Unionism
In September 1911, a huge crowd of over 50,000 people gathered at a rally near Belfast where Carson made a speech in which he urged his party to take on the governance of Ulster. With the passage of the Parliament Act 1911, the Unionists faced the loss of the House of Lords' ability to thwart the passage of the new Home Rule Bill. Carson disliked many of Ulster's local characteristics and, in particular, the culture of Orangeism (although he had become an Orangeman at nineteen he left the institution shortly afterwards). He stated that their speeches reminded him of "the unrolling of a mummy. All old bones and rotten rags."
Carson campaigned against Home Rule. He spoke against the Bill in the House of Commons and organised rallies in Ireland promoting a provisional government for "the Protestant province of Ulster" to be ready, should a third Home Rule Bill come into law.
On Sunday 28 September 1912, "Ulster Day", he was the first signatory on the Ulster Covenant, which bound 447,197 signatories to resist Home Rule with the threat that they would use "all means necessary" after Carson had established the Ulster Volunteers, the first loyalist paramilitary group. From it, the Ulster Volunteer Force was formed in January 1913 to undergo military training and purchase arms. In Parliament Carson rejected any olive branch for compromise demanding Ulster "be given a resolution rather than a stay of execution". The UVF received a large arms cache from Germany on the night of 24 April 1914. Historian Felician Prill says Germany was not trying to start a civil war, for the Ulster cause was not popular in Berlin. Later that year, a further shipment of arms from Germany was delivered to the pro-Home Rule and IRB-influenced Irish Volunteers at Howth near Dublin.
The Home Rule Bill was passed by the Commons as the Government of Ireland Act 1914 (4 & 5 Geo. 5. c. 90) on 25 May 1914 by a majority of 77 and due to the Parliament Act 1911, it did not need the Lords' consent, so the bill was awaiting royal assent. To enforce the legislation, given the activities of the Unionists, H. H. Asquith's Liberal government had prepared to send troops to Ulster. This sparked the Curragh Incident on 20 March. Together with the arming of the Irish Volunteers, Ireland was on the brink of civil war when the outbreak of the First World War led to the suspension of the Government of Ireland Act 1914's operation until the end of the war. By this time Carson had announced in Belfast that an Ulster Division would be formed from the UVF, and the 36th (Ulster) Division was swiftly organised.
Brown examines why Carson's role in 1914 made him a highly controversial figure:
But his commitment was unqualified, both to Ulster unionism and to its increasing extremism. Under Carson's leadership, with Craig as his lieutenant, discipline and organization were imposed on their supporters; proposed compromises were rejected; and plans were drawn up for a provisional government in the north, if the bill was passed, with its implementation to be resisted by the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force, which had been armed by illegal gun-running. It is this apparent willingness to carry resistance to virtually any length, even to risk civil war, that makes Carson so controversial.In 1914, suffragettes Flora Drummond and Norah Dacre Fox (later known as Norah Elam) besieged Carson's home, arguing that his form of Ulster "incitement to militancy" passed without notice whilst suffragettes were charged and imprisoned for same action.
Carson spoke in Belfast on The Twelfth of July 1919 on his reaction to any implementation of Irish Home Rule: "I tell the British people this...here in your presence to-day...that if there is any attempt made to take away one jot or tittle of your rights as British citizens and the advantages which have been won in this war for freedom, I will call out the Ulster Volunteers."
In a 1921 speech opposing the pending Anglo-Irish Treaty, Carson attacked the "Tory intrigues" that had led him on the course that would partition Ireland, an outcome he opposed almost as strongly as Home Rule itself. In the course of the speech, Carson said: What a fool I was! I was only a puppet, and so was Ulster, and so was Ireland, in the political game that was to get the Conservative Party into Power. Later in the speech, Carson said:
But I say to my Ulster friends, and I say it with all sincerity and solemnity: Do not be led into any such false line. Stick to your old ideals of closer and closer connection with this country. The Coalition Government, after all, is not the British nation, and the British nation will certainly see you righted. Your interests lie with Great Britain. You have helped her, and you have helped her Empire, and her Empire belongs just as much to you as it does to England. Stick to it, and trust the British people.
Although considering himself proudly British, Carson also considered himself a proud Irishman stating "I am very proud as an Irishman to be a member of the British Empire".
