DAVE MANS8LL The Irish unionist M.P.s (representing predominantly Ulster constituencies) and the U.U.e. quickly saw the writing on the wall, and began to organize resistance. Due to the 1910 election result the Irish unionist M.P.s had to select a new leader. They chose Sir Edward Carson, a Southem Irish Protestant, who represented one of the Dublin constituencies, was a leading and extremely wealthy lawyer at the English bar, anda prominent figure in English Conservative circles. At the same time the U.U.e. revived the Clubs movement which had been instituted in 1893 so as to enrol popular support once again, and started importing weapons. (Arms importation into lreland had been banned under a Coercían statute but this had lapsed in 1908). By 1912 the struggle between the Liberals and the Lords had been resolved so that the Lords could delay legislation voted through the Commons for three successive sessions of Parliament at the most. As a reward for their aid the Irish parliamentary party were granted a Home Rule Bill which passed through the Commons for the first time in 1912 and was thus destined to become law in late 1914. Although the bill only envisaged partial independence for Ireland, with many powers still retained by the British parliament, the fears of the Protestants in the North were once again roused by the spectre of their being a minority in a predominantly Catholic state where they reckoned that a Catholic majority would take vengeance on them for their previous wrongs, and that the Roman Catholic Church would restrict their religious rights, not to mention the economic ruin that would befall them, they predicted, if the taxation and economic policy-making function were transferred from free-trade Britain to a protectionist regime in Dublin which would milk Belfast to provide funds for economic development and welfare benefits in the South, and erect barriers against their markets. VOLUNTEERS EVERYWHERE On September 23rd 1912, Sir Edward Carson declared, in a speech in Belfast: "We must be prepared - and time is precious in these things - the morning Home Rule passes, ourselves to become responsible for the government of the Protestant province of Ulster". A few days later the inner caucus of the U.U.e. met to make plans for the formation of 46
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