Thomas1195
Banned
The Tory campaign against Irish Home Rule in 1912-14 used extreme rhetoric and encouraged insurrection in Ulster. The party leader, Andrew Bonar Law, associated himself with Sir Edward Carson and was particularly inflammatory in his speeches at a time when the Ulster Volunteer Force was arming itself and drilling as a militia. Some examples include an infamous speech given at Blenheim Palace (I'm quoting from The Strange Death of Liberal England):
The Government's policy, he said, was part of a "corrupt Parliamentary bargain," and it had no right "to carry such a revolution by such means." Circumstances being what they were, he told his fifteen thousand hearers, he could imagine no lengths to which Ulster Unionists might go where the Unionist Party, and the public at large, would not follow them in sympathy.
A message sent to Belfast in July 1913:
Whatever steps you may feel compelled to take, whether they are constitutional, or whether in the long run they are unconstitutional, you have the whole Unionist Party, under my leadership, behind you.
And (probably the most damning) a speech given in Dublin in November 1913:
I remember this, that King James had behind him the letter of the law just as completely as Mr. Asquith has now. He made sure of it. He got the judges on his side by methods not dissimilar from those by which Mr. Asquith has a majority in the House of Commons on his side. There is another point to which I would specially refer. In order to carry out his despotic intention the King had the largest army which had ever been seen in England. What happened? There was no civil war. Why? Because his own army refused to fight for him.
It's not particularly uncharitable to interpret his words and actions as advocating armed rebellion against the Crown, using extra-parliamentary means to subvert Parliament and deny its sovereignty, and telling the army to disobey orders. If Asquith had been a more bloody-minded man and decided to have Law and Carson arrested and charged with sedition? What would the consequences have been?
The Government's policy, he said, was part of a "corrupt Parliamentary bargain," and it had no right "to carry such a revolution by such means." Circumstances being what they were, he told his fifteen thousand hearers, he could imagine no lengths to which Ulster Unionists might go where the Unionist Party, and the public at large, would not follow them in sympathy.
A message sent to Belfast in July 1913:
Whatever steps you may feel compelled to take, whether they are constitutional, or whether in the long run they are unconstitutional, you have the whole Unionist Party, under my leadership, behind you.
And (probably the most damning) a speech given in Dublin in November 1913:
I remember this, that King James had behind him the letter of the law just as completely as Mr. Asquith has now. He made sure of it. He got the judges on his side by methods not dissimilar from those by which Mr. Asquith has a majority in the House of Commons on his side. There is another point to which I would specially refer. In order to carry out his despotic intention the King had the largest army which had ever been seen in England. What happened? There was no civil war. Why? Because his own army refused to fight for him.
It's not particularly uncharitable to interpret his words and actions as advocating armed rebellion against the Crown, using extra-parliamentary means to subvert Parliament and deny its sovereignty, and telling the army to disobey orders. If Asquith had been a more bloody-minded man and decided to have Law and Carson arrested and charged with sedition? What would the consequences have been?