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Ulster Will Fight?: The British Press and Ulster, 1885–1886

On February 1, 1886, William Gladstone, the “Grand Old Man” of British politics, began his third premiership determined to complete a twenty-year effort to pacify Ireland.Although the introduction of his Irish Home Rule bill was still several months away, some constituencies in Ireland and Britain were already feverish with excitement or fear over the prospects of Irish self-government. Foremost among the latter group were Ulster Protestants. An astute assessor of political opportunity, Lord Randolph Churchill had previously decided,“If the GOMwent for Home Rule, the Orange card would be the one to play.”Churchill would begin the process of playing that card with a much-publicized trip to Belfast on February 22–23, 1886.1 Prominent loyalists had organized Churchill’s visit, which featured numerous addresses from Orange lodges and noisy public affirmations of Ulster’s Protestant identity and loyalty. Churchill did not coin his famous phrase, “Ulster will fight, Ulster will be right,” in his keynote speech at Ulster Hall, but he did offer a number of lines sure to inflame sentiment in the audience and to infuriate his critics in equal measure. Perhaps the most remarkable of these came near the end.Although he believed the current storm over Home Rule would blow over, Churchill assured his listeners, if it did not he was of the opinion “that the struggle is not likely to remain within the lines of what we are accustomed to look upon as constitutional action.”2 Thus, a leading member of the Conservative party, the first but not the last, publicly signaled his support for armed resistance to the government—or at least for the public threat of such resistance. Churchill left Belfast the next morning, and although he never returned to the North of Ireland, he would be forever associated with militant Unionism.3