Belfast 1913) p 20.

58 Ibid.

59 Ibid 11 and 18 July 1913.

60 Ibid 17 April 1914.

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64 Ibid 10 April 1914; M.G.A. 12 (1911-15) p 908.

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