THE PARLIAMENT ACT: CRAIGAVON


A good many months were to elapse before the Unionist rank and file in
Ulster were brought into close personal touch with the new leader of the
Irish Unionist Parliamentary Party. The work to be done in 1910 lay
chiefly in London, where the constitutional struggle arising out of the
rejection of the "People's Budget" was raging. But shortly before the
General Election of December a demonstration was held in the Ulster Hall
in Belfast, in the hope of opening the eyes of the English and Scottish
electors to the danger of Home Rule. Mr. Walter Long was the principal
speaker, and Sir Edward Carson, in supporting the resolution, ended his
speech by quoting Lord Randolph Churchill's famous jingling phrase,
"Ulster will fight, and Ulster will be right."

On the 31st of January, 1911, when the elections were over, he went over
from London to preside at an important meeting of the Ulster Unionist
Council. The Annual Report of the Standing Committee, in welcoming his
succession to Mr. Long in the leadership, spoke of his requiring no
introduction to Ulstermen; and it is true that he had occasionally
spoken at meetings in Belfast, and that his recent speech in the Ulster
Hall had made an excellent impression. But he was not yet a really
familiar figure even in Belfast, while outside the city he was
practically unknown, except of course by repute. That a man of his
sagacity would quickly make his weight felt was never in doubt; but few
at that time can have anticipated the extent to which a stranger--with
an accent proclaiming an origin south of the Boyne--was in a short time
to captivate the hearts, and become literally the idolised leader, of
the Ulster democracy.