The Ascendancy in Ulster
The British Government proclaimed the Dail, the Sinn Fein organisation, and later the Gaelic League as illegal bodies, but this produced no effect. Meetings were held ” in secret,” but really with the full knowledge of large numbers of persons, probably often also with that of the police, who had no desire to incur risks by a display of zeal. The lot of these men was indeed not an enviable one. In many parts of the country they hardly dared to venture abroad. It is scarcely to be wondered at that they, in some cases, turned on their opponents and savagely revenged themselves by destruction of property or even by murders.
Meanwhile, the appointed twelve months from the con¬clusion of the War had passed, and it was necessary that action should be taken in regard to the suspended Home Rule Bill. In December (1919), Mr. Lloyd George announced that he would introduce an Amending Bill to modify the Act passed in 1914. The provisions of this measure were intended to honour the engagements given to North-east Ulster that she should not be coerced, while, at the same time, the promise of Legislative Independence made to Nationalist Ireland should not be actually broken. There were now set up in Ireland two Parliaments, one for the six counties of Antrim, Down, Armagh, Derry, Tyrone, and Fermanagh; the other for the rest of the country. The powers of the two Parliaments would be restricted by regula¬tions, reserving certain matters to the jurisdiction of theWestminster Assembly, but their powers would be equal.
This Bill was not really acceptable to any party. The two Nationalist groups resented the partition of Ireland, as well as the restricted powers of the proposed Parliaments. The Ascendancy in Ulster desired the maintenance of the Legislative Union But, while the latter declared that they would accept and work the scheme, the former announced their intention ot ignoring the Southern Parliament should it be established.
During the summer ^1920), there were murders, burnings, ambushes and riots all over Ireland. In Belfast, Catholic work¬men were driven out of their employment, and houses inhabited by Catholics burnt. As a result several thousand people were left homeless and destitute.
In other parts of Ulster the same thing happened, but ot course on a much smaller scale. Southern Ireland replied to this by a general boycott of Belfast-made goods. On November 21 st two terrible occurrences took place in Dublin. In the morning, fourteen British officers (said by the Sinn Fein party to have been employed in Secret Service work) were shot in the houses where they were staying. Several men were afterwards arrested for this, and two were hanged, but the evidence against them was so slender that it seems unlikely that either was guilty. In the afternoon of the same day a crowd, assembled in Croke Park on the outskirts of the city to witness a football match, was fired on by military, who drove up in armoured cars, and fifteen persons, including a woman and a child, were killed. It was stated by the Irish Chief Secretary (Sir Hamar Greenwood), when questioned on the matter in the House of Commons, that persons in the crowd had begun by firing on the soldiers, but no reliable evidence of this was ever produced, •while there was much evidence to the contrary. Evidently the whole country was falling into a state of anarchy.
