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IRELAND & THE WAR: DOWNLOAD TEXT - UVF

The Ulster Volunteers: Throughout 1912, the Unionist leader Sir Edward Carson, organised demonstrations all over Ulster rallying Unionist support against Home Rule. In September 1912, Unionist leaders drew up a document in which they stated that Home Rule would be, ‘disastrous to the material well-being of Ulster as well as the whole of Ireland, subversive of our civil and religious freedom.’ They gave this document the title ‘Ulster’s Solemn League and Covenant’. On the 28th of September 1912, at rallies throughout Ulster, 471,314 men and women signed this covenant, the women signing a separate covenant. Feelings were so strong on the issue that some of the men signed it in their own blood. On the 13th of January 1913, under the aegis of Sir Edward Carson and the Ulster Unionist Council, the Ulster Volunteer Force was formed. Organisation of this force was carried out on a county basis through the machinery of the Orange Lodges and Unionist Clubs. Drilling took place in Orange Halls usually with dummy rifles. Its first commander was a retired English General of the Indian Army, Sir George Richardson. Though it had the appearance of an efficient military unit with transport, ambulance, and communications facilities, it had little or no weapons. On the 24th of April 1914, this latter problem was solved when the U.V.F landed 24,600 rifles and three million rounds of ammunition at Bangor and Larne from a ship called the Clyde Valley. 

The UVF bought German and Italian guns to fight against an army they would join in the space of four months. The German guns were bought by a former army officer named Crawford, who in 1893 at the time of the second Home Rule Bill, devised a plan to kidnap Gladstone from the Sea front at Brighton and take him to a lonely Pacific Island. The Italian guns gained an amount of unpopularity among the volunteer ranks of the UVF due to the fact that they had the word 'Annunciata' stamped on them. Many of the Ulstermen thought it meant 'Blessed by the Pope.' However whether or not they were blessed by the Pope, the guns were used in open drilling, and target practice soon commenced .

Open displays of weapons training and marching etc were carried out at Clandeboye outside Newtownards, Co. Down and at Finner in Co. Donegal. No military or police attempts were made to stop this illegal open display of arms and gun running into Larne. A private army ruled Ulster, much to the displeasure of the British Government. By March 1914, one in three Protestant Ulstermen joined the force. When a volunteer joined the U.V.F, his first acquisition would be a small bronze badge with the red hand of Ulster, and on it the famous motto, ‘For God and Ulster.’

Whatever about the legality of this action by some members of the Ulster Unionist community, it was done out of a sense of fear and uncertainty about their future place in  an  Ireland under the control of Irish Nationalists. A popular poem of the time was:

What of the men of Ulster ?
Hark to the armed tread,
As they turn their backs on the Province,
And face to the front instead:

The sword half drawn on her own behalf
In Ulster’s Red Right Hand
Will leap from scabbard and flash like fire
For the common Motherland.

And wherever the fight is hottest,
And the sorest task is set,
Ulster will strike for England,
And England will not forget.

They had a distinguished array of senior army officers which included the Waterford man Field Marshall Earl Roberts ex-Commander in Chief of the British Army in Ireland. Col. Henry Savage from Cushendal in Co. Antrim, took command of the 13th Royal Irish Rifles on the 1st of July 1916 at the Battle of the Somme. Colonel Savage was due to retire from many years service in the Indian Army when the U.V.F. was being set up. His daughter, Rose Mary was a U.V.F. nurse and later served in France as a VAD. Colonel Percy Crozier, who, after the war was to command the Auxiliaries in Dublin. He resigned from the Auxiliaries as a mark of protest against the policy of reprisal being used by the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries during the War of Independence in Ireland. 

Hundreds of army veterans joined and acted as drill masters for the new recruits. At the Curragh army camp, senior army officers threatened to resign their commissions if they were asked to enforce Home Rule in Ulster. Almost all the 3rd Cavalry Brigade with its commander Brigadier General Hubert Gough threatened to resign rather than face loyal Ulstermen. This incident was known as the Curragh Mutiny. The threat of fifty nine Cavalry officers resigning their commissions did not confine itself to the Curragh. General Douglas Haig, the Commander-in-Chief at Aldershot, warned a War Office meeting about the strong feeling among the officers of his command in favour of Gough. Haig warned that the resignation of every officer in the Aldershot command could be expected if Gough was punished. The politicians backed down and Gough returned to Ireland welcomed by his officers as a conquering hero.