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Updated: June 9, 2025
These honours were bestowed by the King in person at an investiture held in the Ulster Hall in the afternoon. There must have been many present whose minds went back to some of the most stirring events of Ulster's domestic history which had been transacted in the same building within recent years.
He told the Ulstermen that he had come to them as the leader of the Unionist Party to give them the assurance that "that party regard your cause, not as yours alone, nor as ours alone, but as the cause of the Empire"; the meeting, which he had expected to be a great gathering but which far exceeded his expectation, proved that Ulster's hostility to Home Rule, far from having slackened, as enemies had alleged, had increased and solidified with the passing years; they were men "animated by a unity of purpose, by a fixity of resolution which nothing can shake and which must prove irresistible," to whom he would apply Cromwell's words to his Ironsides: "You are men who know what you are fighting for, and love what you know."
This was an attitude of mind which Ulster could endorse, although it did not fully represent Ulster's conviction: but this was the case which Sir Edward Carson always made on behalf of Ulster, and he made it as an Irishman whose personal interests and connections lay in the South of Ireland, not in the North.
"Yours," said Bland. "Well, mine, if this must be an interview; but I'd rather you had the whole credit. Are nothing to mine when I survey the vacant pedestal of that statue. You catch the idea now?" "No," said Bland. "I don't. Is there one?" "Yes, there is. These unrecognizable fragments of stone, the once majestic statue, Ulster's loyalty." "Good," said Bland. "I have it now."
That clarion was, indeed, in no danger of being forgotten; but there happened at that particular moment to be a very special reason for Ulstermen to remember it, and the incident which was present in Londonderry's mind a Resolution passed by the Standing Committee of the Ulster Unionist Council two days earlier proved to be so distinct a turning-point in the history of Ulster's stand for the Union that it claims more than a passing mention.
Redmond's next important speech in England showed by its emphasis that he felt a danger. He denounced "the gigantic game of bluff and black-mail" which was in progress. The proposed exclusion of Ulster was not a proposition that could be considered. It would bring about, he thought, the ruin of Ulster's prosperity.
He went on to expose the hollowness of the allegation, then current in Liberal circles, that Ulster's repugnance to Home Rule was less uncompromising than it formerly had been.
A single resolution, identical in the simplicity of its terms, was carried without a dissenting voice at every one of these meetings: "We hereby reaffirm the resolve of the great Ulster Convention of 1892: 'We will not have Home Rule." These words became so familiar that the laconic phrase "We won't have it," was on everybody's lips as the Alpha and Omega of Ulster's attitude, and was sometimes heard with unexpected abruptness in no very precise context.
He was actually crowned King, and laid siege to Carrickfergus, while the wild chieftains of Connaught broke into the English settlements, and did great mischief, till they were defeated at Athenry by the Earl of Ulster's brother and Sir Richard Bermingham.
Churchill made it plainer, that the Unionist leader did not speak for Ulster; Ulster's intention was still to use its own opposition to Home Rule as a bar to self-government for the whole of Ireland. Equally was it plain that the plebiscite by counties would not be unacceptable to Mr. Churchill.
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