THE ULSTER CONFLICT organize a similar convention to allay any accusations of regional bias. The covert aim of the Convention was to impose the urban politics of the Belfast industrialists on the whole anti-Home Rule movement at the expense of the landed aristocracy and gentry, and the Orange order; in fact, to bring the movement under Belfast control. "All walks of Ulster life" were intended to be represented at the Convention, but the organizing committee declined to subsidize rural delegates' travelling expenses, which ensured a majority for urban representation. In addition the committee tried to form associations throughout rural Ulster for the purpose of sponsoring delegates to the Convention, and attempted to restrict the choice of such delegates to local professional people so as to eliminate any linking of the new movement with either landlords or tenant farmers. The long term aim of this move was the creation of a new controlling class in the countryside which would, in fact, represent urban interests and act as the intermediary between the political leadership of the province and local interests. The spectacle of the Convention itself was intended to provide an "ideology" capable of unifying the rural section of the movement with the Belfast industrial entrepreneurs and working class. The centre-piece of the show was a pavilion specially erected for the occasion in Belfast's Botanic Gardens and decorated on the outside with suitable flags and emblems and on the inside with tapestries depicting the momentous events of Protestant history. The entire event, which took place in June 1892, marked by silent mass processions to the pavilion and heavily rhetorical speeches by the pre-ordained "leaders" of the movement, was intended to articulate the concept of an "Ulster civilization" which combined "progress" and "tradition", "unity" and "diversity" (in the sense of the usual conservative hierarchical organization of social classes). The project of the Convention was the procreation of a new party - the Ulster Unionists (as distinct from lrish unionists) -and, in effect, the birth of a new nationalism centred around a new creation, the "Ulsterman", with a claim to self-determination. The appeal to the working class was now more sophisticated than the crude tactics employed in 18•86when the Home Rule crisis had coincided with a severe economic depression. At that juncture it had been possible to arouse the 35
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