Federalism, Devolution and Partition: Sir Edward Carson and the Search for a Compromise on the Third...

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Federalism, Devolution and Partition: Sir Edward Carson and the Search for a Compromise onthe Third Home Rule Bill, 1913-14Author(s): Jeremy SmithSource: Irish Historical Studies, Vol. 35, No. 140 (Nov., 2007), pp. 496-518Published by: Irish Historical Studies Publications LtdStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20547491 .

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Imh Hi%r*>rUat Studies, xxxv. m, 140 <N?v. 2007)

Federalism, devolution and partition: Sir Edward Carson and the search for a compromise on the

Third Home Rule Bill, 1913-14

i

Four days after the dramatic launch of the anti-home rule campaign at

Craigavon on 23 September 1911, where Sir Edward Carson was "delivered to his people*, Fred Oliver, a keen Unionist, passionate federalist and peddler of various constructive political initiatives, wrote to Geoffrey Robinson, editor of The Times, In the course of a long and pessimistic letter he expressed deep distress at the violent tone adopted by Carson at Craigavon, admitting that 4he was glad to see the Irish Times has been "pole-axing" Carson and co' and imploring Robinson to criticise similarly "all this Ulster shouting and drum beating and treasonable Tom Foolery'.1 By October 1912, and some six months after the introduction of the Third Home Rule Bill, Oliver was still berating Carson, this time pressing Arthur Steel-Maitland, the Conservative Party chairman, to "urge your Tom Fool followers to keep off two things

? religious

intolerance and treason, Carson has done more harm to Irishmen in the last months than Redmond.'2 Oliver's criticism reflected a widespread exasperation amongst federal enthusiasts at the damage being done by Carson's tactics. It was, however, an exasperation that did not last. For by March 1914, when he published his tract The present political situation, which outlined the virtues of 'federaMevolution for the whole U.K.', Oliver offered the following pen-portrait of Carson:

Sir Edward Carson is a big enough man to be capable of anything which he is convinced in right in itself, and m which he believes lies a chance of saving his fellow countrymen in Ireland from the horrors which threaten them. I single out Sir Edward Carson from among the other leaders because the popular imagination has singled him out. Partly force of circumstances, partly his own qualities of courage, and sincerity, and of seeing things in a big way, and as they really .are. Even by his bitterest opponents he is admitted to be dlsinteroted, standing to lose in a personal sense far more than he can possibly gain by the course lie has taken. His references to the duty of the army in his speech at Manchester in the ?utumn, the remarkable impression which he produced during the debate upon the Address, the firm and fearless character of his injunctions to the Ulstemen.? all these

J Oliver to Robinson, 27 Sept. 1911 (National Library of Scotland (henceforth N.L.S.), Oliver papers, MS 24845). ' OBwr to Steel-Maitland, 15 Oct. 1912 (National Archives of Scotland (henceforth N.A.S.), Steei-Martland papers, Gp 193/154/5/51).

496



Smith ? Sir Edward Carson and the Third Home Rule Bill, 1913-14 497

things have combined to give him a moral authority which could do almost anything it pk&sed with the Unionist party at the present.3

While it is never safe, let alone wise, to judge a politician through the shifting perceptions of others, the revision of Oliver's opinion of Carson from (apparently) sectarian rabble-rouser to courageous statesman, might nonetheless be useful for exploring fresh ideas and understandings about this most interesting of leaders. Oliver's fawning description was rooted in a belief that the Unionist leader

shared his faith in a federal-devolutionary alternative to home raie for Ireland and thus could prove to be a force for achieving it. This may have been supreme wishful thinking on Oliver's part, and indeed most accounts of Carson's tactics during the struggle against the Third Home Rule Bill seem to agree that it was. Historians of federalism, for example, have rarely offered Carson a place at the heart of their interpretations, or even on the periphery of them, at least during the pre-war years. A case in point is John Kendle, whose fascinating study of federalism between 1870 and 1921 barely mentions Carson as anything other than antagonistic to such a scheme,4 His later work on Walter Long is a little more positive when it declares that 'Unionists, Carson among them, began to pay more attention to proposals for devolution, for home rule all round and even for federalism'.5 However, Kendle goes on to insist that like; Long he [Carson] continued to resist them' and instead moved towards the exclusion of Ulster from home rule as the basis for a viable compromise solution.6 Patricia Jalland initially strikes a positive if slightly surprised note when admitting that 'Sir Edward Carson was actually closer to Chamberlain^ position than most of the British Unionists', but then fails to pursue the theme and dismisses federalism as little more than 'a supremely useful tactical cover*.7 Vernon Bogdanor goes further, but only to the extent of declaring that Carson 'made favourable noises* towards devolutionary ideas.8 In a similar vein* most biographical assessments of Carson either disregard the federal-devolutionary element to his strategic thinking before 1916 (at the earliest) or seriously underplay ?t^ The best assessment of Carson, by Alvin Jackson, limits his federal-devolutionary sentiment before 1914 to a 'tentative enthusiasm',10 while in Jackson*s later study of Irish home rule, Carson's federal-devolutionary ideas are but a 'muted sympathy**1*

* The present political situation, March 1914 (London, 1914) (copy in N.L.S., Oliver papers, MS 24851), 4 John Kendle, Ireland and the federal solution: the debate over the United Kingdom constitution,1870-1921 (Montreal, 1989). 5

Idem, Walter Long, Ireland and the union (Montreal, 1992), p, 76, 6 Ibid. 7 Patricia Jalland, "United Kingdom devolution, 1910-1914: political panacea or tactical

diversion* in E.H.R., xciv (1979),pp 182-3. 8 Vernon Bogdanor, Devolution in the United Kingdom (Oxford, 1999), p. 47. In his excellent study, British opinion and Irish self-government, 1865-1925: from unionism to Liberal Commonwealth (Dublin, 2001), ch. 8, Gary Peatling also omits Carson from the unfolding federal debate within unionist circles during the pre-war period. 9 H. M. Hyde, Carson (London, 1953); A. T. Q. Stewart, Edward Carson (Dublin, 1981); D. G. Boyce, 'Sir Edward Carson and Irish unionismVm Ciaran Brady (ed.),

Worsted in the game: losers in Irish history (Dublin, 1989). 10 Alvin Jackson, Sir Edward Carson (Dublin, 1991) p. 34. 11 Idem? Home rule: an Irish history, 1800-2000 (London, 2003), p. 217.



498 Irish Historical Studies

Andrew Gailey's insightful essay on Carson's leadership at least acknowledges that he 'willingly considered schemes of federalism in 1913, 1916 and 1917', though Gailey resists exploring the issue more deeply.12 The most recent and

disappointing treatment of Carson ignores his connexions with federalism

altogether13 This trivialising of Carson's sympathy for federal-devolutionary ideas is rooted

in a common understanding among historians that his ambitions and tactics before 1914 represented an anguished journey from diehard, all-Ireland unionist to reluctant Irish partitionist* Carson's campaign of resistance had certainly begun-as a fight for the larger prize of saving the union for Ireland. However, from 1913, 'after a long and obstinate defence', Carson 'returned from the first line ? the maintenance of the legislative Union' by scaling down his ambitions onto the 'narrower' concern of excluding all or part of Ulster from the Home Rule Bill14 And while exclusion was 'not the primary object of British and southern Irish Unionists', Carson came to regard it as 'an acceptable alternative'.15 Most historians recognise this Odyssey, although they explain it slightly differently. For A. T. Q. Stewart, Carson's narrowing tactical game occurred once he realised

Asquith was not going to be bludgeoned into dropping the Home Rule Bill

Alternatively, George Boyce argues that it was the awful, looming prospect of civil war that finally forced Carson 'at least to contemplate the idea of some fair and reasonable settlement of the Irish difficulty, that would save Ulster but fatally compromise the link between his beloved Ireland, the U.K. and the British

Empire'.16 For Jackson, Carson's tactical reorientation occurred under the

multiple pressures of a weakening southern unionism, an unexpectedly tough political stance by Asquith, and a growing militancy within the Ulster unionist movement whose 'leading men* by this stage 4desire[d] a settlement on the lines of leaving Ulster out*,17 These developments, alongside Carson's natural realism that made him as pragmatic and temporising as any secular parson', as. well as his undoubted 'passion for a negotiated settlement', led him to *

abandon the

vestiges of his Irish Unionism'18 and accept partition as 'a facilitating rather than wrecking device',19

For Stewart and Jackson, the moment at which Carson finally abandoned his Irish unionism (tactically, not sentimentally speaking) came in September 1913, when he took up the cause of exclusion as the means to resolve the crisis. Indications of such a shift had been visible at an earlier stage, but were coloured by his appreciation of exclusion for its tactical 'wrecking' capabilities. Accordingly, his acceptance of the Agar-Robartes amendment of June 1912, calling for the exclusion of four Ulster counties from the bill, followed in January

n Andrew Gailey, 'King Carson; an essay on the invention of leadership' in I.H.S., xxx,

no. 117 (May 1996), p. 78. 13 Geoffrey Lewis, Carson: the man who divided Ireland (London, 2005). 14 Ronald McNeill, Ulster's stand for union (London, 1922), p. 19. 15 D. G. Boyce, Englishmen and Irish troubles: British public opinion and the making

of Irish policy, 1918-1921 (London, 1972), p. 105. M Idem, 'Carson & Irish unionism*, p. 152.

17 Jackson, Carson, p. 32,

3*Ibid.




1913 by his amendment demanding exclusion for all nine counties, were both

justified on the grounds that they might destroy the bill in its entirety. But from the autumn of 1913 onwards 'an important transition in Carson's principles and

strategies ... occurred]*,20 whereby his previously tactical regard tor exclusion turned into a firm commitment. Jackson emphasises a letter he sent to Andrew Bonar Law on 20 September 1913 as constituting 'a pivotal document in the

history of the partition issue'.21

I ant of the opinion [Carson explained] that on the whole things are shaping towards a desire to settle on the terms of leaving Ulster out .., My own view is that the whole of

Ulster should be excluded but the minimum would be the six plantation counties and for

that a good case could be made. The south and west would present a difficulty and it might be that I could not agree to their abandonment although I feel certain it would be; the best settlement if Home Rule is inevitable ... I am fully conscious of the duty there is to try and come to some terms.22

Here, then, was Carson's irreducible minimum in the eventual search for a

political settlement, the permanent exclusion of six Ulster counties from the

application of home rule to Ireland, September 1913 is represented as something of a damascene moment for Carson, the point where sentimental attachments to the union for all Ireland gave way to a realistic assessment of what was actually salvageable in the altered political circumstances. It was also, according to both Jackson and Gailey, from this point on that Carson became much *more

thoroughly a prisoner of his own people",23 and thus his 'freedom of action was

severely circumscribed' by the massing forces of Ulster unionism."4 He may have been their leader, but from this moment it was the Ulstermen who

increasingly determined the direction in which he would take them.25 These ideas have significantly advanced our understanding of Carson and the

changing nature of his leadership. The present article builds upon them, by taking a fresh look at Carson's approach and thinking during a critical phase in the struggle against home rule, from September 1913 to March 1914. The

argument offered here is that it was during this period that he began to consider various ways out of the crisis, a process that was more complex and fluid than a

simple, if tortured, adoption of exclusion, and in fact embraced a growing enthusiasm for federal-devolutionary ideas. This enthusiasm increasingly placed him at odds with the bulk of the movement he led and necessitated on his part a cautious ambiguity in public statements, while in private his views, though less

guarded, still required a degree of reticence. Nonetheless, when the search for a

negotiated settlement began in earnest from September 1913, Carson signalled his desire that Ireland with Ulster should form part of a wider federal

devolutionary reconstruction of the British Isles? as the best (indeed only) alternative to both an unsustainable all-Ireland unionism and an unthinkable all

?Ibid. 21

Jackson, Home rule, p. 144; 22 Ibid,; Stewart, Carson, p. 86, See also Carson to Bonar Law, 20 Sept, 1913 (House

of Lords Record Office (hencefcm H,L.R^ 2-

Jackson, Carson, p. 38. 24 Gailey, 'King Carson*, p. 79, 25 Ibid.




Ireland home rule. For a few months Carson was hopeful that party leaders could

arrange a compromise, on such a basis. However, by January 1914 the chances of this looked slim, in the face of an obdurate Asquith, a Conservative Party leadership firmly wedded to exclusion, and an Ulster Unionist leadership unimpressed by any type of compromise except exclusion. Carson was forced to bend to these pressures and now incorporated into his strategy the exclusion of all or part of Ulster from home rule, but only as an (unavoidable) precursor to a

federal-devolutionary settlement. Exclusion remained for Carson a short-term

necessity that might bring immediate calm to the north and afford Ulster unionists the sense of security and control over their own future which they so

craved? and from where they might be drawn back into a more constructive

political dialogue on the future of Ireland and perhaps accept a place within an all-Ireland federal-devolutionary structure.26 His advocacy of exclusion was a

soporific to a dangerously out-of-control situation and not a solution to the Irish

question, a means to avoid civil war, not a vision for the future, and an unavoidable first step towards his long-term hopes for a federated United Kingdom.

II

Carson's public pronouncements before 1913 offer little to suggest that he was

anything other than a traditional defender of Irish unionist interests. During the devolution crisis of 1904-5 he reacted with anger against those 'fellow

travelling' unionists who had any truck with the proposal, some of whom he

suspected sat in the Unionist cabinet,27 The Irish Council Bill of 1907, with its

devolutionary, even Chamberlainite undertones, drew little positive response from Carson, When federalism resurfaced during the political hiatus of the summer and autumn of 1910 as the basis for a possible coalition government, Carson was among the most prominent signatories to a letter in The Times defending a single united parliament at Westminster28 Lord Dunraven, a leading light of the federalist community, remained deeply critical that the 'violence of Carsonism* was impairing the cause of federalism,29 while, along with others, Carson attacked the 'phoney* federalist veil that Asquith hung over the bill when introducing it in April 1912, Tt is put forward', he declared to the House of

Commons, 'simply for the purpose of pretending that you are only giving to Ireland something which you would also give to England and Scotland .., You are only pretending.1

* Nor was Carson very different in private. At the height of the federalist scare in 1910 he confided to Lady Londonderry that It will split the party to pieces and should it tura out to be true I earnestly hope the Conservatives will never again be in office during my life. How can anyone suppose that those of us who have fought all our lives to prevent a separate Parliament and Executive

26 Paul Bew's important study of this period reveals the existence and potential of such a dialogue taking shape; Ideology and the Irish question, 1910-1916 (Oxford, 1994). 21 Alvin Jackson, Tlie Ulster party: Irish Unionists in the House of Commons, 1884-1911 (Oxford, 1989), pp 265-6. "

* The rimes, 10 Nov. 1910. *

Dunraven to Bonar Law, 8 Sept. 1912 (H.L.R.O., Bonar Law papers, 27/2/10). 30 Hansard 5 (Commons), xxxvi, 1433-4 (11 Apr. 1912),




in Ireland now turn round and allow so base a surrender? We are all drifting, where to I

don't know and I hate the whole situation.31

However, an early hint that Carson's sympathies might lie in another direction came during the federalist scare in 1910. J. S. Sandars, Balfour's political aide

de-camp, relayed to his master a recent conversation with F. E. Smith in which 'Carson frankly admitted that there was much to be said in favour of the policy (of federalism) and he quite realised the changed conditions in Ireland; but that he considered in his position in Ireland he was not free to entertain the question, at all events at the present time.*32 While we need to be aware of Sandars*s pro federal sympathies and should question the reliability of Smith as any type of messenger, there is nonetheless value in Sandars's view that Carson's traditional unionism had already begun to evolve in a more flexible, perhaps realist, direction that under certain political circumstances and political pressures might accommodate some type of federal-devolutionary scheme. Likewise his attack on the federal nature of the Home Rule Bill in 1912 set out to disprove the connexion rather than to rubbish the idea, and was such that it even drew support from leading federalists such as Lord Dunraven; /Though I differ from you about Home Rule in the abstract ... I agree to a great extent with your views on the

present bill.*33 It would be naive to expect any more tangible insights into Carson's deeper thinking at such an early stage in the bill's passage through parliament, where all thoughts of a compromise were inappropriate and irrelevant ?

inappropriate because Unionists believed the entire bill could be brought down by a tough display of intransigence; and irrelevant because governments do not as a rule introduce compromise proposals having only just launched a bill, particularly a government in the position of AsqumVs after 1911, reliant upon the

support of Nationalist M,Rs. Even obsessive federalists could see the logic of this: 'The time for federalism is not now but later when you have got yourself locked in a constitutional impasse,' Oliver explained to Steel-Maitland.34 In the meantime It may be that an intransigent attitude on the part of Ulster, if it takes a responsible and not its present untenable form, is a necessary element in the working out of a settlement on our lines*.35 In any case, it is probable that Carson himself had no clear or settled understanding yet as to how the crisis would be resolved,

The end of the second session, in July 1913, was an altogether different

prospect, for it was evident that Ulster's intransigent attitude had indeed helped to engineer a much more promising political context, The government, although still committed to its Home Rule Bill, nonetheless began to offer some unmistakable hints that it was willing to start discussing various compromise proposals or even renegotiate parts of the bill Early in the summer rumours circulated widely of 'conversations* between the king and ministers. On 11

September Lord Loreburn wrote a letter to "The Times calling for a conference of

leaders/6 followed a few weeks later by Winston ChurcMlFs pro-compromise M Carson to Lady Londonderry, 27 Oct. 1910 (Durham Record Office, Londonderry

papers, D.2846/1/1/55). 32 Sandars to Short, 31 Oct, 1910 (B.U Arthur Balfour papers, Add, MS 49767, ff 19-20).

33 Dunraven to Carson, 17 Dec. 1912 (ER.O.NX, Carson papers, D/1507/A/3/19),

54 Oliver to Steel-Maitland, 15 Oct. 1912 (RA,S? GD 193/154/5/51 ). 35 Milner to Oliver, 13 Oct. 1911 (N.L.S., Oliver papers, Ace. 7726s 85/6/14). *6 The Times, 11 Sept 1913,




speech at Dundee. Carson received these hints with cautious encouragement. He had long recognised that some type of deal with the government would probably be necessary. The problem was not whether, but when, how and what. Using Ulster's resistance to achieve political objectives involved delicate questions of

timing and balance, between what the government was willing to offer, what the Ulstermen would be willing to accept, and what Irish unionists could realistically expect. All of these were dynamic interests, rising or falling, strengthening or

weakening as the political situation altered. Yet at some point Carson believed a critical mass would occur when the interests of all sides might, if not actually correspond and overlap with each other, at least come close enough for an

agreement to be stretched across them. Carson's task was to strike at the moment when the best deal was in the offing. If he waited too long, Ulster's campaign might collapse altogether in a welter of sectarian rioting, organisational divisions, regional animosities and financial chaos. Or, as looked increasingly likely, it

might spiral out of control and into the hands of more 'hawkish' elements, thus

raising the bar on what the Ulstermen would accept as a compromise,37 But

equally, if he struck too early, he would expose a weak position to the

government, stiffening it against meaningful compromise.38 Carson had to mix bitter invective with a close attention to the political atmosphere.

By the spring and summer of 1913, as political circumstances began to alter, so Carson's 'watching brief turned into a serious reconsideration of his options. He had already seen in March, at the All-for-Ireland League conference, William O'Brien and Lord Dunraven secure the passage of a resolution in favour of an Irish convention to settle the Irish question by consent, that drew support from

many federalists, including Moret?n Frewen and R S. Oliver, both

correspondents of Carson. In June Carson received an interesting letter from Dr E, C. Thompson, a former Nationalist M.R for North Monaghan,39 Thompson had written before, and even thanked him for using sections of an earlier letter in a recent speech at the Albert Hall. He praised Carson's tough stance: 'No sensible man in Ireland be he Nationalist or Unionist likes the Home Rule bill of the present Government... You are quite right in your efforts to save Ireland from its effects ,, for a worse measure .,. or one more likely to be disastrous for every Irish and Imperial interest could scarcely have been devised,'40 Having thus re established his credentials, Thompson now passed on his important intelligence: No sensible Nationalist really wants to shove down the throats of the Protestants of Ulster a Home Rule Parliament which leaves them at the mercy of men who desire to be top dog over them, as Mr Dillon admitted. The scheme of Home Rule the country wants is one of federation similar to the Home Government in Canada or Australia, All parties might very well unite in some such scheme-as this but the present measure of Mr Asquith's Government is unfair in every particular, especially in its financial aspects. It deprives Ireland of Imperial credit which is an unsurpassed asset and it prevents Ireland ever being able to establish a credit for itself.41

" Jackson, Carson, pp 36-41. 38 Bew writes: 'Any slight hint of public willingness to compromise on Carson's part

was seized on by critics as a sign of weakness* (Ideohgv & the Irish question, p. 95). ^Thompson to Carson, 15 June 1913 (RR.O.NX, D/1507/A/4/4). 40 Ibid.



Smith - Sir Edward Carson and the Third Home Rule Bill 1913-14 503

These were valuable insights from someone in the enemy camp, yet one whose ideas Carson had evidently used before. And at a moment when politics were rather fluid they offered a possible basis upon which he might confer. Carson was

encouraged along this particular trajectory by Loreburn's call for a conference on federalism on 11 September, followed two days later by Earl Grey's appeal in The Times for a federal solution.42 He also received information detailing the enthusiasm expressed in certain nationalist circles for Loreburn's idea, notably among the O'Brienites, and further intimating that Redmond, 'who is in very deep water', might go along with such a proposal as a means 'to extricate him1.43 This would not have surprised Carson, for Redmond, along with his colleague T. P. O'Connor, had flirted with federal ideas once before during a period of

political stalemate.44 Carson responded to these signs of conciliation with a speech to the Durham

County Unionist Association on 13 September, where he hinted to the

government his conditions for a settlement. This was his first public response to the altered circumstances and thus merits close attention. He set a moderate tone from the start by paying tribute to Loreburn and, like him, recognised that *the

question can no longer stand as it did',45 Then, having dismissed the idea of a conference on the basis of a separate Irish executive and parliament, be announced that if it was a 'question of considering the better government of Ireland ? if it were a question of the expansion of local government or of doing something which might unite the people in one common cause for the progress of Ireland1, then he would say 'let us have a conference'.46 He finished by telling his audience that 'It is a question of separate nationality and you cannot reconcile these two different views ... Our passionate longing is for peace, for citizenship

with you.'47 This was a most significant speech, made at a critical and shifting stage in the crisis, one week before his 'pivotal' letter to Bonar Law of 20

September. The phrases used, though ambiguous, nevertheless betray a

preference for federal-devolutionary schemes rather than exclusion. His concern for all Ireland, his dismissal of home rule in favour of extended local governance, his concern for practical economic improvement in Ireland (something that Ireland on her own could not achieve), and for an Irish people united in a common cause, were all staples of federalist rhetoric. Moreover, Carson had

conceptualised the question on the basis of nationality; Ireland as a mix of two or more nations, held together by a common British citizenship. He could not, therefore, support home rule, because it ignored Ireland's separate nationalities; but nor could he sanction exclusion (and thus home rule for the south), because it undermined his belief in a common citizenship. Only a federaLdevolutionary solution could hold both these aspirations together, by recognising national differences while simultaneously containing them within a common British

citizenship. Grey interpreted this 'admirable' speech as a sign of Carson's

42 The Times, 13 Sept. 1913. 43 Frewen to Carson, 13 Sept. 1913 (Durham University Library, Earl Grey papers, MS 223/3). 44 Michael Wheatley, 'John Redmond and federalism' m IHS?, xxxti? no, 127 (May 2001), pp 343-64, 45 The Times, 15 Sept 1913. ^Wd, 47 Ibid.




'readiness to come into a conference as long as the agenda included a federal solution and as long as the present bill was withdrawn',48 Importantly, the Durham speech set down what Lord Lansdowne, joint leader of the Conservative

Party and an advocate of mild devolution, described as "Carson's manifesto', a

({evolutionary marker for the government to navigate along its compromise route.*

Given the sentiments expressed in his Durham speech, Carson's letter to Bonar Law of 20 September? with its apparent endorsement of exclusion, runs somewhat

against the grain.50 It should be remembered, however, that Carson wrote it

having just returned to Ulster, where he was quickly immersed in the intensifying and radicalising preparations ongoing in the province. On 17 September the U.V.R was placed under the direction of General Sir George Richardson, followed a week later by the formal constitution of a provisional government for Ulster51 These were dramatic 'step-changes* taken by Ulster unionists along the road of patriotic rebellion, and thus it seems reasonable to assume that Carson's tetter was as much a reflection of his current fears and forebodings as of his settled opinions. Moreover, Carson was replying to Bonar Law's assertion? made in a letter two days earlier, that exclusion was the best basis for a compromise. 'As-you know,' Bonar Law told Carson, T have long thought that if it were

possible to leave Ulster as she is and have some form of Home Rule for the rest of Ireland, that is on the whole the only way out,'52 It was Bonar Law who first

injected exclusion into the debate on a compromise, opened up by Loreburn, and who kept it central in all subsequent contact with the government. Carson's letter of 20 September was perhaps replying in kind to Bonar Law, bending to his

thinking, to keep all options open, avoid splits and thus ensure the support of the leader of the Conservative Party. Indeed, a close reading of the letter suggests a certain conditionally, even detachment, behind Carson's commitment, T am of the opinion that on the whole things are shaping up towards a desire to settle on the terms of leaving Ulster out\ which would 'be the best settlement if Home Rule is inevitable*;5* in other words, circumstances, rather than his own

preferences, were moving towards exclusion, and exclusion was best only if and when home rule was inevitable, something of which he was still not convinced, The letter became clearer and more balanced towards the end. 'Of course', he wrote, 'the ideal thing would be that this plan [the exclusion of Ulster] be part of a general scheme for the United Kingdom and even if that question is not practical to settle for the moment it could be drafted in such a way as to make it fit afterwards/54 He repeated these sentiments in an accompanying five-page memorandum describing the two compromise options before them: first, the exclusion of Ulster, and 'second and [the] perhaps preferable course open to the Unionist leaders is to recommend the simultaneous application of devolutionary principles, if there is to be any application of them anywhere1.55.

? Grev to Oliver, 26 Sept. 1913 (N.L.S., Oliver papers, MS 24848, ff 137-42). * Lansdowne to Bonar Law, 30 Sept. 1913 (H.L.R.O., Bonar Law papers, 30/2/37). ? Carson to Bonar Law, 20 Sept, 1913 (ibid., 30/32/15). 51 Bew, Ideology & the Irish question, pp 96-7. 52 Bonar Law to Carson, 18 Sept. 1913 (H.L.R.O., Bonar Law papers, 33/5/67). 5* Carson to Bonar Law, 20 Sept. 1913 (ibid., 30/32/15) (emphasis added). 54 Ibid 55 Ibid.




Whatever the precise status of this letter, there is less doubt as to the direction of Carson's thinking in the weeks that followed. While in public he maintained his 'verbal violence'56 ? indeed, he may even have ratcheted it up a few notches

{perhaps an indication that he was thinking of compromise)57 ~~ in private he

continued the tone established at Durham, On 26 September he wrote to Grey, no doubt aware of Grey's contacts with the lord chancellor, Haldane:

? daresay we would not differ really as to a solution of the question of local assemblies as you put it, outside the question of separate nationality Of course Ulster could not resist any proposals which applied equally to the rest of the U.K. and would leave her an equal share in the body politic, I imagine that is the real solution ? it would offend no sentiment and would not degrade our position from an Imperial standpoint... I hope that if there is a conference it may proceed on these broad lines.58

Grey sent a copy of this letter to Oliver, emphasising that 4he [Carson] is

prepared, provided the present bill is withdrawn, to accept federalism*.59 The next day Carson wrote to Lord Selborne exclaiming: '! feel confident that any settlement that could be come to must be, as you say, a national settlement,

making no distinctions between any parts of the U.K., and of course people here

[Ulster] would be bound to accept whatever was given to Englishmen and Scotchmen.'60 A day later (28 September) he repeated the terms of his Durham

speech in a letter to the Daily Express: 'I should be quite willing, as I said at Durham to discuss any question of extension of local government, Private bill

legislation or any measure for the improvement of existing Government in Ireland/61 Lansdowne, who a week before had been enraged by what he thought was Carson's adoption of exclusion, noted the direction of Carson's thinking when he assured Bonar Law that

He [Carson] could not and would not agree to it [exclusion], and I am sure that he would not accept any compromise founded upon the separate treatment of Ulster until he had

satisfied himself that the Unionists of the rest of Ireland, to say nothing of the great body of the Unionist party in the rest of the U.K. were prepared to entertain the idea. An attempt to devise a better system of local Government for Ireland or for the U.K. generally

? a

system under which Ulster could be given separate treatment somewhat on the linos of a

("anadian province ~~ would be another matter.62

He then observed; * Since the above lines were dictated I have seen the enclosed

message from Carson to the Daily Express. I think it bears out what I have written.'63 By the start of October Carson's vague public signals in favour of a

federal-devoiutionary solution contrasted with his unmistakable private declarations of support.

Events, however, appeared to be moving in the direction of exclusion. Central to this was Bonar Law, who between 16 and 20 September recommended it to the

56 Bew, Ideology & the Irish question, p. 95. 57

Ibid, pp 94-6. 58 Carson to Grey, 26 Sept. 1913 (N.L.S., MS 24848, f. 143). 59 Grey to Oliver, 3 Oct. 1913 (ibid., Oliver papers, MS 24849, ff 4-5). 60 Carson to Selborne, 27 Sept. 1913 (Bodl., Selborne papers, MS 77, f. 57),

61 H.LJR.O., Bonar Law papers, 30/2/37, includes a copy of Lansdowne to

Stamfordham, 29 Sept 1913, in which Carson's letter to the Daily Express is printed. 63 Ibid, ?Ibid.




king, to Carson, to a like-thinking Balfour and to a deeply sceptical Lansdowne.64 He also convinced Churchill, when they met at Balmoral, that it was the best solution, aware that these ideas would be reported back to Asquith. If Bonar Law raised the issue, then R E. Smith evangelised it, persuading the king not only that exclusion offered the likeliest chance of success but that Carson was signed up to it? intelligence the king was only too eager to recommend to his prime minister

To add momentum to the initiative, Churchill delivered a strongly pro-exclusion

speech in Dundee on 8 October, declaring that obviously the claim of RE. Ulster for special consideration was a very different claim from the claim ... of the whole of the rest of Ireland', and one that would 'not be ignored by the Government\65 (Such comments were in contrast to his pro-federal speech of the

year before.) That same day Asquith invited Bonar Law to a series of 'open1 conversations, beginning on 15 October, which in focusing upon definitions of exclusion were in fact not very 'open' at all. Carson did nothing to thwart these

developments, though he was hopeful that they would transform into what he mentioned to Selborne as a wider 'National settlement'. This brought him closer to Chamberlain, who at the time was trying to switch the basis of the conversations from exclusion to a wider conference on devolution; Chamberlain regarded the Carson-Grey letter of 26 September as 'highly important'66 and communicated its substance to Lansdowne: 'Carson clearly indicates that he thinks that this [devolution] is the right solution and expresses the hope that if there is a conference it may proceed on these broad lines.'67 Lansdowne now

pressed Bonar Law to take up devolution with Asquith when they met on 6 November, assuring him that 'As Carson ... said to me the other day, it might be

possible to set up some kind of Irish Administration the existence of which would placate Home Rulers without doing much harm.,6H All to no avail, as Bonar Law stood firm against the pro-devolution designs of Chamberlain, Lansdowne and,

more tentatively, Carson.

During their three meetings, between October and early December, Bonar Law and Asquith never seriously deviated from discussing plans for exclusion. Throughout, Carson, who was kept closely informed of the talks, maintained his preference for a federal-devolutionary solution. He received Oliver's federal pamphlet, An alternative to civil war, on 3 December with sympathy; So long as we Irishmen are treated in the same way as other citizens of the UX, we could not complain, although we might differ on the meaning for every particular measure and we could have our place in the U.K. preserved to us with a real safeguard of an Imperial Parliament we could also be saved from what we think is a step towards ultimate neparatism.^

The next day Oliver told Chamberlain that 'Carson is very cordial and amplifies your point about the difference it would make to Ulster's feeling, all the difference

M Jeremy Smith, The Tories and Ireland, 1910-1914: Conservative Party politics and

the home rule crisis (Dublin, 2000), ch. 5. ^ The Times, 9 Oct. 19U. 66 Austen Chamberlain, Politics from the inside: an epistolary chronicle, 1906-1914 (London, 1936), p. 569. w

Ibid., p. 570. m Lansdowne to Bonar Law, 17 Oct. 1913 (H.L.R.O., Bonar Law papers, 30/3/56). * Carson to Oliver, 3 Dec. 1913 (N.L.S., Oliver papers, MS 24850, ff 9-10) (emphasis added).




in the world ? if Wales, Scotland etc were being treated as an equal party with Ireland.'70 Now Chamberlain, foiled in his attempts to move Bonar Law, opened links with Churchill and John Morley, telling the latter on 9 December that 'He

[Carson[ has proved himself most moderate and deeply sensible of his heavy responsibility ... Make no mistake about Carson's object. He wants peace ? on terms of course, but on terms which I believe the Government could accept', which he spelt out as 'the principle that Ulster was to be treated like other parts of the U.K.V1 Chamberlain even suggested Asquith might converse directly with Carson, cutting the obstructive Bonar Law out of the loop completely. The next

day Asquith duly invited Carson to a private conversation on 16 December and another on 2 January, but their meetings were little more than sparring matches, shadow-boxing around exclusion as a basis for settlement.

By December Carson's preference for a federal-devolutionary settlement as an alternative to the government's Home Rule Bill had advanced little. He had

always realised that inducing the government to drop or radically alter its bill in favour of such an alternative was never going to be an easy operation,-as he confided to Selborne: 'I doubt very much if the Government would be prepared to tackle it, though I cannot see myself any other way out of the impasse.'72

Moreover, some awkward questions began to present themselves. How likely, for

example, was it that the Nationalist Party would be won over to it, when home rule was, in effect, just months away? And closer to home, how realistic was it to assume the Ulster Unionist leadership, not to mention the more militant Unionist rank and file, would agree to a federal-devolution scheme?73 On the other hand, the idea of excluding some part of Ulster had advanced during the secret

meetings with the government. Exclusion was, Carson acknowledged, the

preferred option of the Ulstermen ? indeed, perhaps the only possible compromise they would consider if withdrawal of the bill was no longer likely. And given their strength and assertivmesa by this stage, it would be an

impossibly difficult task to manoeuvre them in any other direction. Horace Plunkett noticed this constraint on Carson when visiting Ulster early in January: I knew the mind of Ulster quite accurately before I went but I had not realised how little control the leaders of the Carson army have over the rank and file. So long as the Tory

party think that Home Rule is their best card and stand by Ulster in their extremist attitude, neither my scheme nor anybody else's except exclusion will be listened to.74

However, unless the Ulstermen could be persuaded out of their extremist attitude, conflict with the government was assured, and civil war in Ireland an inevitable

consequence. Carson was now forced to adjust his tactics and stance according to the realities

and acute dangers of the situation. This meant combining some type of exclusion,

acceptable to the Ulstermen, with his own predilection for a federal

70 Oliver to Chamberlain, 4 Dec. 1913 {Birmingham University Library, Austen Chamberlain papers, AC 60/118). 71

Chamberlain, Politics from the inside, pp 587-8. 12 Carson to Selborne, 27 Sept 1913 (BodL, Selborne papers, MS 77, f. 57). 73 For example, J. B. Lonsdale, honorary secretary to the Ulster Unionist Council, spoke

in Armagh of it being 'absurd and illogical to begin to consolidate the Empire by splitting up the ?.K,' {Morning Post, 29 Oct. 1913). 74 Piunkett to Oliver, 9 Feb. 1914 (N.L.&, Oliver papers, MS 24851, ff 1?M9),




devolutionary scheme for all of Ireland. Exclusion was introduced into his calculations as an immediate and unavoidable exigency before any future federal reconstruction of the United Kingdom. It became a.necessary first step so as to avoid civil war, to re-establish security and to engender political trust, if any future constructive dialogue on constitutional reform were to succeed. His letter to Bonar Law on 20 September is perhaps better viewed as an early sign of this

marriage of long-term aspirations to temporary necessities. 'The ideal thing would be that this plan [the exclusion of Ulster] be part of a general scheme for the United Kingdom and even if that question is not practical to settle for the

moment it could be drafted in such a way as to make it fit afterward'; a blend, in other words, of 'leaving Ulster out' with an ambition for the 'simultaneous

application of devolutionary principles ... [within] a general scheme for the IUC\B

This tactical shift was more evident by the new year. On 19 January 19141L. Garv?n, editor of The Observer, wrote to Oliver describing a conversation he had

just had with Carson. 'Carson is not an extremist,' he declared, 'but if he seemed to take anything less than "exclusion pending federation" his people would sling him aside, And then ?-.'76 Two days after the start of the new parliamentary session, in February, Carson replied to Asquith's highly ambiguous statement of the loth, that in the search for a compromise he 'would exclude no possible solution', Carson began by attacking these vague hints of exclusion which, if

genuinely made, he promised to deliver to Ulster and 'take counsel with people there4.77 But he went on to make his own ambiguous statement: 'The Government

must either coerce Ulster or try in the long run to win her over to the cause of the rest of Ireland by showing that good government could come under a Home Rule bill.'78 For The Times, his speech lifted debate 'to a higher plane',79 while for the Westminster Gazette, these phrases marked a 'substantial approach'. 'We gather', it went on,

from Sir Edward's language that, though he would accept the exclusion of Ulster as a

temporary expedient which would enable his Covenanters to return to the ways of peace, he no mm than Mr Redmond considers exclusion to be a desirable solution as it merits ... The Ulster problem becomes not a permanent but a temporary difficulty and it should be greatly eased by an intimation that the north Irish are prepared eventually to fall in with any scheme which is applied equally to the U.K.80

In light of his private comments, this seems a reasonable assessment of Carson's thinking by early 1914 and drew agreement from those around him. Lord Stamfordham, ever eager to set the compromise ball rolling before it landed in the king's lap, told Oliver that having heard Carson's and Redmond's speeches, M cannot help hoping that a solution may be found' on the basis of the 'total exclusion of Ulster as die sole expedient in the difficulty; but better still if she could be left out until the federal system has been applied to Ireland'.81

n Carson to Bonar Law, 20 Sept 1913 (HX.R.O., Bonar Law papers, 30/32/15), % Garvin to Oliver, 19 Jan. 1914 (N.L.S., MS 24850, f. 138) (emphasis added), 77 The Times, 12 Feb. 1914. 7t??b?d, 19 mid.

80 Westminster Gazette+12 Feb. 1914. 81 Stamfordham to Oliver, 13 Feb. 1914 (N.L.S., MS 24851, ff 32-5).




Chamberlain also seemed to accept the Carson formula, informing Oliver that 'federalism makes the exclusion of Ulster easy',82 and regarded 'the present exclusion of Ulster as absolutely essential', though they could eventually join a Dublin parliament 'when it had shown itself loyal to the flag and Empire, as the local assemblies of any other part of the U.K. would be\8a This idea, he argued, 'would fulfil Carson's conditions and indeed has been privately favoured bv

him*.*4

This upsurge in federal activity quickly waned by early March in the face of a

sequence of polarising events: AsqumVs failure to advance on his offer of

temporary exclusion for (effectively) four counties, the mass resignations of

army officers at the Curragh barracks on 20 March, and then the Larne gun running episode in April Throughout, Carson clung to his line of exclusion

pending federation. At the tnd of April, in reply to Churchill's rather offhand and off-the-cuff demand to know if he would accept a federal solution, Carson outlined his settled position: If it was put into the bill that Ulster was to be excluded until such a time as the federal scheme, which you said you were going to bring in the introduction to this bill, and that then it should be reconsidered in the light of the action of the Irish Parliament and how

they got on, as to whether Ulster should form a portion of the integral unit... or should

get separate or different treatment or remain under this Parliament ? I said I should be

perfectly satisfied to go over and press that proposal in Ulster ... I will say this, though I do not want to be introducing my own personality into it, I am myself a Southerner in Ireland ? I will say this that if Home Rule is to pass, much as I detest it... my earnest

hope and indeed I would say my earnest prayer would be that the Government of Ireland for the south and west would prove, and might prove, such a success in the future,

notwithstanding all our anticipations, that it might be even for the interest of Ulster itself to move towards that Government and come in under it and form one unit in relation to

Ireland ... a stronger Ireland as an integral unit in the federal scheme.85

For Carson, Ulster within an all-Ireland arrangement was the preferred outcome. But she could only be wooed into such a marriage, not forced kicking and

screaming into a loveless contract. Of course, how likely this was is another matter. And by March 1914 exclusion pending federation looked ominously like exclusion hoping fox federation, a hope Carson nonetheless held with no small

degree of conviction and commitment.

HI

For A. V. Dicey, Vinerian professor of law and constitutional expert? federal ideas remained an anathema to the British system but were much in vogue during the few years before the First World War and eagerly taken up 'by politicians ,.,

when it happened to suit their party interests',86 Similarly, Patricia JaUand has located the upsurge in federal sympathy in the immediate political advantages it

82 Chamberlain to Oliver, 18 Feb. 1914 (ibid., f. 44). u Chamberlain to Oliver, 23 Feb. 1914 (ibid., ff 56-9). u Chamberlain, Politics from the inside, p. 615.

85 The Times, 30 Apr. 1914. See also Hyde, Carson, pp 365--6. 86 A. V. Dicey, Introduction to the study of the law of the constitution (8th ed., London,

1915), p. Ixxxix.




offered.87 This applied to Carson, whose sympathy for a federal-devolutionary solution was rooted in the altered political context of the summer of 1913. This new context materialised when the government signalled both its determination to give some type of self-rule to Ireland, alongside a willingness to find some

type of political compromise to its present bill. When secret 'conversations' finally commenced in October, two possible bases for that compromise emerged which set the terms and pattern for all subsequent negotiations: to exclude all or

part of Ulster from the bill, or to amend home rule into a federal-devolutionary settlement for the whole United Kingdom. Carson embraced federal devolutionary ideas since they offered him, as for other previous sceptics, a

practical means to placate the various conflicting interests and ambitions at stake. The scheme proclaimed an ability to accommodate national or regional aspirations within and as part of a United Kingdom and British Empire, Thus it could be made to appeal to British imperialists and 'Covenanters' on the Tory right, while simultaneously, or so he believed, offering enough regional autonomy to persuade Irish nationalists of its value. Indeed, Carson had reason to think that such a settlement was not unattractive to the O'Brien/Healy wing*8 and would be tolerated by the rest if the alternatives were the exclusion of Ulster or civil war. Federalism appealed to various ministers and Liberal backbenchers, many of whom, he realised, were convinced of its merits.89 Moreover, he believed the Ulstermen were not beyond compromise on this idea. For, although a federal scheme would keep Ireland whole, the Ulster people would have

'equality of status' under the Westminster parliament. As he informed Grey, with the right federal-devolutionary scheme 'Ulster could not resist', and by 'right' he

meant 'any proposals which applied equally to the rest of the U.K. and would leave her an equal share in the body politic'.90 Carson's faith in a federal

devolutionary settlement was rooted in a pragmatic adjustment to political circumstances.

But this was not the whole story. For Carson judged the alternatives of exclusion or federalism not just on the political advantages they might offer, but also according to how each measured up to what, ultimately, was central to his thinking on the Irish question, the survival of some type of all-Ireland union. By this standard, federal-devolution was the lesser evil in that, unlike exclusion, it

maintained Ireland as one entity and would allow for the continuation of a strong, binding link between Ireland and Britain, On its own exclusion negated the union and flew in the face of a lifetime's immersion in Irish unionism, where in terms of background, family ties, cultural inheritance, education, career, political grounding and friendships, Carson was a southern unionist to the quick. Speaking

^ Patricia Jalland, The Liberalsand Ireland: the Ulster question in British polities to 1914 (Brighton, 1980), * E, C, Thompson to Carson, 15 June, 12 Dec. 1913 (P.R.O.N.L, D/1507/A74/4, 21); Archibald Dobbs to Carson, 8 Nov. 1913 (ibid., D/1507/A/4/13). Moret?n Frewen hinted at the same thing (Frewen to Carson, 13 Sept. 1913 (Durham University Library, Earl Grey papers, MS 223/3)). w

Carsoa's papers (P.R.O.N.?., D/1507) contain a copy of Churchill's Dundee speech (in Dundee Advertiser, 13 Sept. 1912) in which he advocated a federal solution for the United Kingdom. % Carson to Grey, 26 Sept 1913 (N.L.S., MS 24848, f. 143).




to the Ulster Women's Unionist Council on 19 January 1914, just days after he had sanctioned the U.V.F.'s gun-running mission in Germany, he declared:

... and love of country which I was taught from my childhood, I bear now, Though I live

in another part of my own country ... my heart always goes back to Ireland, I wish to see

Ireland happy, prosperous and free, and if I can die as I have lived, under the Union, I shall have attained the highest object and ideal of my existence.91

These are not the sentiments of an exciusionist, but of someone who toiled hard to maintain all of Ireland in some sort of connexion with Britain. And Carson was a man of ideas, sentiment, loyalties and passions, not simply the cold 'lawyer politician* assessing the strengths and weakness of a particular case with

unfeeling detachment. The union was and remained, as Stewart says, his 'guiding star',92 while for Boyce, Carson regarded the connexion of Ireland with Britain as nothing less than the 'guarantor of law, order, liberty and life in Ireland'.93 As such, union was the mechanism by which a still weak and backward Ireland could participate in and gain from Britain's wealth, prosperity, enlightenment, political stability and imperial splendour. Moreover, Boyce argues that the inner core of Carson's belief was an integrated and mutually dependent vision of the union, the United Kingdom and the British Empire, entities that stood or fell

together.94 Such a vision did not allow for the shaving off of one aspect without

seriously rupturing his wider unionist vision with its connected belief in the union, the United Kingdom and the Empire as a whole. There was clearly more to Carson's unionism than just Ireland, and for him to advocate exclusion was not

only to condone discarding unionists in the south and west but to endanger the United Kingdom and destabilise the Empire as a whole. When he was forced to recommend it, by December, it was as. a desperate short-term method to avoid civil war, something he greatly feared, and only then if it was grafted onto a commitment to a wider all-Ireland solution.

In other words, federal-devolution satisfied Carson's immediate tactical and

strategic concerns as well as his deep sentimental attachments and ideological make-up. It was small wonder, then, that for the rest of his political career these ideas would remain at the forefront of his thinking about the Irish question. In the aftermath of the 1916 rising, for example, he raised the idea of exclusion pending federation as a method to settle the question immediately. At the time of the Irish Convention he wrote to Lloyd George advocating a similar solution;

1 do not deny that the Union, which I regard as the keystone of the British Commonwealth, may nevertheless be preserved upon the principles of a true federation ... Let Ulster stand

out until such a time as England and Scotland can be brought in ... True federation is the only alternative.95

In the 1919 Commons debate on Murray Macdonald's devolution bill Carson

expressed support for such extended local government as long as it.was not

premised on the basis of separate nationalities,96 Moreover, his bitter words

91 The Times, 20 Jan. 1914. n

Stewart, Carson, p. 76. 93

Boyce, Carson, p. 147. 94

Ibid., pp 147-52.

M'Quoted in [Edward Magoribanks and] Ian Coivin, The life of Lord Carson (3 vols, London, 1936), iii, 325-7; Kendle, Ireland ? the federal solution, p. 19L 96

Kendle? Ireland & the federal solution, p, 216.




against the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, and more sensationally 'his berserk

fory'*7 at the treaty of 1921, were driven by the absence of any protection for southern unionists, compared with what a federal-devolutionary scheme might have offered them.98 During the latter debate he even admitted that he hoped Ulster would, in time, join up with the south.

Establishing Carson's attachment to a federal-devolutionary compromise still leaves the question of what exactly he meant by it. As with most federalist dcvolutionists, Carson offered no very clear or precise meaning to his ideas

beyond a few imperial comparisons, and was equally inclined to fling around words and phrases (such as federal, federation, devolution, etc.) without fully comprehending what each entailed. 'I have always myself felt*, Lansdowne

complained to Chamberlain, 'that no-one has yet worked out a scheme for the establishment of such local legislatures... Haldane insists and not without reason that none of the Unionist leaders have yet produced anything intelligible in the

shape of a federal plan.1" No doubt, for Carson, this derived partly from his delicate position as leader of a body of opinion that had shown little regard for federal-devolutionary ideas in the past. And when it came to mobilising support, signalling intent or offering terms, there were good political reasons for keeping definitions ambiguous. It does, however, make subsequent analysis difficult, forcing us to speculate and to draw upon the observations of those close to Carson. These caveats aside, it seems reasonably clear that what he had in mind was the extension of local assemblies to England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, with the maintenance of the imperial parliament at Westminster. While some federal-devolutionists spoke of two assemblies for Ireland, with one for Ulster as a means to alleviate the Ulster 'question', or even a heptarchy model of multiple provincial assemblies in which Ireland's four provinces would each have an assembly, Carson pointedly talked of just one for Ireland. As he told the Commons at the end of April, 'it might even be for the interest of Ulster itself to move towards that Government and come in under it and form one unit in relation to Ireland... a stronger Ireland as an integral unit in the federal scheme',100 These assemblies would be charged with strictly local services and administration, while certain 'reserved' powers would remain with the imperial parliament at Westminster. The precise powers to be thus reserved he never clearly expounded, though they would certainly have included foreign and imperial policy, war and peace, treaties, trade, customs and excise, the judiciary, and more than likely policing, taxation and the Post Office. Such a list would conform to Lansdowne's estimation of what Carson had in mind as 'somewhat on the lines of a Canadian province1 J01

Carson's federal ideas were, therefore, not really very federal at all, but more devolutionary in outlook and substance, His vision did not embrace an equitable division of powers between central and provincial parliaments, but was premised upon a rather limited devolution of responsibilities from centre to province.102

mCol vin, Carson, iii, 413. m

Jackson argues that once ensconced in the Lords his main preoccupation became 'the

beleaguered loyalists of the south and west* (Carson, p. 62). 99 Chamberlain, Politics from the inside, pp 589-94,

m77ie Times, 30 Apr. 1914. m Lansdowne to Bonar Law, 29 Sept. 1913 (HJLR.O., Bonar Law papers, 30/2/27). 102 Bogdanor, Devolution, pp 3-4: Dicey, Introduction, pp Jxxiii-xci,




Nor did he envisage a co-ordination and sharing of authority by Westminster, but the supremacy of the imperial parliament. Such a stance moves him away from the position held by those more committed federalists (and his correspondents), Grey, Oliver and Frewen, and placing him in turn much closer to the 'Home Rule all Rounders', who sat on both sides of the House of Commons and who numbered among their ranks several members of the Nationalist Party. His stance

positions him more squarely in the orbit of Austen Chamberlain, and Lords Selborne, Milner and Lansdowne, as a supporter of general all-round devolution of administrative responsibilities and powers. If this was the case, then we might suggest Carson was returning to his Liberal Unionist origins, or even back towards Joseph Chamberlain's 'cental board1 idea of 1884-5. If we take A. J.

Ward's interpretation of Chamberlain's plan as essentially devolutionary in substance, something 'less than home rule' but not quite federal,103 then Carson's

thinking bears a close resemblance. Even closer to Carson's line (and still within a Liberal Unionist tradition) were the views of Bernard Holland, a keen

imperialist and later biographer of the Liberal Unionist eighth duke of Devonshire. In a letter to The Times in September 1913 Holland argued for the

implementation of what he termed 'the federal-Unionist idea', 'The foundation of this ... is that the U.K. as constituted by Vitfs legislation, is to be preserved but that legislative and administrative powers are to be devolved for local

purposes upon provincial authorities', a mix that was best imagined as standing half-way between nation and county.m Holland's brand of federal-unionism, with its championing of the United Kingdom and mention of Pitt, would surely have felt more comfortable for Carson than the more exotic enterprises of Grey and Oliver, or perhaps even than the essentially pragmatic schemes of Chamberlain,

Finding ready correlations with Carson's thinking within Liberal Unionist circles is less surprising than finding them within nationalist ones. Yet such is the case if we compare him to that other great Irish Conservative lawyer-politician, Isaac Butt. Butt's 1870 tract Irish federalism tits meaning, its object and its hopes contains several opinions that come tantalisingly close to what Carson was

saying in private by 1913. For example, Butt advocated a federal system that

gave 'control over all domestic affairs' to Ireland while 'an Imperial Parliament still preserved the unity and integrity of the United Kingdom as a great power \m

m well as the 'unity and integrity of the empire'.106 More specifically, this involved a system under which England, Scotland and Ireland, united as they are under one

sovereign, should have a common executive and a common national council for all

purposes necessary to constitute them, to other nations, as one state, while each of them

should have its own domestic administration and its own domestic parliament for internal affairs,107

m A. L Ward, The Irish constitutional tradition: responsible government in modern Ireland, 1782-1992 (DuMin, 1994), pp 87-9. m The Times,'BS&pt.mm m Isaac Butt, Irish ?demlism: its mmnmg, its object and"its ?wpes i?^lli, 1B70), p,lL

lM Ibid., p. 5.

m Ibid,, pp 15-16.



514 Irish Historical Studies \?

The powers he ascribed to these domestic administrations included some (but not

all) tax-raising powers, railways, Post Office, courts of justice, education, corporations, manufacturing and commerce, on several of which he went a little further than Carson would have gone. Nevertheless, Butt argued that financial

matters relating to imperial defence, civil list, national debt repayments and colonial establishments would remain with the imperial parliament, while on

judicial matters he was willing to follow the more centrally controlled American model.108 In any case, such divisions between 'the central and the local power must depend in each federal Union upon the circumstances and position of the countries comprising it, and in no small degree upon their constitution';109 they could, in other words, be negotiated away. Finally, Butt laid stress on a revived and powerful Irish House of Lords within his Irish parliament, one able 'to check a measure of injustice

? if one should ever unhappily pass the House of Commons ? I believe the veto of the Lords could never be overcome'. Such a veto 'would surely be a sufficient guarantee'110 to Irish Protestants and large landowners. If Carson's and Butt's views on federalism come tantalisingly close on some points, on others they remain stubbornly different, not least the question of nationality and the question of an Irish parliament, a term and concept which neither Carson nor Joseph Chamberlain would have accepted. Still, within the nationalist ambit, a close correspondence of ideas can be discerned when we

compare Carson's thinking of 1913-14 with that of the Nationalist leaders John Redmond and T. P. O'Connor in 1910. On 4 October 1910 O'Connor, speaking in Ottawa during a tour of Canada with Redmond, delivered the following interpretation of what home rule meant:

We mean by Home Rule the same measure of local self-government as exists in each

American state, though with the difference that we are perfectly willing that Westminster

shall have the final authority over local legislation enacted in Ireland as it has over colonial

legislation ... We do not demand such complete local autonomy as the British self

governing colonies possess, for we are willing to forgo the right of making our own tariff, and are prepared to abide by any fiscal system enacted by the British Parliament.111

There is little here that Carson would have found difficult to acknowledge, particularly since O'Connor twice reiterated that Westminster would remain the ultimate authority, regardless of whether the federal structure followed the American or the British self-governing colonial precedent. It offers us a tragic glimpse of what might have been, but for a different set of circumstances. And it

goes far to sustain Bew's claim that beneath all the political fireworks of this

period a rich and complex montage of long-obscured political connexions and

interplays operated between Redmondite Nationalism and Ulster Unionism.112 These comparisons allow us to highlight two central features which Carson

demanded of any federal-devolutionary or federal-unionist scheme: security for

unionists, and a renunciation of 'Ireland a nation'. For Carson, the imperial parliament had to remain, in a practical way, the supreme authority and power

108 Ibid., p. 47. See also David Thornley, Isaac Butt and home rule (London, 1964),

pp 100-03; Ward, Ir. constitutional tradition, pp 54-7. 109

Butt, Ir. federalism, p. 17. 110

Ibid., p. 58. 111 Wheatley, 'Redmond & federalism', p. 354.

112 Bew, Ideology & the Irish question.



5M?th ? Sir Edward Carson and the Third Home Rule Bill, 1913-14 515

within the United Kingdom, with any devolution of powers to local assemblies

beins of necessity a relatively limited extension and ultimately retractable. Such

limitations would underwrite the essential security craved by the Ulstermen. An Irish administration based upon devolution would pose little serious threat to

their religious, economic, social or political freedoms and standing, and would thus lessen their demand to stand outside an all-Ireland unit. The Ulster Unionists would not put their faith in Nationalist assurances about trusting their fellow

countrymen, but they might if that trust was underpinned by practical limits and constraints from Westminster. We might approach this from another angle. On

paper the actual details of home rule were not that far removed from devolution and were proximate to the relationship in Canada between the provincial and dominion parliaments, something for which Carson had expressed sympathy. However the potential projected onto home rule by Nationalists and radical Liberals, and indeed the image they manufactured for it, was of colonial self

government, with all manner of pretensions to national grandeur and, In the last resort, nothing more than a stepping-stone to full separation. During parliamentary debates, and to an even greater extent on the political circuit in Ireland, Nationalists referred to their forthcoming Irish parliament and Irish cabinet. Ward has noted that it was during the debates on the Third Home Rule Bill that the proposed lower house was for the first time called an Irish House of Commons.113 While such pretensions and posturing were hardly unexpected and

might similarly be dismissed as just that, they nonetheless could prove dangerous if subsequently checked or brought to book by the constitutionally 'supreme' authority. The ensuing struggle would offer Nationalist politicians a tempting and attractive political opportunity to agitate for further autonomy and even

independence.114 It was this possible dynamic that Carson so feared, and why for him it was vital to curtail the image of self-government and deny the potential for future change contained within home rule, with real and enforceable constraints from Westminster, The supremacy of the imperial parliament had to mean exactly that and not simply replicate the rather hollow supremacy claimed over dominion parliaments.

Second, a limited devolution of powers that insured the unimpaired authority of Westminster denied the nationalist claim that the island of Ireland was but one nation. Carson believed that what was at stake for the Ulstermen were questions of their identity, community and nationality. Home rule suggested they were part of an Irish nation, whereas federal-devolution signalled they were British. Carson

explained his thinking to Oliver early in February 1914 having just read his

pamphlet What federalism is not:

The real gravamen of the charge against the Government,.. is that they single out peaceful and loyal citizens for exceptional treatment and on no principle that can be made applicable to other members of the U.K. If we were being treated similarly to all other elements of the U.K., whilst we might deplore it ... we could hardly assert the right to

resist by force something which was equally being given to all members of the community in which we live.115

m Ward, Ir. constitutional tradition, p. 67.

114 The consequences of bloated pretensions to autonomy and self-government

contained within home rule would be seen most clearly in the history of fe Stormont government; see Jackson, Home rule, p. 255.

115 Carson to Oliver, 10 Feb. 1914 (N,L>S.,MS 24851, ff 24-5).




It was the exceptionalism of home rule that Carson found deplorable, since to treat Ireland separately from the rest of the United Kingdom was to denote or at least imply the sense of a dominant or even more legitimate Irish national identity on the island of Ireland, to the detriment of unionists and their British identity, Applying home rule throughout the United Kingdom, at the same time and on the same basis, would remove this dilemma, thereby weakening that sense of

uniqueness with Irish nationhood while reinforcing a sense of shared Britishness, The essence of this position was outlined by Grey, whose papers contain an

intriguing memorandum detailing a private meeting he had with 'some Ulster leaders' at some point in 1913, 'As long as they were threatened with the present

Home Rule BilP, Grey wrote,

there could be no possible talk of compromise as sooner than have that pass into law over their heads, there was scarcely anyone in the province who did not intend to fight; but if that bill were once out of the way, nothing would give them greater pleasure than to confer ... to see if it were possible to bring in a scheme of federation, their whole contenta

being that they were under any such scheme, to be treated exactly like England in every way. If this were done they would be heartily thankful for the present bitter feeling to be over, but this Home Rule bill they would not have.116

In these terms, Carson's strategy could be said to derive from his British

identity, what Linda Colley has observed as a British nationalism,117 or, more

thoughtfully, what James Loughlin sees as a multi-layered 'pride in his Irish identity and an intense embracing of British nationality'.118 Dicey observed a similar combination of multiple identities held together in a federal devolutionary scheme when he claimed that while 'a truly federal government is the denial of national independence to every state of the federation .., there is of course a sense ... in which national tradition and national feeling may be cultivated in a state which forms part of a confederacy'.119 Here, for Carson, was a constitutional structure that allowed Ireland's different identities free and

equitable expression but under a loose yet common Britishness. Of course, Carson's British-Irish identity and civic British nationalism, though similar to the Ulstermen's, clearly lacked roots within the community and culture of Ulster? and thus their powerful (and growing) sense of regional chauvinism.120 It was a slight but significant difference of perspective that helped generate alternative visions on the utility and value of federalism.

These notions point to several problems. Despite Grey's optimism, and Carson's subtle distinctions of identity, it is a moot point whether, even if a

federal-devolutionary reconstruction of the bill or Carson's compromise of 'exclusion pending federation' had been agreed, the Ulstermen would have been

116 Earl Grey, 'Memorandum - Private and confidential', n.d, (Durham University

Library, Earl Grey papers, MS 226/6). m Linda Colley, Britons: forging the nation, 1707-1837 (London, 1992). m James Loughlin, Ulster unionism and Brit?sh national identity since 1885 (London, 1995), p. 63. m

Dicey, Introduction, p. Ixxix. m

Jackson, Ulster party, pp 1-21, Jackson argues (ibid., Introduction) for a sense of Ulster nationalism emerging at this time, an argument supported in Graham Walker, A

history of the Ulster Unionist Party: protest, pragmatism and pessimism (Manchester, 2004), pp 5-17.



Smith ? Sir Edward Carson and the Third Home Ride Bill, 1913-14 517

prepared to accept the new arrangement. Many Ulstermen had long regarded

federal-devolution schemes as little better than veiled forms of home rule. As Graham Walker confirms, Ulstermen 'held that Dublin rule would still be

unacceptable in a federal-type framework', and he goes on to quote the Unionist A. W. Samuels, who in a strong anti-federalist pamphlet argued that in practice a federal system ... was no different to an Irish Home Rule scheme in that it would inevitably lead to separation'.121 W, Bourke Cockran, an influential Irish American, discussing temporary exclusion with Moret?n Frewen, wrote in 1913 that once partitioned (even temporarily), Ireland

will never again become reunited into a single nation. So far as I know, there is no instance

where two contiguous states inhabited by different races, professing different creeds, have become united in a single political system through the voluntary action of both. Even though the exclusion of Ulster from the operations of the Home Rule bill be limited in terms of six years, nevertheless the division once effected must in the very nature of things remain permanent. If separation of Ulster from the rest of Ireland be necessary now, to

avoid civil war, that necessity will grow stronger with the passage of time.122

Having won exclusion, Carson's capacity to force the Ulstermen to federate would have been extremely limited. His line of exclusion pending federation, therefore, could well have been a fig-leaf to disguise the reality of exclusion pure and simple: a means of lessening the damage he was inflicting upon his own

deeply held convictions. Cockran's observation probably held true for Nationalists as well. For having

won home rule, even with the exclusion of all or part of Ulster (an eventuality which, in any case, few Nationalists regarded as a serious possibility), would they have agreed to modify it by coming back into a British federal system, with the

implication of losing some powers? (Federation would, for Carson, require Ireland to hand back control of customs, the judiciary and Post Office.) It also seems less than clear that Nationalists would accept a federal-devolutionary settlement, even without exclusion, if the implication was that Ireland was not a nation. Despite positive noises from the O'Brien/Heaiy wing, a majority of Nationalists fell in behind Redmond, Dillon and Devlin in arguing that Ireland was a nation, one and indivisible, for which nothing but home rule was

satisfactory. Theirs was a cultural (even racial) understanding of nationalism, of which Carson's civic nationalism for the United Kingdom as a whole fell far short. Nor was it likely that they would be bought off by having their instalment of devolution passed immediately and in advance of the rest of the United

Kingdom, even with its suggestion of nationhood, as advocated by Lansdowne and Chamberlain, Carson would have opposed the merest hint of exceptional treatment, for precisely the same reasons that were used by some Nationalists to

promote it; any such measure could only be contemplated by him if accompanied by the exclusion of Ulster until the rest of the United Kingdom was ready to be federated. The likelihood of Nationalists agreeing to exclusion on the only tenus

acceptable to the Ulstermen, namely where they had the choice of whether they came back in or stayed outside, was extremely slim.

121 Graham Walker, Intimate strangers: political and cultur? interaction between

Scotland and Ulster in modern times (Edinburgh, 1995), p. 29. m Cockran to Frewen, May 1911 fDurham University Library, Bar? ?irey-jiapei&MS. 201/7).



SIB Irish Historical Studies

Given this resistance on all sides, how was Carson actually going to secure a federal-devolutionary settlement, whether on its own or as the long-term outcome to short-term exclusion? With no support from nationalist circles, and little obvious sympathy among the Ulstermen, Asquith was unlikely to advance a federal-devolutionary compromise, and so perhaps saw more political profit from maintaining his present course,123 'I doubt very much', Carson lamented to Selbome, "whether the Govt would be prepared to tackle it along these lines, though I cannot see myself any other way out of the impasse/124 Powerful colleagues on his own side, notably Bonar Law and Balfour, placed great faith in exclusion. At the same time, Carson's ability to manoeuvre the Ulstermen towards any type of compromise swiftly diminished from mid-1913 as their

militancy and strength rose considerably. The emergence of the U.V.E by the summer of 1913, the creation of the provisional government in September and the secret decision to bring in a large consignment of arms, taken in January-February 1914, generated a powerful self-belief among Ulstermen that compromise was both cowardly and unnecessary in the position they found themselves in by 1914. Carson, aware that a compromise was needed, now headed a movement unwilling or unable to collaborate towards this objective. He could not initiate a federal-devolutionary settlement, and even the suspicion that he was trying to do so would have destroyed his position among his supporters. Carson's role was limited to signals and signs of sympathy, ambiguous words of encouragement and gestures of reconciliation, and private intimations of support through intermediaries and friends. It was a delicate, if not impossible, political high-wire act in which he found himself engaged from late 1913: to go farther or faster risked exposing weakness and impairing standing; to go slower (or not go at all) risked civil conflict, bloodshed and far-reaching political turmoil. It was an act that in the end he failed to perform.125

Jeremy Smith Department of History, University of Wales, Lampeter

iB Jackson, Home rule, pp 162-4.

?* Carbon to Selborne, 27 Sept. 1913 (BodL, Selborne papers, MS 77, f. 57), U5 lilis article is based on a paper delivered at a conference on 'Ireland and the

Victorians1, held at the University of Chester in July 2004.1 would like to thank Dr D. G, Boyce for his helpful comments and advice on an earlier version.



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Federalism, Devolution and Partition: Sir Edward Carson and the Search for a Compromise on the Third...

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