DAVE MANSBLL latent Catholic/Protestant working class rivalry by saying that Home Rule would mean the replaccment of Protestants by Catholics at all levels, with Catholic control of the labour market leading to instant immiseration of Protestant workers and their families, etc. Now, in 1892, when the social conditions of the working class in Belfast were amongst the worst in the British Isles, though still not as bad as those prevailing in Dublin, the argument deployed by the Ulster Unionist leaders was that Home Rule signifi.ed not merely economic collapse but also the cutting off of the extension to the Belfast working class of social reforms which were "guaranteed" by Ireland's membership of the British Empire which meant that the "Ulsterman" enjoyed, along with his British partners, "the most advanced privileges and freedoms in the world". The major outcome of the Convention was the setting up of a political body, the Ulster Unionist Clubs Council, to spread this message of "social imperialism" to the lower classes through the medium of clubs which bore none of the old political labels and which could integrate urban and rural sections of the populace, under the control of the local professional stratum brought forward by the pre-Convention campaign. The Clubs movement had sorne initial success, but in certain rural areas the clubs were taken over by the old landlord power élites, and when the 2nd Home Rule bill was defeated by British unionist mobilization of their inherited power in the House of Lords (by 419 votes to 41) in September 1893, the enthusiasm for popular activity and class unity died away along with the crisis. THE GUNS SPEAK Although the new organizing strength of the urban industrialist~, as demonstrated by the Convention and the Clubs movement, had failed to displace the more traditional agencies of Ulster political mobilization (the landlords and the Orange Order), the Ulster Unionist Party had, during this period, staked its claim to being regarded as an alternative State to the one which was being confusedly developed in the South. lts claim to power was not only in the creation of the local Unionist associations to select delegates which survived, in embryo at least, until they were to be used again during Home Rule scares and crises of the early 20th century, but also in 36
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