Sir Edward Carson, the troublesome loyalist. And the Winslow Boy

Some readers of my “Countdown to War” series of blog posts have asked about that strange character, Sir Edward Carson.

As pressure mounted, in the years leading up to the First World War, for some kind of Home Rule in Ireland – i.e. a measure of autonomy within the United Kingdom – he took the leadership of the Protestant movement in Ulster that opposed any slackening of the ties with Britain. He was a lawyer and a Member of Parliament, but he raised and at least connived at the arming of a resistance group that came to be known as the Ulster Volunteer Force.

Sir Edward Carson opposing Home Rule
He launched the slogan "No Surrender"

Decades later, the UVF and its successors were major contributors to the troubles that plagued Northern Ireland between 1972 and 1997.

Even back then, it was a significant factor in the instability of the island and its steady drift towards civil war.

And yet Carson was never arrested. Indeed, the British government treated him as a spokesman for a certain strand of opinion, and someone with whom it was prepared to negotiate. It’s hard not to feel that if he was treated so leniently, despite fomenting armed insurrection against the State he was sworn to serve, it was because at heart the government couldn’t bring itself to condemn a movement that set out to keep at least a part of Ireland under its control.

Because he favoured the Union, he was a loyalist, and one can be indulgent towards any degree of disloyalty in a loyalist.

This adulation of a rebel and insurgent continues to this day. There is a greater than life-size statue of Carson on the drive up to Stormont Castle outside Belfast, the seat of the power-sharing government of Northern Ireland and its Assembly. One can’t help admiring the Republicans who turn up there each day and go past the statue, on their way to continue work for the peaceful development of the province.

What amazes me most about the man, however, is that there was another side to his character. The Terence Rattigan play The Winslow Boy tells the story of a young cadet expelled from Naval College for the theft of a five shilling postal order; a leading right-wing MP and lawyer takes up the case and his brilliant forensic skills become the biggest weapon in the defence of the child.

The lawyer, Sir Robert Morton, bases his legal action on a so-called “petition of right”. Technically, this is an appeal to the Sovereign to correct a wrong that has been done to a subject. The play several times makes powerful and poignant use of the words inscribed on such a petition, “let Right be done.” At one point, Morton declares, “it is easy to do justice, but it is very hard to do right”.

It came as a shock to me a few years ago – such a shock that I put up a blog post on the subject at the time – to discover that the historical figure on whom Morton is modelled, who fought the case of the real cadet on whom the Winslow boy is based, was none other than Sir Edward Carson.

I’ve always preferred my heroes when I can see that they have feet of clay. Carson’s interesting because he’s a villain in whom I can see a halo. And that’s marvellously intriguing.

Countdown to War, Day 17. 14 July 1914: "No Surrender", Mrs Pankhurst struggles on, and gentility is maintained at Birkdale and Southport. Viciously

One hundred years ago today, on Tuesday 14 July 1914, Martin the young railwayman and his friends might have read some historic words in the Manchester Guardian. Spoken by Sir Edward Carson, the leader of Unionism in Ireland, they were deliverd to a meeting in Drumberg as part of the 12th of July Battle of the Boyne celebrations. Faced with all those cheering people calling on him for leadership, he had asked himself:

What is the one lesson I ought to learn from all that I have seen to-day? And I think I can sum it up in the two old words you every one wish to say to me, “No surrender.” (Great cheers).

“No surrender”. A call for implacable conflict and words he felt might well echo down the decades.

While the Protestants were cheering Carson, at Castlebellingham in County Louth, 4000 Irish Volunteers were parading in military formation, as a photograph published by the paper attested. And so the descent towards civil war continued...

Things weren’t getting sorted out in the Levant either. The paper published another extract from a letter by an “Englishman in the Aegean Islands”:

It is, I confess, difficult for me to see how, if, as it seems, the expulsion of the Christian inhabitants of the coasts opposite Lesbos and Chios, was, so to speak, a simple move in the game, a simple retort to Greece, it might not have been carried out openly and diplomatically without the horrors that attended it. 

“More horrors,” said Martin. 

“With religion to fuel them,” said the Cynic, “to make sure they really cut deep. The Irish don’t know what delights they’re preparing for themselves.”

Meanwhile, Mrs Pankhurst, released from prison for four days, was going to be returned to gaol before she could address a planned suffragette meeting. Mrs Mansel had told a meeting of the Women’s Social and Political Union:

Mrs. Pankhurst was too ill to be able to go to the meeting except on an ambulance with her nurses and doctors. And what did the Home Secretary propose to do? Did he propose to tear her away from her nurses and doctors? ... Mrs. Pankhurst was going to the meeting on Thursday evening, and nothing could stop her. She was going to be there, and they were going to see that she was there. (Cheers)

It was impressive just how far people were prepared to go to attain their goals. Whatever it cost, even their own or others’ lives or liberty. Would he go so far for any of those causes? Ireland? Did it matter whether it stayed or went? Turkey and Greece? He didn’t understand their conflict, but did anyone else? The vote? Well that was worth a sacrifice, he agreed. But would he go through what Mrs Pankhurst had?

Croquet: genteel. And vicious

In a world where so much seemed to be going wrong, there was at least one area in which a sense of proper order and decorum was being maintained.

The eighth annual croquet tournament promoted by the Birkdale and Southport Croquet Club began yesterday, and will continue for the rest of the week. In spite of the fact that there are several other meetings in various parts of the country in progress at the present time the entry was much more numerous than usual, and the standard of the competing players was much higher.

“See?” said the older tracklayer, “what are you complaining about? Things can’t be going all wrong in a world which still has that much gentility in it.”

“What are you talking about?” asked the Cynic. “Bloody vicious game. Good preparation for war, if you ask me.”