Love the ‘bits’ on ZA too! Brings back good memories of a happy childhood spent in ‘die Moeder stad en die mooiste Kaap’.

Happy New Year.

Nevertheless, Carson and Law were pretty adept at what we would now call “dog whistle” politics – and played the Orange card pretty ruthlessly. In fact, Carson’s private correspondence reveal that by 1914 he was pretty regretful about the sectarian strife that had been unleashed in Britain and Ireland through the campaign against Irish Home Rule (which, in hindsight, seems like one of the great missed opportunities given the growth of an insular, obscurantist theocracy in the South, and a repressive and violently sectarian cauldron in the North).

Referring to Northern Ireland as a country is quite ordinary and perfectly acceptable. For example, it competes in international sporting competitions such as the Commonwealth Games and the Football World Cup as a country (though for the Rugby World Cup, the all-Ireland team has wisely been preserved).

Also, I think you’ll find that the United Kingdom does not have “provinces”, it has constituent “countries”, which in turn are traditionally divided into counties (which, for administrative purposes have been replaced with all manner of crazy units). England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are countries.

Ulster, as opposed to Northern Ireland, is undoubtedly a province, and in the sense that, while inaccurate, it is sometimes acceptable to use “Ulster” as shorthand for “Northern Ireland” then so also I suppose it is sometimes acceptable to use “province” as a shorthand for “country”.

Returning to Carson, you cite no evidence that he had no respect for the opinion of the majority of his countrymen. I suspect he did have some respect for that opinion, but more importantly he disagreed with that opinion, and to disagree with an opinion is not the same as to disrespect it.

Carson was indeed, as you point out, involved in the Larne gun-running, but on multiple occasions he expressed his grave doubts over its wisdom and questioned whether it might have been folly.

Were I on the Ulster Protestant (and I am not) I might point out that the Nationalists were also guilty of precisely the same thing you accuse the Ulstermen of (being ready to use German weaponry and rebellion to impose their will upon those who disagreed with them). But this truth, while salient, in no way removes the guilt of the Ulster party.

Curiously, you claim that Carson “forced” the partition of Ireland, whereas I think you’ll find most historians and contemporary observers in agreement that partition was the next-to-last thing Carson wanted, and he only accepted it (just as Collins and co. only accepted it) as a last-ditch means of reducing bloodshed.

And there seems little practicality involved in what you call his “willingness to play nice” with the disenfranchised nationalists of N.I. Rather, if you actually investigate the career and life of Carson, it is perfectly fitting with his character. He had not one practical purpose in being nice to them, for he was not involved at all in the devolved Government of Northern Ireland. He represented an Ulster constituency at Westminster, but gave that up in 1921, and after partition he lived the rest of his life in England (he died in Kent).

The attempt to paint Edward Carson as Mr. Nasty Unionist is completely contradicted by historical fact. It seems odd that he is frequently the victim of these attempts, as he is one of the few Protestant figures popularly associated with Ulster who was not a nasty, virulent, Catholic-hating bigot. James Craig and his bigoted cohorts should provide enough fodder for those who want to feed their own feelings of victimisation and to vilify in its entirety Ulster Protestant culture (in a parallel fashion to the way post-Carson Unionists attempted to simply ignore and sideline Ulster Catholic culture). But we must give Sir Edward Carson his due.

Carson had no respect for the opinion of the majority of his countrymen, who supported Home Rule, or for the elected government in Westminster. He was ready to use German weaponry and rebellion to impose his will upon those who disagreed with him (the Larne Incident) and he forced the gerrymandered partition of his country to prop up a sectarian grab for power. The fact that he was willing to play nice with the disenfranchised nationalists that remained in the statelet has more to do with practicality than a lack of bigotry.

Also, Northern Ireland is either a province of the United Kingdom or part of a province of the nation of Ireland that is currently ruled from Westminster. Referring to it as a country smacks of last-ditch Loyalist paramilitarism.

“We used to say that we could not trust an Irish parliament in Dublin to do justice to the Protestant minority,” quoth Carson. “Let us take care that that reproach can no longer be made against your parliament, and from the outset let them see that the Catholic minority have nothing to fear from a Protestant majority.”

Unfortunately it was not the Edward Carson mentality which carried the day in Northern Ireland, but that of James Craig (Lord Craigavon) instead, who referred to a “Protestant Government for a Protestant People” and a “Protestant Parliament and a Protestant State” to the complete exclusion of Catholics from participation in civic life. The results speak for themselves.

It’s somewhat odd — in that way that things in history are often odd — that Carson is now so identified with Ulster; he was a Dubliner himself and turned down the premiership of Northern Ireland, a country that was not his own.