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The
Press With few exceptions the Ulster and British press declared Ulster Day to have been successful as a massive display of Unionist resolve to oppose the third Home Rule Bill. Even papers favourable to the Liberal Government could not deny the significance of the Ulster Day demonstration in Belfast, nor fail to recognise that the Unionists were clearly not, as they had often been accused, bluffing in the preparations for resisting the imposition of Dublin rule. The London Star was one such Liberal paper that, grudgingly perhaps, faced up to the reality that the opponents of Unionism had to accept that the Ulstermen meant business. It considered it 'Ifolly to belittle or to deride the Lrlster Covenant." Avoiding the natural Liberal "temptation," which was "great," to "assail these Covenanters with mockery," the Star stated that it "instinctively" shrank "from treating with levity the disciplined vow taken by these Lllster Protestants. It is not a thing to be laughed at. It is a thing to be reckoned with." There was a forced breadth of outlook in this assessment that was singularly lacking from the report of the Belfast Nationalist newspaper the Irish News which alone found it possible to dismiss the protest. "Taking the day's proceedings altogether they were tame as a demonstration of enthusiasm, and highly ludicrous as an indication of the 'gr~im determined spirit.' The whole grotesqueproduction has been apolitical failure, though a comic success.... A covenant has been signed by great numbers of people -- many of whom had never read its terms." The pro-Unionist Belfast-published news- papers the News Letter and the Northern Whig, could be expected to give a favourable report of the happenings of Ulster Day, but even they seemed taken aback by the overwhelming way the Unionist people had responded to the calls from their leaders to support the Covenant, and show the world their mettle. The Northern Whig noted that all classes of Unionists had signed the Covenant with "not a man of them who did not know what the celebration meant." It then indulged in some purple prose -- which it was entitled to, given the achievement of the Lister people on Ulster Day -- when it parodied Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Pome by continuing that no one signed "who did not feel that in these ceremonies he was paying a duty to the ashes of his fathers and the temple of his God." Ulster Day had given fitting prominence to the Union Jack, "the glorious old flag, emblem of the unity of Britain, which met the gaze at every footstep." The News Letter referred to the "wonderful sense of order" that had marked the behaviour of the crowds with an "ever present ... sense of individual responsibility underlying the business of the day." The London Daily Express clearly understood the true significance of the Ulster people's exhibition of solidarity on Ulster Day. "Even the most obtuse and the least sincere can no longer pretend to misunderstand the mood of Ulster. The deeply impressive scenes and ceremonies of Covenant Day throughout the province were the culmination of a campaign of preparation conceived and executed in the obvious spirit of religious and patrioticfervour. You may call thatfanaticism if you will. (The Express did not.) To call it b[uf~ or to deny the desperate earnestness which inspires it is quite impossible. Ulster will not have Home Rule, and all the world now knows it." The London Times, which in those days was sympathetic to the Unionist cause, caught the mood and deeper meaning of the Covenant campaign. Its assessment was above all based on political reality: "English readers havefollowed in detail and with deepening interest the impressive series of meetings throughout the province, which have culminated in this final protest. The same note of sincerity and enthusiasm ran through them all. The impression left on the mind of every competent observer is that of a community absolutely united in its resistance to the act of separation with which it is threatened.... Liberal speakers and writers have tried to persuade English electors, mostly ignorant of the conditions which prevail in Ireland, that the 'Orange' sentiment is largely artificial, and has been manufactured to serve the ends of the Unionist Party. The subscription to the Covenant and the transactions that preceded it are the answer to these allegations.... If there were no other obstacle to Home Rule, that which is embodied in the opposition of Ulster is the rock upon which the Bill must shipwreck in the end. We believe that these Northern gatherings have brought that conviction home to many thousands of English men.''
The End
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