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The rise of English Unionism

The so-called 'Battle of Tilbury' had significant consequences. Trade unionists felt themselves increasingly under pressure as emboldened Employer's groups began to target activists. The Civilian Force became more and more overt in its strike breaking activities, whether called in by employers or not. Faced with this, workers groups in towns and cities across the country began to organise self-protection militias.

The CF President, de Broke was a committed Unionist with many contacts in Ulster and with unionist groups on the mainland, particularly in Liverpool and Glasgow. In his eyes the fight back being organised by workers groups represented as great a threat to the Union as anything going on in Ulster. The prominent role taken by activists like Mann and others on both sides of the Irish Sea convinced him that the CF needed to make common cause with Unionism if the Union was to survive. Unsurprisingly he was equally antagonistic to the growing suffrage movement. Blenkinsopp was of the same view and between them they began to make plans to significantly increase the size of the CF, to organise it on military lines in a similar fashion to the UVF and critically, to arm it. Most significantly though, de Broke used his Unionist contacts to open up discussion with the UVF command.

In February 1912, the UVF had acquired some 50,000 rifles, 100 Maxim machine guns, 1500 Webley pistols and 2 batteries of field artillery from a dealer in Birmingham. Some of this had been successfully smuggled to Ulster with the weapons bought in Germany and some had been seized by customs when used as decoys in the 'shell game' that enabled the successful landings. Much of the purchase still remained in England however, including all of the Maxims, all the Webley pistols, about 35,000 rifles and amazingly all but 2 of the field guns. Using his contacts, de Broke arranged for these all to be released, discreetly, to the Civilian Force.

By the end of 1913, the CF only had a membership of at most 2-3000, concentrated in London and the Midlands. Now Blenkinsopp set up a small group of recruiters, who began to travel the country interviewing responses to discreet advertisements in local newspapers and making contact with signatories to the British Covenant. Membership grew rapidly, so that by the end of February 1914, it had reached over 10,000 men. At this point de Broke and Carson announced the creation of the Council of British Unionists committed to safeguard ‘the King, the British Union and the British Empire.’ De Broke also announced that the Civilian Force would be renamed as the British Volunteer Force. The next day, the UVF, represented by its Commander Lt General Sir George Richardson (Roberts having resigned in December 1911, officially on account of his age) and the BVF, represented by Blenkinsopp, signed an agreement in which they both pledged to support the UUC and CBU in their defence of the Union.

The timing of these announcements was not entirely random. The Speaker’s Convention on the Constitution was seen to be struggling and de Broke and Carson were each for their own reasons keen to keep it that way.