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Tag Archives: James Craig (1st Viscount Craigavon)


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Birth of Sir Anthony Babington, Barrister, Judge & Politician

Sir Anthony Brutus Babington PC (NI), Anglo-Irish barrister, judge and politician, is born on November 24, 1877, at Creevagh House, County Londonderry, to Hume Babington JP, son of Rev. Hume Babington and a landowner of 1,540 acres, and Hester (née Watt), sister of Andrew Alexander Watt.

Babington is born into the Anglo-Irish Babington family that arrives in Ireland in 1610 when Brutus Babington is appointed Bishop of Derry. Notable relations include Robert Babington, William Babington, Benjamin Guy Babington and James Melville Babington and author Anthony Babington.

Babington is educated at Glenalmond School, Perthshire, and Trinity College, Dublin, where he wins the Gold Medal for Oratory of the College Historical Society in 1899.

Babington is called to the Irish Bar in 1900. He briefly lectures in Equity at King’s Inns, and it is during this time, in 1910, that he re-arranges and re-writes R.E. Osborne’s Jurisdiction and Practice of County Courts in Ireland in Equity and Probate Matters. He takes silk in 1917.

Babington moves to the newly established Northern Ireland in 1921 and practises as a barrister until his election to the House of Commons of Northern Ireland as the Ulster Unionist Party member for Belfast South in the 1925 Northern Ireland general election and subsequent appointment as Attorney General for Northern Ireland the same year in the cabinet of James Craig, 1st Viscount Craigavon. His appointment to the Privy Council of Northern Ireland in 1926 entitles him to the style “The Right Honourable.” From 1929 he is the MP for Belfast Cromac, the Belfast South constituency having been abolished. He is made an honorary bencher of the Middle Temple in 1930.

Babington resigns from politics in 1937 upon his appointment as a Lord Justice of Appeal and is knighted in the 1937 Coronation Honours.

In 1947, Babington chairs the Babington Agricultural Enquiry Committee, named in his honour, which is established in 1943 to examine agriculture in Northern Ireland. The committee’s first recommendation under Babington’s leadership is that Northern Ireland should direct all its energies to the production of livestock and livestock products and to their efficient processing and marketing.

Babington retires from the judiciary in 1949, taking up the chairmanship of the Northern Ireland Transport Tribunal, which exists until 1967, established under the Ulster Transport Act – promoting a car-centred transport policy – and which is largely responsible for the closure of the Belfast and County Down Railway. He endorses the closure on financial grounds and is at cross purposes with his co-chair, Dr. James Beddy, who advises against the closure, citing the disruption of life in the border region between the north and the south as his primary reason in addition to financial grounds.

Babington also chairs a government inquiry into the licensing of clubs, the proceeds of which results in new regulatory legislation at Stormont. While Attorney General, he is a proponent of renaming Northern Ireland as “Ulster.”

Babington is critical of the newly proposed Irish constitution, in which the name of the Irish state is changed to “Ireland,” laying claim to jurisdiction over Northern Ireland.

Michael McDunphy, Secretary to the President of Ireland, then Douglas Hyde, recalls Ernest Alton‘s correspondence with Babington on the question of Irish unity, in which Alton and Babington are revealed to be at cross purposes. The discussion is used as an example by Brian Murphy, in Forgotten Patriot: Douglas Hyde and the Foundation of the Irish Presidency, as an example of the office of the Irish President becoming embroiled in an initiative involving Trinity College Dublin and a senior Northern Ireland legal figure, namely Babington. 

Babington writes to Alton, then Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, expressing his view that, as Murphy summarises, “… Severance between the two parts of Ireland could not continue, that it was the duty of all Irishmen to work for early unification and that in his opinion Trinity College was a very appropriate place in which the first move should be made.” When Alton arrives to meet with Hyde, it emerges, after conversing with Hyde’s secretary McDunphy, that he and Babington are at cross purposes. “It soon became clear that the united Ireland contemplated by Mr. [sic] Justice Babington of the Northern Ireland Judiciary was one within the framework of the British Commonwealth of Nations, involving recognition of the King of England as the Supreme Head, or as Dr. Alton put it, the symbol of unity of the whole system,” writes McDunphy.

On September 5, 1907, Babington marries Ethel Vaughan Hart, daughter of George Vaughan Hart of Howth, County Dublin (the son of Sir Andrew Searle Hart) and his wife Mary Elizabeth Hone, a scion of the Hone family. They have three children.

Babington is a member of the Apprentice Boys of Derry. From 1926 to 1952, he is a member of the board of governors of the Belfast Royal Academy. He serves as warden (chairman) of the board from 1941 to 1943. Through his efforts the school acquires the Castle Grounds from Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 9th Earl of Shaftesbury in 1934.

Babington is a keen golfer. He is an international golfer from 1903 to 1913, during which he is runner-up in the Irish Amateur Golf Championships in 1909 and one of the Irish representatives at an international match in 1913. The Babington Room in the Royal Portrush Golf Club is named after him, as is the 18th hole on the course as a result of the key role he plays in shaping its history.

Babington dies at the age of 94 on April 10, 1972 at his home, Creevagh, Portrush, County Antrim.


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Birth of Frederick Hugh Crawford, Loyalist & British Army Officer

Colonel Frederick Hugh Crawford, CBE, JP, an officer in the British Army, is born in Belfast on August 21, 1861. A staunch Ulster loyalist, he is one of the lesser-known figures in Ulster Unionist history but one who is hugely influential because of his involvement in what is known as the Larne gun-running incident, when he is responsible for smuggling over 25,000 guns and ammunition into the North on the night of April 24, 1914. This makes him a hero for Northern Ireland‘s unionists.

Crawford is born into a “solid Methodist” family of Ulster Scots roots. He attends Methodist College Belfast and University College London (UCL). While Crawford is a determined Ulster loyalist, his great-grandfather was Alexander Crawford, a United Irishman arrested in March 1797 for “high treason,” and sent to Kilmainham Gaol, sharing a cell with prominent United Irishman Henry Joy McCracken.

According to the 1911 census for Ireland, Crawford is living in Marlborough Park, Belfast, with his wife of 15 years, Helen, and four of their five children: Helen Nannie, Marjorie Doreen, Ethel Bethea and Malcolm Adair Alexander. His other child, Stuart Wright Knox, is recorded as a pupil at Ballycloghan National School, Belfast. Stuart would become a lieutenant colonel in the British Army, before being invalided in 1944. Malcolm, after being a member of the Colonial Police, joins the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), advancing to District Inspector. In 1931, Malcolm becomes a Justice of the Peace for Singapore.

Crawford works as an engineer for White Star Line in the 1880s, before returning from Australia in 1892. In 1894, he enlists with the Mid-Ulster Artillery regiment of the British Army, before being transferred to the Donegal Artillery, with which he serves during the Boer Wars, earning himself the rank of major.

In 1898, Crawford is appointed governor of Campbell College, Belfast. Two of his children, Stuart Wright Knox and Malcolm Adair Alexander, both attend Campbell College.

In 1911, Crawford becomes a member of the Ulster Unionist Council. On September 28, 1912, he is in charge of the 2,500 well-dressed stewards and marshals that escort Sir Edward Carson and the Ulster Unionist leadership from the Ulster Hall in central Belfast to the nearby City Hall on Donegall Square for the signing of the Ulster Covenant, which he allegedly signs in his own blood. With the formation of the Ulster Volunteers in 1913, he is made their Director of Ordnance.

During World War I Crawford is an officer commanding the Royal Army Service Corps and is awarded the Royal Humane Society‘s bronze medal for saving life. He also becomes a justice of the peace for Belfast.

With regard to Irish Home Rule, Crawford is strongly partisan and backs armed resistance to it, being contemptuous of those who use political bluffing. His advocation of armed resistance is evident when he remarks, at a meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council, that his heart “rejoiced” when he heard talk of looking into using physical force. At another meeting he even goes as far as asking some attendees to step into another room where he has fixed bayonets, rifles and cartridges laid out.

In 1910, the Ulster Unionist Council plans for the creation of an army to oppose Home Rule and approaches Crawford to act as their agent in securing weapons and ammunition. He tries several times to smuggle arms into Ulster, however, vigilant customs officials seize many of them at the docks. Despite this, the meticulously planned and audacious Larne gun-running of April 1914, devised and carried out by Crawford, is successful in bringing in enough arms to equip the Ulster Volunteer Force.

By the 1920s Crawford remains as stoic in his beliefs, remarking in a letter in 1920 that “I am ashamed to call myself an Irishman. Thank God I am not one. I am an Ulsterman, a very different breed.” In March 1920, he begins to reorganize the UVF and in May 1920 he appeals to Carson and James Craig for official government recognition. He states, “We in Ulster will not be able to hold our men in hand much longer…we will have the Protestants…killing a lot of the well-known Sinn Féin leaders and hanging half a dozen priests.” In 1921, he attempts to create an organisation intended to be a “Detective Reserve,” but called the “Ulster Brotherhood,” the aims of which are to uphold the Protestant religion and political and religious freedom, as well as use all means to “destroy and wipe out the Sinn Féin conspiracy of murder, assassination and outrage.” This organisation only lasts for a few months after failing to gain acceptance from the political authorities.

In 1921, Crawford is included in the Royal Honours List and appointed a CBE. In 1934, he writes his memoirs, titled Guns for Ulster.

Crawford dies on November 5, 1952, and is buried in the City Cemetery, Falls Road, Belfast. Upon news of his death, he is described by the then Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Sir Basil Brooke, as being “as a fearless fighter in the historic fight to keep Ulster British.”


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Birth of Sir Edward Carson, Politician, Barrister & Judge

Edward Henry Carson, Baron Carson, Irish unionist politician, barrister and judge, known as the “uncrowned king of Ulster,” is born on February 9, 1854, at 4 Harcourt Street, in Dublin. He serves as the Attorney General and Solicitor General for England, Wales and Ireland as well as the First Lord of the Admiralty for the British Royal Navy.

Although Carson is to become the champion of the northern province, he is born into a Protestant family in southern Ireland. He is educated at Portarlington School, Wesley College, Dublin, and Trinity College Dublin, where he reads law and is an active member of the College Historical Society. He graduates BA and MA.

From 1877, early in his Irish legal career, he comes to mistrust the Irish nationalists. As senior Crown prosecutor, he sternly enforces the Criminal Law and Procedure (Ireland) Act 1887, securing numerous convictions for violence against Irish estates owned by English absentee landlords. He is appointed Solicitor-General for Ireland and elected to the British House of Commons in 1892, is called to the English bar at Middle Temple on April 21, 1893, and serves as Solicitor General for England and Wales from 1900 to 1905. During these years he achieves his greatest success as a barrister. In 1895, his cross-examination of Oscar Wilde largely secures the Irish writer’s conviction for homosexuality.

On February 21, 1910, Carson accepts the parliamentary leadership of the anti-Home Rule Irish Unionists and, forfeiting his chance to lead the British Conservative Party, devotes himself entirely to the Ulster cause. His dislike of southern Irish separatism is reinforced by his belief that the heavy industry of Belfast is necessary to the economic survival of Ireland. The Liberal government (1908–16) under H. H. Asquith, which in 1912 decides to prepare a Home Rule bill, cannot overcome the effect of his extra-parliamentary opposition. The Solemn League and Covenant of resistance to Home Rule, signed by Carson and other leaders in Belfast on September 28, 1912, and afterward by thousands of Ulstermen, is followed by his establishment of a provisional government in Belfast in September 1913. Early in that year he recruits a private Ulster army, the Ulster Volunteer Force, that openly drills for fighting in the event that the Home Rule Bill is enacted. In preparation for a full-scale civil war, he successfully organizes the landing of a large supply of weapons from Germany at Larne, County Antrim, on April 24, 1914. The British government, however, begins to make concessions to Ulster unionists, and on the outbreak of World War I he agrees to a compromise whereby the Home Rule Bill is enacted but its operation suspended until the end of the war on the understanding that Ulster’s exclusion will then be reconsidered.

Appointed Attorney General for England in Asquith’s wartime coalition ministry on May 25, 1915, Carson resigns on October 19 because of his dissatisfaction with the conduct of the war. In David Lloyd George’s coalition ministry (1916–22) he is First Lord of the Admiralty from December 10, 1916, to July 17, 1917, and then a member of the war cabinet as minister without portfolio until January 21, 1918.

Disillusioned by the Government of Ireland Act 1920 that partitions Ireland and establishes what is essentially a Home Rule parliament in Belfast, Carson declines an invitation to head the Northern Ireland government and resigns as Ulster Unionist Party leader in February 1921. Accepting a life peerage, he serves from 1921 to 1929 as Lord of Appeal in Ordinary and takes the title Baron Carson of Duncairn.

Carson retires in October 1929. In July 1932, during his last visit to Northern Ireland, he witnesses the unveiling of a large statue of himself in front of Parliament Buildings at Stormont. The statue is sculpted by Leonard Stanford Merrifield, cast in bronze and placed upon a plinth. The inscription on the base reads “By the loyalists of Ulster as an expression of their love and admiration for its subject.” It is unveiled by James Craig, 1st Viscount Craigavon, in the presence of more than 40,000 people.

Carson lives at Cleve Court, a Queen Anne house near Minster-in-Thanet in the Isle of Thanet, Kent, bought in 1921. It is here that he dies peacefully on October 22, 1935. A warship brings his body to Belfast for the funeral. Thousands of shipworkers stop work and bow their heads as HMS Broke steams slowly up Belfast Lough, with his flag-draped coffin sitting on the quarterdeck. Britain gives him a state funeral on Saturday, October 26, 1935, which takes place in Belfast’s St. Anne’s Cathedral. He remains the only person to have been buried there. From a silver bowl, soil from each of the six counties of Northern Ireland is scattered onto his coffin, which had earlier been covered by the Union Jack. At his funeral service the choir sings his own favourite hymn, “I Vow to Thee, My Country.”


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Death of Seán MacEntee, Fianna Fáil Politician

Seán Francis MacEntee (Irish: Seán Mac an tSaoi), Fianna Fáil politician, dies on January 9, 1984, in Booterstown, Dublin. He serves as Tánaiste (1959-65), Minister for Social Welfare (1957-61), Minister for Health (1957-65), Minister for Local Government and Public Health (1941-48), Minister for Industry and Commerce (1939-41), and Minister for Finance (1932-39 and 1951-54). He serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) from 1918 to 1969. At the time of his death, he is the last surviving member of the First Dáil.

MacEntee is born as John McEntee at 47 King Street, Belfast, on August 23, 1889, the son of James McEntee, a publican, and his wife, Mary Owens, both of whom are from Monaghan. James McEntee is a prominent Nationalist member of Belfast Corporation and a close friend of Joseph Devlin MP.

MacEntee is educated at St. Mary’s Christian Brothers’ Grammar School, St. Malachy’s College and the Belfast Municipal College of Technology where he qualifies as an electrical engineer. His early political involvement is with the Irish Socialist Republican Party in Belfast. He quickly rises through the ranks of the trade union movement becoming junior representative in the city’s shipyards. Following his education, he works as an engineer in Dundalk, County Louth, and is involved in the establishment of a local corps of the Irish Volunteers in the town. He mobilises in Dundalk and fights in the General Post Office garrison in the Easter Rising in 1916. He is sentenced to death for his part in the rising. This sentence is later commuted to life imprisonment. He is released in the general amnesty in 1917 and is later elected a member of the National Executives of both Sinn Féin and the Irish Volunteers in October 1917. He is later elected Sinn Féin Member of Parliament (MP) for South Monaghan at the 1918 Irish general election.

An attempt to develop MacEntee’s career as a consulting engineer in Belfast is interrupted by the Irish War of Independence in 1919. He serves as Vice-Commandant of the Belfast Brigade of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). He is also a member of the Volunteer Executive, a sort of Cabinet and Directory for the Minister for Defence and the HQ Staff, however, he remains one of the few Sinn Féiners from the north. On August 6, 1920, he presents ‘a Memorial’ lecture to the Dáil from the Belfast Corporation. He tells the Dáil it is the only custodian of public order, that a Nationalist pogrom is taking place, and he advises them to fight Belfast. The Dáil government’s policy is dubbed Hibernia Irredenta or “Greening Ireland.” He is asked to resign his South Monaghan seat after voting against a bunting celebration in Lurgan to mark the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty.

In April 1921 MacEntee is transferred to Dublin to direct a special anti-partition campaign in connection with the May general election. It remains Michael Collins‘s policy, he declares, that the largely Protestant shipyard workers of Belfast are being directed by the British, urging all Irishmen to rejoin the Republic. Correspondingly the Ulster Unionist Council rejects the call for a review of the boundary commission decision made on Northern Ireland. But when Ulstermen choose James Craig as Premier, Collins denounces democracy in the north as a sham. It is on the partition of Ireland issue that MacEntee votes against the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. During the subsequent Irish Civil War, he commands the IRA unit in Marlboro Street Post Office in Dublin. He later fights with Cathal Brugha in the Hamman Hotel and is subsequently interned in Kilmainham and Gormanstown until December 1923.

After his release from prison, MacEntee devotes himself more fully to his engineering practice, although he unsuccessfully contests the Dublin County by-election of 1924. He becomes a founder-member of Fianna Fáil in 1926 and is eventually elected a TD for Dublin County at the June 1927 Irish general election.

MacEntee founds the Association of Patent Agents in 1929, having gained his interest in Patents when he worked as an assistant engineer in Dundalk Urban District Council. He values his status as a Patent Agent as he maintains his name on the Register for over 30 years while he holds Ministerial rank in the Irish Government, although he is not believed to have taken any active part in the patent business, which is carried on by his business partners.

In 1932, Fianna Fáil comes to power for the very first time, with MacEntee becoming Minister for Finance. In keeping with the party’s protectionist economic policies his first budget in March of that year sees the introduction of new duties on 43 imports, many of them coming from Britain. This sees retaliation from the British government, which in turn provokes a response from the Irish government. This is the beginning of the Anglo-Irish Trade War between the two nations, however, a treaty in 1938, signed by MacEntee and other senior members brings an end to the issue.

In 1939, World War II breaks out and a cabinet reshuffle results in MacEntee being appointed as Minister for Industry and Commerce, taking over from his rival Seán Lemass. During his tenure at this department, he introduces the important Trade Union Act (1941). In 1941, another reshuffle of ministers takes place, with him becoming Minister for Local Government and Public Health. The Health portfolio is transferred to a new Department of Health in 1947. Following the 1948 Irish general election, Fianna Fáil returns to the opposition benches for the first time in sixteen years.

In 1951, Fianna Fáil are back in government, although in minority status, depending on independent deputies for survival. MacEntee once again returns to the position of Minister for Finance where he feels it is vital to deal with the balance of payments deficit. He brings in a harsh budget in 1951 which raises income tax and tariffs on imports. His chief aim is to cut spending and reduce imports, however, this comes at a cost as unemployment increases sharply. The increases are retained in his next two budgets in 1952 and 1953. It is often said that it is his performance during this period that costs Fianna Fáil the general election in 1954. The poor grasp on economics also does his political career tremendous damage as up to that point he is seen as a likely successor as Taoiseach. Seán Lemass, however, is now firmly seen as the “heir apparent.”

In 1957, Fianna Fáil returns to power with an overall majority with MacEntee being appointed Minister for Health. The financial and economic portfolios are dominated by Lemass and other like-minded ministers who want to move away from protection to free trade. He is credited during this period with the reorganisation of the health services, the establishment of separate departments of health and social welfare, and the fluoridation of water supplies in Ireland. In 1959, he becomes Tánaiste when Seán Lemass is elected Taoiseach.

Following the 1965 Irish general election, MacEntee is 76 years old and retires from the government. He re-emerges in 1966 to launch a verbal attack on Seán Lemass for deciding to step down as party leader and Taoiseach. The two men, however, patch up their differences shortly afterwards. MacEntee retires from Dáil Éireann in 1969 at the age of 80, making him the oldest TD in Irish history.

MacEntee dies in Dublin on January 9, 1984, at the age of 94. He is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.


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Death of Sir James Craig, First Prime Minister of Northern Ireland

James Craig, 1st Viscount Craigavon PC PC (NI) DL, prominent Irish unionist politician, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party and the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland from 1921 until his death, dies peacefully at his home at Glencraig, County Down, at the age of 69 on November 24, 1940.

Craig is born at Sydenham, Belfast, on January 8, 1871, the seventh of nine children of James Craig (1828–1900), a wealthy whiskey distiller who had entered the firm of Dunville & Co. as a clerk and by age 40 is a millionaire and a partner in the firm. Craig Snr. owns a large house called Craigavon, overlooking Belfast Lough. His mother, Eleanor Gilmore Browne, is the daughter of Robert Browne, a prosperous man who owned property in Belfast and a farm outside Lisburn. Craig is educated at Merchiston Castle School in Edinburgh, Scotland. After school he begins work as a stockbroker, eventually opening his own firm in Belfast.

Craig enlists in the 3rd (Militia) battalion of the Royal Irish Rifles on January 17, 1900, to serve in the Second Boer War. He is seconded to the Imperial Yeomanry, a cavalry force created for service during the war, as a lieutenant in the 13th battalion on February 24, 1900, and leaves Liverpool for South Africa on the SS Cymric in March 1900. After arrival he is soon sent to the front and is taken prisoner in May 1900, but released by the Boers because of a perforated colon. On his recovery he becomes deputy assistant director of the Imperial Military Railways, showing the qualities of organisation that are to mark his involvement in both British and Ulster politics. In June 1901 he is sent home suffering from dysentery, and by the time he is fit for service again the war is over. He is promoted to captain in the 3rd Royal Irish Rifles on September 20, 1902, while still seconded to South Africa.

On his return to Ireland, having received a £100,000 legacy from his father’s will, Craig turns to politics, serving as Member of the British Parliament for East Down from 1906 to 1918. From 1918 to 1921 he represents Mid Down and serves in the British government as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Pensions (1919–20) and Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty (1920–21).

Craig rallies Ulster loyalist opposition to Irish Home Rule in Ulster before World War I, organising the paramilitary Ulster Volunteers (UVF) and buying arms from Imperial Germany. The UVF becomes the nucleus of the 36th (Ulster) Division during World War I. He succeeds Edward Carson as leader of the Ulster Unionist Party in February 1921.

In the 1921 Northern Ireland general election, the first ever, Craig is elected to the newly created House of Commons of Northern Ireland as one of the members for Down.

On June 7, 1921, Craig is appointed the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. The House of Commons of Northern Ireland assembles for the first time later that day.

Craig is made a baronet in 1918, and in 1927 is created Viscount Craigavon, of Stormont in the County of Down. He is also the recipient of honorary degrees from Queen’s University Belfast (1922) and the University of Oxford (1926).

Craig had made his career in British as well as Northern Irish politics, but his premiership shows little sign of his earlier close acquaintance with the British political world. He becomes intensely parochial and suffers from his loss of intimacy with British politicians in 1938, when the British government concludes agreements with Dublin to end the Anglo-Irish trade war between the two countries. He never tries to persuade Westminster to protect Northern Ireland‘s industries, especially the linen industry, which is central to its economy. He is anxious not to provoke Westminster, given the precarious state of Northern Ireland’s position. In April 1939, and again in May 1940 during World War II, he calls for conscription to be introduced in Northern Ireland (which the British government, fearing a backlash from nationalists, refuses). He also calls for Winston Churchill to invade Ireland using Scottish and Welsh troops in order to seize the valuable ports and install a Governor-General at Dublin.

While still prime minister, Craig dies peacefully at his home at Glencraig, County Down at the age of 69 on November 24, 1940. He is buried on the Stormont Estate on December 5, 1940, and is succeeded as the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland by the Minister of Finance, J. M. Andrews.

(Pictured: James Craig, 1st Viscount Craigavon, bromide print by Olive Edis, National Portrait Gallery, London)


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Ulster Day

Ulster’s Solemn League and Covenant, commonly known as the Ulster Covenant, is signed by nearly 500,000 people on and before September 28, 1912, in protest against the Third Home Rule Bill introduced by the British Government in the same year.

The Covenant is first drafted by Thomas Sinclair, a prominent unionist and businessman from Belfast. Sir Edward Carson is the first person to sign the Covenant at Belfast City Hall with a silver pen, followed by Charles Stewart Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 6th Marquess of Londonderry (the former Lord Lieutenant of Ireland), representatives of the Protestant churches, and then by Sir James Craig. The signatories, 471,414 in all, are all against the establishment of a Home Rule parliament in Dublin. The Ulster Covenant is immortalised in Rudyard Kipling‘s poem “Ulster 1912.” On September 23, 1912, the Ulster Unionist Council votes in favour of a resolution pledging itself to the Covenant.

The Covenant has two basic parts: the Covenant itself, which is signed by men, and the Declaration, which is signed by women. In total, the Covenant is signed by 237,368 men; the Declaration, by 234,046 women. Both the Covenant and Declaration are held by the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI). An online searchable database is available on the PRONI website.

In January 1913, the Ulster Volunteers aim to recruit 100,000 men between the ages of 17 and 65 who had signed the Covenant as a unionist militia. A British Covenant, similar to the Ulster Covenant in opposition to the Home Rule Bill, receives two million signatures in 1914.

The majority of the signatories of the Covenant are from Ulster, although the signing is also attended by several thousand southern unionists. Acknowledging this, Carson pays tribute to “my own fellow citizens from Dublin, from Wicklow, from Clare [and], yes, from Cork, rebel Cork, who are now holding the hand of Ulster,” to cheers from the crowd.

Robert James Stewart, a Presbyterian from Drum, County Monaghan, and the grandfather of Heather Humphreys, the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht (2014-16) in the Republic of Ireland, is one of around 6,000 signatories in County Monaghan, where one quarter of the population is Protestant before the establishment of the Irish Free State. Almost 18,000 people sign either the Covenant or the Declaration in County Donegal.

The signature of Frederick Hugh Crawford is claimed by him to have been written in blood. However, this is disputed. Based on the results of a forensic test that he carries out in September 2012 at PRONI, Dr. Alastair Ruffell of Queen’s University Belfast asserts that he is 90% positive that the signature is not blood. Crawford’s signature is injected with a small amount of luminol. This substance reacts with iron in blood’s hemoglobin to produce a blue-white glow. The test is very sensitive and can detect tiny traces even in old samples. Crawford’s signature is still a rich red colour today which would be unlikely if it had been blood. Nevertheless, some unionists are not convinced by the evidence.

The term “Solemn League and Covenant” recalls a key historic document signed in 1643, by which the Scottish Covenanters make a political and military alliance with the leaders of the English Parliamentarians during the First English Civil War.

The Ulster Covenant is used as a template for the “Natal Covenant,” signed in 1955 by 33,000 British-descended Natalians against the nationalist South African government’s intention of declaring the Union a republic. It is signed in Durban‘s City Hall. Loosely based on Belfast’s Ulster Covenant, the Ulster scene is almost exactly reproduced.

September 28 is today known as “Ulster Day” to unionists.

(Pictured: Sir Edward Carson signing the Solemn League and Covenant)


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Birth of Seán MacEntee, Fianna Fáil Politician

Seán Francis MacEntee (Irish: Seán Mac an tSaoi), Fianna Fáil politician, is born as John McEntee at 47 King Street, Belfast, on August 23, 1889. He serves as Tánaiste (1959-65), Minister for Social Welfare (1957-61), Minister for Health (1957-65), Minister for Local Government and Public Health (1941-48), Minister for Industry and Commerce (1939-41), and Minister for Finance (1932-39 and 1951-54). He serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) from 1918 to 1969.

MacEntee is the son of James McEntee, a publican, and his wife, Mary Owens, both of whom are from Monaghan. James McEntee is a prominent Nationalist member of Belfast Corporation and a close friend of Joseph Devlin MP.

MacEntee is educated at St. Mary’s Christian Brothers’ Grammar School, St. Malachy’s College and the Belfast Municipal College of Technology where he qualifies as an electrical engineer. His early political involvement is with the Irish Socialist Republican Party in Belfast. He quickly rises through the ranks of the trade union movement becoming junior representative in the city’s shipyards. Following his education, he works as an engineer in Dundalk, County Louth, and is involved in the establishment of a local corps of the Irish Volunteers in the town. He mobilises in Dundalk and fights in the General Post Office garrison in the Easter Rising in 1916. He is sentenced to death for his part in the rising. This sentence is later commuted to life imprisonment. He is released in the general amnesty in 1917 and is later elected a member of the National Executives of both Sinn Féin and the Irish Volunteers in October 1917. He is later elected Sinn Féin Member of Parliament (MP) for South Monaghan at the 1918 Irish general election.

An attempt to develop MacEntee’s career as a consulting engineer in Belfast is interrupted by the Irish War of Independence in 1919. He serves as Vice-Commandant of the Belfast Brigade of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). He is also a member of the Volunteer Executive, a sort of Cabinet and Directory for the Minister for Defence and the HQ Staff, however, he remains one of the few Sinn Féiners from the north. On August 6, 1920, he presents ‘a Memorial’ lecture to the Dáil from the Belfast Corporation. He tells the Dáil it is the only custodian of public order, that a Nationalist pogrom is taking place, and he advises them to fight Belfast. The Dáil government’s policy is dubbed Hibernia Irredenta or “Greening Ireland.” He is asked to resign his South Monaghan seat after voting against a bunting celebration in Lurgan to mark the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty.

In April 1921 MacEntee is transferred to Dublin to direct a special anti-partition campaign in connection with the May general election. It remains Michael Collins‘s policy, he declares, that the largely Protestant shipyard workers of Belfast are being directed by the British, urging all Irishmen to rejoin the Republic. Correspondingly the Ulster Unionist Council rejects the call for a review of the boundary commission decision made on Northern Ireland. But when Ulstermen choose James Craig as Premier, Collins denounces democracy in the north as a sham. It is on the partition of Ireland issue that MacEntee votes against the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. During the subsequent Irish Civil War, he commands the IRA unit in Marlboro Street Post Office in Dublin. He later fights with Cathal Brugha in the Hamman Hotel and is subsequently interned in Kilmainham and Gormanstown until December 1923.

After his release from prison, MacEntee devotes himself more fully to his engineering practice, although he unsuccessfully contests the Dublin County by-election of 1924. He becomes a founder-member of Fianna Fáil in 1926 and is eventually elected a TD for Dublin County at the June 1927 Irish general election.

MacEntee founds the Association of Patent Agents in 1929, having gained his interest in Patents when he worked as an assistant engineer in Dundalk Urban District Council. He values his status as a Patent Agent as he maintains his name on the Register for over 30 years while he holds Ministerial rank in the Irish Government, although he is not believed to have taken any active part in the patent business, which is carried on by his business partners.

In 1932, Fianna Fáil comes to power for the very first time, with MacEntee becoming Minister for Finance. In keeping with the party’s protectionist economic policies his first budget in March of that year sees the introduction of new duties on 43 imports, many of them coming from Britain. This sees retaliation from the British government, which in turn provokes a response from the Irish government. This is the beginning of the Anglo-Irish Trade War between the two nations, however, a treaty in 1938, signed by MacEntee and other senior members brings an end to the issue.

In 1939, World War II breaks out and a cabinet reshuffle results in MacEntee being appointed as Minister for Industry and Commerce, taking over from his rival Seán Lemass. During his tenure at this department, he introduces the important Trade Union Act (1941). In 1941, another reshuffle of ministers takes place, with him becoming Minister for Local Government and Public Health. The Health portfolio is transferred to a new Department of Health in 1947. Following the 1948 Irish general election, Fianna Fáil returns to the opposition benches for the first time in sixteen years.

In 1951, Fianna Fáil are back in government, although in minority status, depending on independent deputies for survival. MacEntee once again returns to the position of Minister for Finance where he feels it is vital to deal with the balance of payments deficit. He brings in a harsh budget in 1951 which raises income tax and tariffs on imports. His chief aim is to cut spending and reduce imports, however, this comes at a cost as unemployment increases sharply. The increases are retained in his next two budgets in 1952 and 1953. It is often said that it is his performance during this period that costs Fianna Fáil the general election in 1954. The poor grasp on economics also does his political career tremendous damage as up to that point he is seen as a likely successor as Taoiseach. Seán Lemass, however, is now firmly seen as the “heir apparent.”

In 1957, Fianna Fáil returns to power with an overall majority with MacEntee being appointed Minister for Health. The financial and economic portfolios are dominated by Lemass and other like-minded ministers who want to move away from protection to free trade. He is credited during this period with the reorganisation of the health services, the establishment of separate departments of health and social welfare, and the fluoridation of water supplies in Ireland. In 1959, he becomes Tánaiste when Seán Lemass is elected Taoiseach.

Following the 1965 Irish general election, MacEntee is 76 years old and retires from the government. He re-emerges in 1966 to launch a verbal attack on Seán Lemass for deciding to step down as party leader and Taoiseach. The two men, however, patch up their differences shortly afterwards. MacEntee retires from Dáil Éireann in 1969 at the age of 80, making him the oldest TD in Irish history.

MacEntee dies in Dublin on January 9, 1984, at the age of 94. He is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin. At the time of his death, he is the last surviving member of the First Dáil.


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IRA Kidnaps & Holds Hostage 42 Prominent Loyalist Activists

On February 7, 1922, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Northern Ireland kidnaps and holds hostage forty-two prominent loyalist activists in Fermanagh and Tyrone in response to the January 14 arrest of the Monaghan county football team, who were traveling to play Derry in the final of the Ulster Championship game.

A party of eighteen armed B-Specials, a part-time auxiliary police force which is almost 100% Protestant, when traveling by train to Enniskillen, are stopped at Clones railway station in County Monaghan by an IRA group. The B-Specials react immediately by shooting Commander Fitzpatrick. His colleagues retaliate by fatally shooting four Specials and arresting the survivors. Trouble in the North is at a boiling point and in the three days after the Clones incident thirty people are murdered in Belfast.

Intense negotiations between Secretary of State for the Colonies Winston Churchill and Chairman of the Provisional Government of the Irish Free State Michael Collins helps to secure the release of the Monaghan footballers and the Fermanagh and Tyrone loyalists, but for some time the British suspend the evacuation of troops from Ireland. Following the incident, Churchill, who is leading the UK effort on the transfer of power following the Anglo-Irish Treaty, writes to his wife Clementine in what might be termed an understatement, “Ireland is sure to bring us every form of difficulty and embarrassment.”

Collins and James Craig, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, have further discussions in Dublin in early February 1922 but the meeting breaks down over the question of the boundary revision. Craig informs reporters that he has the assurance of the British Government that the Boundary Commission will make only slight changes. He complains that the maps which Collins had produced led him to the assumption that Collins had already been promised almost half of Northern Ireland. Craig agrees to minor changes but if North and South fail to agree, there will be no change at all. Collins issues a statement which refuses to admit any ambiguity and says that majorities must rule.

The British and the Provisional Government finally agreed that an Irish Free State Agreement Bill will legalise the Treaty and the transfer of power to the Provisional Government and will authorise the election of a Provisional Parliament to enact the Free State Constitution. Final ratification of the Treaty is deferred until the British confirm the Free State Constitution. Only then will Northern Ireland be allowed to exclude itself formally from the Free State.

(From: “OTD in 1922 – The IRA Kidnaps More Than Forty Loyalists Activists and ‘B’ Specials,” Stair na hÉireann | History of Ireland, https://stairnaheireann.net | Picture: Colour image of the IRA patrolling Grafton Street, Dublin, during the Irish Civil War in 1922, 1916 Easter Revolution in Colour)


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The McMahon Murders

The McMahon murders occur on March 24, 1922 when six Catholic civilians are shot dead at the home of the McMahon family in Belfast. Police officers break into their house at night and shoot all eight males inside, in an apparent sectarian attack. The victims are businessman Owen McMahon, four of his sons, and one of his employees. Two others are shot but survive, and a female family member is assaulted. The survivors say that most of the gunmen wore police uniforms and it is suspected that they were members of the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC). It is believed to be a reprisal for the Irish Republican Army‘s (IRA) killing of two policemen the previous day.

Following the end of the Irish War of Independence in July 1921 and the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921, the new unionist Government of Northern Ireland establishes the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC), a quasi-military reserve police force to the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), to counter the IRA.

The McMahon killings are believed to be a reprisal for the IRA’s killing of two USC policemen in Belfast. On March 23, 1922, USC officers Thomas Cunningham and William Cairnside are patrolling Great Victoria Street in the city centre when they are approached by a group of IRA members and shot dead. Two Catholics, Peter Murphy (61) and Sarah McShane (15), are shot dead in a suspected reprisal attack several hours later in the Catholic Short Strand area by unidentified gunmen. The McMahon family has no connection to any paramilitary violence.

At about 1:00 a.m. on March 24, 1922, two men wearing police uniforms seize a sledgehammer from a Belfast Corporation workman, who is guarding a building site at Carlisle Circus. A curfew is in place at the time, due to the daily violence in the city. At nearby Clifton Avenue they meet three other men and the party of five proceed to the home of Owen McMahon. Eight males and three females are in the house that night. The males are Owen, his six sons, and Edward McKinney, a parish just north of Buncrana in Inishowen, County Donegal. He works for the McMahons as a barman. The women are Owen’s wife Eliza, her daughter and her niece. At about 1:20 a.m., the gang uses the sledgehammer to break down the door of the McMahon residence.

Owen’s wife, Eliza, says that four of the men wore police caps and carried revolvers while another wore civilian clothes. John McMahon, one of Owen’s sons, says, “Four of the five men were dressed in the uniform of the RIC but, from their appearance, I know they are Specials, not regular RIC.” All of the men hide their faces. The four men in police uniform rush up the stairs and herd the males into the dining room. The women are taken into another room. When Owen asks why his family is being singled-out, one of the gunmen says it is because he is “a respected papist.” The gunmen say “you boys say your prayers,” before opening fire. The shooting continues for five minutes. Five of the men are killed outright and two are wounded, one fatally.

Owen McMahon (50), Gerard McMahon (15), Frank McMahon (24), Patrick McMahon (22) and Edward McKinney (25) are killed outright while Bernard McMahon (26) dies later. The youngest McMahon son, 12-year-old Michael, survives the attack by hiding behind furniture and pretending to be hit. John McMahon (30) survives despite serious gunshot wounds. Eliza McMahon raises the alarm by opening the drawing room window and shouting “Murder! Murder!” A matron at an adjoining nursing home is alerted and phones the police and an ambulance.

It is alleged that a group of policemen operating out of Brown Square Barracks in the Shankill Road area are behind the killings. This has never been proved, but historian Eamon Phoenix, of Stranmillis University College in Belfast, has said there is “strong circumstantial evidence” that District Inspector John Nixon was responsible. Historian Tim Pat Coogan believes the police were responsible. An inquiry is carried out by the Department of Defence of the Irish Free State, but not by the Northern Irish authorities. A 1924 Free State report alleges that twelve policemen, whom the report identifies by name, had carried out the McMahon murders, as well as several other attacks on Catholics.

The killings cause outrage among Belfast’s Catholic population and over 10,000 people attend the funerals of those killed.

David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, worried that the violence could collapse the new Northern Ireland administration, organise a meeting in London between Irish republican leader Michael Collins and Sir James Craig, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, both to try to stop the IRA violence which Collins has been tacitly encouraging and supporting, and to pressure Craig to provide more protection for Catholics. Craig denies the nationalist assertion that the McMahon killings were part of an anti-Catholic pogrom on behalf of state forces.

No one is ever prosecuted for the killings but District Inspector John Nixon of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) is strongly suspected of being responsible. Nixon is later forced to step down from the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the force that succeeds the RIC in June 1922, albeit on full pension, in 1924 after being heard giving (in breach of police regulations) a political speech to an Orange Order meeting saying that, “not an inch of Ulster should be yielded” to the Free State.


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Michael Collins Letter Fetches Record Price at Auction

On February 21, 2003, a letter signed by Irish revolutionary leader Michael Collins, written in 1922 upon his return from London, fetches a record price of €28,000 at an auction at James Adam & Sons Ltd. on Dublin’s St. Stephen’s Green. Estimated to fetch up to €8,000.00, despite fierce bidding by the National Library of Ireland, the letter is purchased by singer Enya’s manager, Mickey Ryan, who says he wants the letter to remain in Ireland.

The letter is a three-page document sent by Collins to prominent Derry republican Louis J. Walsh in 1922, telling him about his opposition to the Northern Ireland border. Replying to a letter from Walsh, he outlines his position regarding negotiations with Winston Churchill and unionist leader James Craig.

The letter is written after Collins returns to Dublin from a meeting in London with Churchill and Craig. He states in the letter that Craig’s stance on partition is seen as “an unreasonable one and not ours.”

“All the British statesmen are agreed that it was most disastrous on Craig’s part to talk about agreeing to nothing less than the six county area,” Collins writes.

Collins expresses his belief that ties would increase between leaders in the north and south, leading to a united Ireland in the long term. He tells Walsh that he is “no lover of partition, no matter what form it appears,” and that any form of partition is “distasteful” to him. “It would be far better to fix our minds for a time on a united Ireland, for this course will not leave minorities which would be impossible to govern,” he writes. He also says he hopes that one day a multi-denominational party might be formed in the north east, developing links with the Free State and destabilising the northern administration.