The Ulster Covenant

100 years ago, Ireland stood at the brink of a bloody civil war.

At the time, the whole of the island was ruled from London,

but a bill before the House of Commons at Westminster

planned to establish Home Rule,

creating a separate parliament in Dublin

that would have extensive powers over Irish affairs.

In a dramatic act of protest, half a million Unionists,

men and women from all classes of society,

signed their names to what became known as the Ulster Covenant.

Some, it was said, even signed in their own blood.

The first person to sign the Covenant

was the charismatic Unionist leader, Edward Carson.

Using this pen at this very table here at Belfast City Hall,

he swore an oath to oppose the break-up of the United Kingdom

by any means necessary, even an armed insurrection.

What followed was an unprecedented stand-off

between Unionists and the British government,

one that threatened a military rebellion in Ireland

and violence on the streets of Britain.

This is the story of that extraordinary episode from British and Irish history,

one that is cloaked in mystery, myth and misconceptions,

but which was to turn this man, the Dublin-born Edward Carson,

into an unlikely but defining figurehead for Ulster Unionists

and an event that was to shape the political landscape we live in today.

The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland

in Belfast's new Titanic Quarter is a repository of our history.

It contains literally millions of documents

dating as far back as the 13th century,

all neatly boxed away for safekeeping.

These boxes may look rather anonymous,

but they contain the laws, the letters, the diaries,

the accounts, the maps and the photographs that tell our story.

And in the boxes on these shelves

is a collection of particularly significant documents.

Signatures, hundreds of thousands of them,

bound together in little folders by county.

Each foolscap page contains ten signatures, names and addresses

and at the top, a copy of the Ulster Covenant -

the solemn promise made by Unionists

and signed on a clear-skied Saturday in September 1912.

There are lords and ladies, politicians and clergy,

soldiers and police officers, teachers, shipyard workers,

labourers and linen workers. They're all here.

And also here, someone by the name of William Crawley.

He also added his signature to the Covenant that day.

Beyond the same name, I can find no other connection to him.

He gives his address as 34 Ormeau Street in South Belfast

and the place where he signed the Covenant

was the old town hall in the city centre.

But what fired up Unionists like this William Crawley?

What triggered this avalanche of written defiance?

It's simple, really -

this Covenant was a response, a call to arms, a reply in simple black ink

to a document these people believed was a political death sentence.

But political change was not the only issue

troubling the people of Ulster at this time.

On 15th April 1912,

news began to reach Belfast of a shocking disaster.

Titanic, the world's largest passenger liner,

launched from the city's shipyard the previous year,

had struck an iceberg with a terrible loss of life.

The industrial pride of Ulster was shattered.

But Ireland's Unionists believed

they were now facing an even greater crisis.

Four days before the Titanic disaster,

the British Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith,

had introduced the Home Rule Bill for Ireland.

If it was passed into law, Ulster would be governed

not by a British Parliament in London,

but by an Irish Parliament in Dublin,

exercising extensive powers devolved from Westminster.

Here in the archives of the Houses of Parliament

is this rather innocent looking document.

It's got a lovely parchment cover,

the green ribbon of the House of Commons at the side and it's called

"An Act to Amend the Provision for the Government of Ireland."

We think of it as the Home Rule Bill.

It does look innocent but in fact,

this is what the Ulster Covenant was about.

This is why 500,000 people signed their names and pledged,

if necessary, to give their lives to fight.

You get a real sense of the scope of what is intended in this act from the first page.

"Notwithstanding the establishment of the Irish Parliament

"or anything contained in this act, the supreme power

"and authority of the Parliament of the United Kingdom

"shall remain unaffected and undiminished

"over all persons, matters and things in Ireland

"and every part thereof."

Why were Unionists so enraged by this document?

Well, I think one way of dealing with that

is to look at the Covenant itself.

The first point it makes is it believes that this bill

represents a threat to the material well-being of North East Ulster.

It must be remembered, at that time, Belfast was considered

to be one of the premier industrial cities in the world.

The second point that they make is

it's a threat to their civil and religious liberty.

And the third key point, more positive, is the idea to challenge

what they call the equal citizenship of Northern Irish Unionists

within the United Kingdom.

In addition to their concerns that this might eventually lead to independence,

the Unionists were clearly also concerned

about the influence of the Catholic Church -

"Home Rule means Rome Rule," they said.

Yes, and again that is an argument which it is very hard to say

has been refuted by subsequent history.

But there were particular cases which alarmed Unionists

about the growing influence of the Catholic Church,

and there are also occasions of very unwise statements by Catholic clergy,

as there are by some Protestant clergymen in this period,

which again created a spasm in the Unionist mind.

But the subsequent history of 20th-century Ireland

does not disprove the thesis

that self-government is some form of Rome Rule.

It's really clear from the bill that the British King would remain the King of Ireland.

How can this be read as a strategy towards independence?

-It's devolution, isn't it?

-Oh, it IS devolution.

Look, the best way of thinking about this bill now

is to think of it as something similar to the Scottish model

that we've seen in recent years.

But it is equally reasonable to say, and Unionists make this point

and again and again, once you have devolved this power,

once you give the prestige of an Irish Parliament

and you set it up in Dublin and that Parliament says,

"We want to take further powers,

"we want to move in a more separatist reaction,"

it's actually going to be very hard to stop it

because that Parliament will have a legitimacy

and an emotional appeal which wasn't there before.

The seeds of the crisis had been planted two years earlier,

in 1910, when a Liberal government was elected to Westminster

with a majority of just two seats.

That left the Irish Nationalists,

led by John Redmond, the MP for Waterford,

holding the balance of power in the British Parliament.

With the crucial leverage they needed

to press forward with Home Rule, they seized their moment.

In return for the Irish Nationalists' backing in Parliament,

Asquith's Liberal government supported their demand for Home Rule

and agreed to introduce the bill in 1912.

It was a political deal that kept the Liberals in power,

but as events would prove, Asquith gravely miscalculated

the ferocity of Unionist opposition to it.

Asquith's Cabinet colleague, Winston Churchill,

would soon look that opposition in the eye when in February 1912,

he travelled to Belfast to present the case for Home Rule.

Fearing violence,

the Army even had to deploy five battalions of soldiers

to guarantee Churchill's safety when he addressed a rally in the city.

Afterwards, as crowds of unionists gathered at the Belfast hotel

where Churchill was staying, the authorities arranged for him

to slip out of the city through the back streets

and secreted him away to an early departure from Larne Harbour.

He exited Ulster, Unionists said, "Like a thief in the night."

The political battle lines were drawn.

Sometimes literally, in cartoons and propaganda posters,

caricaturing the key players in the unfolding drama.

In the case of the unionist campaign,

depicting the political apocalypse

that would befall the prosperous city of Belfast

if Home Rule was granted.

This grand house in East Belfast

soon became the epicentre of Unionist resistance to Home Rule.

In 1912, it was the home of the man who could rightly be described

as the architect of Unionist opposition -

the MP for East Down, James Craig.

Craig was the son of a self-made whiskey millionaire.

He trained as a stockbroker,

but it was his military service in the Boer War

that equipped him with the tactical skills

he would deploy in the Unionist struggle against Home Rule.

100 years ago, Craigavon House was alive with Craig's personality.

This is the room where Craig entertained his guests,

some of the leading political figures of his day.

It features a stained-glass window Craig had designed

to commemorate his connection with some of the greatest men in history.

Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Mozart and Titian -

all, like Craig, thought to be Freemasons.

While he was a skilled organiser,

Craig knew that with nationalists pressing for Home Rule,

Unionists needed a charismatic champion for their cause.

In effect, they needed a first-class lawyer,

a man who would forcefully argue their case

before the court of British opinion.

Craig also knew that only one man had the legal skill,

the personal charisma and the political stamina to play that role -

a Dublin MP who had curiously little knowledge or experience

of the very people he would have to represent -

the Protestants of Ulster.

His name was Edward Carson.

Student debaters at Trinity College Dublin

are perfecting their skills as orators.

This is the college's Historical Society,

known to everyone as The Hist.

People fear what they don't understand

and they hate what they cannot conquer.

It's where the public voice of the future leader of Unionism,

the Dublin-born Edward Carson, was first heard.

I'm here today to motivate you to stand in opposition to this foolhardy idea.

We say that the modern society has in many senses gone

from a backward one, in which we fought each other and which oppressed,

into one which is now free and fair and democratic.

Some say Carson even in these first forays into public debate

was already refining the granite-like appearance

that would eventually become his political calling card.

I beg you to oppose.

APPLAUSE

While Carson maintained a pretty mediocre academic record at Trinity,

it was followed by a brilliant career at the bar

that would see him acting in

some of the most high-profile cases of his day.

He was the victorious counsel in the famed Winslow Boy trial,

when he defended a teenage naval cadet

against an allegation of theft.

Even more sensational was his role in the libel trial

of one of his most celebrated contemporaries from Trinity days, Oscar Wilde.

When Wilde discovered that he would face Carson in the court

he's reported to have said,

"No doubt he will pursue his case

"with all the added bitterness of an old friend."

Carson's growing distinction at the bar, both in Dublin

and in London, made a career in politics almost inevitable.

By 1905, he had served for five years as Solicitor General in a Conservative government

and when Irish Unionist MPs at Westminster needed a new leader after the election of 1910,

Craig and others pressed Carson to accept the position.

Carson knew the odds were stacked against the Unionist cause,

but as he walked into Parliament as the new leader of Unionism,

he did so with the uncompromising zeal of a resistance fighter.

It was here in September 1911, in the grounds of his home,

that Craig mobilised 50,000 Unionists to meet their new leader

to prove to Carson that their willingness to resist the Home Rule Bill was not in doubt.

As Carson walked down the hill from the house,

the massed Unionists gathered here roared their welcome.

As he moved through their ranks,

he climbed a specially constructed platform

at the centre of what is essentially a natural amphitheatre here.

In response to their demonstrations of support,

he offered them determined words

which anticipated the battle that lay ahead of them.

"I know the responsibility you are putting on me today," he said.

"In your presence, I cheerfully accept it, grave as it is,

"and I now enter into a compact with you and everyone of you

"and with the help of God, you and I joined together

"will yet defeat the most nefarious conspiracy

"that has ever been hatched against a free people."

Events were moving quickly.

Carson's words were widely reported in the national press.

But his rousing speech was soon dismissed by Winston Churchill

as "nothing more than the trivial frothings of a Unionist politician."

Churchill may have delivered

a colourful rebuff to their campaign,

but Carson and Craig found a high-profile supporter

in a national politician of Ulster descent...

..none other than the Conservative leader, Andrew Bonar Law.

His father had served as a Presbyterian minister in Coleraine

and Bonar Law, a frequent visitor to the province,

understood the mindset of Ulster Protestants better than Carson.

On 9th April 1912, Easter Tuesday,

Bonar Law was the guest of honour at a demonstration of Unionist strength

in the Royal Agricultural Grounds at Balmoral in Belfast.

100,000 men and women paraded in front of his platform.

Nearby, a 90ft-high flagstaff

flew what was said to be the largest Union Flag ever woven.

Three days later, on Friday 12th April,

the Home Rule Bill was introduced in Parliament.

The following Sunday, the Titanic struck an iceberg.

Amongst Unionists, the sense of depression

and an air of impending defeat was palpable.

The show of strength at Balmoral had been a triumph for Craig,

but it was not enough.

He wanted to give unionists in Ulster

an opportunity to put their convictions into words,

to signal their determination in a binding oath.

In late spring at his club in London,

Craig found himself puzzling over the wording of that oath.

Sitting nearby was a well-known Belfast businessman

called BWD Montgomery, who seeing Craig's furrowed brow,

asked him what he was working on.

When Craig explained,

Montgomery immediately suggested that he should model his text

on the Scottish Covenant of the 17th century,

which protested against interference by the King in the life of the Church.

They called for the club's librarian

and asked him to bring them a book on Scottish history.

Then, hurriedly, they searched for the Scots Covenant of 1638.

It was the biggest eureka moment of Craig's life -

rediscovering that Covenant in the 20th century was a revelation.

Craig's family was originally from Scotland,

settling in Ulster during the Plantation of the 17th-century.

Now here he was, reaching back in time to another moment of crisis

for help in the Ulster Protestants' hour of need.

Getting the wording of the Ulster Covenant right

was a matter of huge importance.

Craig wanted a manifesto that would set out the case against

Home Rule persuasively, but he also wanted something that would

move Unionists, if necessary, into action.

Craig also realised that the lengthy, archaic language

of the Scottish Covenant would be lost on most of his followers.

He needed something simpler, more plain spoken.

The search was on for someone who could turn a phrase, but who

also understood the quickening heartbeat of Ulster Unionists.

The man given the crucial task of fashioning a completely

original Covenant is all but forgotten today.

His portrait, by the artist Frank McKelvey, is stored away here

at the Ulster Museum's archives.

This is Thomas Sinclair.

A successful merchant

and influential Presbyterian, Sinclair was a liberal in politics.

He broke with the British liberals over their plans to introduce

Home Rule and at Craig's request, he set to work on a draft

of the Covenant, agonising over every phrase of it

and incorporating important amendments from the Presbyterian Church.

In short order, Sinclair delivered a text

that put a smile on Craig's face.

Short enough to be carried in the wallet of every Unionist,

it would bind its signatories to a defiant defence of Ulster.

KEY LINES FROM THE COVENANT: "Being convinced in our consciences...

"that Home Rule would be disastrous...

"whose names are underwritten...religious freedom...

"in solemn Covenant... to defeat the present conspiracy...

"such a parliament being forced upon us,

"and in using all means which may be found necessary...

"confidently trusted...do hereby pledge ourselves in solemn Covenant."

Craig moved quickly to announce his new Covenant in the press.

Saturday 28 September would be named Ulster Day,

a public holiday and pivotal date in the history of Ireland

when the loyalists of Ulster would be invited to sign

their solemn league and Covenant.

Leaving nothing to chance, Craig staged managed

ten days of rallies across the north of Ireland.

CHEERING

Carson set out on the campaign trail which began in Enniskillen,

then swept eastward through Ulster towns as he sought to

mobilise the support of Unionists.

He was greeted like a returning hero with rank and file escorting him

to platforms and tens of thousands of new volunteers marching

past him in military order.

But the wording of the Covenant was still to be revealed.

That moment also had to be carefully choreographed.

On the 19th of September,

at precisely four o'clock in the afternoon,

Carson took his place on the front steps of Craig's home,

which to all intents and purposes had become

the birthplace of the Covenant, and addressed the assembled press.

He read aloud the text of the Covenant

and one phrase in particular was lost on no-one -

they would pledge to resist Home Rule in using

"all means that may be found necessary."

Unionists had issued a conditional declaration of war.

If a parliament in Ireland was forced upon them, they would fight.

The charismatic man who would lead them

earned not just the respect of Unionists,

they looked to him as a political saviour. But Carson's public persona

masked a deeply complex personality.

What kind of man was Edward Carson?

He was an interesting and equivocal figure.

To the outside world he was the epitome

of fortitude,

resolution and he appeared like a messiah.

But inside, he was prey to self-doubt

and he was an intense hypochondriac.

His letters to Lady Londonderry for example are full of complaints

about his health and how he was taken to his bed yet again

and that sort of thing.

Unionists clearly thought the Covenant a masterstroke

-but it was certainly a political gamble too, wasn't it?

-Yes.

The background was quite serious sectarian violence in this city

and the Covenant in a way was a safety valve.

It allowed the people to let off steam in a ceremonial way

by signing this solemn declaration.

The Covenant may have been a safety valve but it had within it

this phrase - "all means necessary",

which was a kind of a ticking bomb inside that document.

Yes. I think they were prepared to do "all things necessary."

When Carson agreed to come over to the first mass meeting in 1911,

he wrote to Craig and said, "I'm not for a game of bluff", and he wasn't.

But his followers weren't either

so it was entirely serious.

At a mass rally in the Ulster Hall, Carson urged his followers

to translate their opposition to Home Rule into a binding contract.

It was 27 September - the eve of Ulster Day.

Inside, the hall was crammed to capacity,

outside, thousands more filled the surrounding streets,

held together by a sense that they were not just watching a unique event unfolding -

they were making common cause in a moment of history.

CHEERING

The next morning Carson rose early

and returned to the Ulster Hall for a church service.

Across the province Ulster men and women followed his example,

listening to sermons that drew parallels between the pledge

they were about to sign and the Old Testament covenants

between God and the people of Israel.

Suitably stirred by that religious endorsement, Unionists made

their way to one of hundreds of designated venues,

mostly church halls,

where they would add their names to Craig's solemn oath.

CHEERING

An atmosphere of almost religious intensity greeted Carson as he

walked in a military procession towards the City Hall.

Ahead of him, a flag that was said to have been carried

by King William III's troops at the Battle of the Boyne.

Belfast's newly-built City Hall was by far

the largest of the Ulster Day Covenant centres.

It was just six years old in 1912 and this marked

its transformation into the focal point of Ulster's defiance.

CHEERING

When he arrived at the City Hall, Carson was met by city fathers

and tens of thousands of loyalists.

2,500 men from Orange Lodges

and Ulster Clubs acted as marshals to ensure that Craig's choreography

was followed literally to the letter.

Standing here under the dome of the City Hall,

in this grand entrance space surrounded by civic,

political and religious leaders, Carson leaned over the specially

constructed table and this is the actual table, and as he looked down

he saw a copy of the Covenant that had been placed here by James Craig.

This is the actual pen used by Carson to sign the Covenant.

It's a silver pen presented to him by the Ulster Committee

on Ulster Day and look at the box that accompanies it - it has some

of the names centrally connected with the Covenant's history.

Thomas Sinclair over here on the right,

the man who drafted the words of the Covenant.

BWD Montgomery the man who originally suggested

the Scots Covenant as a model to James Craig in that London club,

and of course over here on the left,

Captain Craig MP, James Craig himself.

As Carson and the other dignitaries stepped back from the table,

marshals began to usher in the ordinary people of Ulster,

in waves of 500 at a time until the doors were closed at 11pm.

They signed using makeshift desks

constructed along the City Hall's corridors.

While the men of Ulster signed using the main text of the Covenant,

women added their names to a separate declaration,

pledging to associate themselves with the men of Ulster

in their uncompromising opposition to the Home Rule Bill.

The resolve of those who signed on Ulster Day was so great,

so visceral, that a story began to travel through the province

and beyond, that some had even signed the Covenant in blood.

There is however one signature that conforms to the myth.

Major Fred Crawford.

Or so it would seem.

Crawford commanded the marshals on Ulster Day and his signature here

is written in red, unlike all the others on the page.

Of course it's possible that it's merely red ink.

But look at this - those who signed were given personal copies

of the Covenant and many of these were

displayed on walls of homes all across the country.

This is Fred Crawford's personal Covenant certificate.

It says at the bottom, "The above was signed by me

"on Ulster Day 1912..." and then just look here...

"In my own blood."

In total 471,414 men and women signed,

women outnumbering by about 10,000 and they signed not only

in Ulster, but in Dublin, where 2000 signatures were collected,

in Scotland where 20,000 people added their names

and in exotically far-flung places like South Africa and even China.

Some of them weren't even on land.

This is a collection of signatures from a ship en route to Canada

bringing people from Ireland who were emigrating, and they've

divided their signatures into second and third class passenger lists.

On the evening of Ulster Day, while thousands were still signing

at the City Hall, Carson was the Lord Mayor's guest of honour

for dinner at the Ulster Club in the centre of Belfast.

They toasted the King and revelled in the sheer triumph

they had just witnessed.

CHEERING

That night as Carson made his way to Belfast docks to catch

the boat to Liverpool, thousands of cheering, waving supporters

lined his route, imploring him not to leave.

Obviously, Ulster Day itself was in every sense

a red-letter day for Protestants.

What was that day like for Nationalists here?

I think it was ostentatiously ignored by Nationalists in Belfast

and Derry and elsewhere.

It was a normal day - football matches proceeded,

men went to the bookies, whatever they did on Saturday really.

It was very much a Protestant occasion and it was mocked,

of course, by the Nationalist press as a carnival of fools, you know.

It's a kind of masquerade of noise, a cacophony of Orange bluster.

Did any Catholics sign the Covenant?

I think it's absolutely certain that no Catholic signed

the Ulster Covenant. The best example would be

the leading Roman Catholic Unionist, Denis Henry who later became

Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland,

a close colleague of Carson's.

He didn't sign the Covenant because it was not invoking his God

or his religious experience.

As an Ulster Catholic, an Irish Catholic, his background was

the penal laws, Catholic emancipation, that was his background.

It wasn't the God of Presbyterian battles which was

invoked by the Covenant.

There was also a counter Covenant of a kind, wasn't there?

-A second Covenant?

-Absolutely.

Towards the end of 1912, people like Rev JB Armour,

the great Presbyterian minister from Ballymoney, Sir Roger Casement

and others produced this counter Covenant which actually expressed enthusiasm for Irish Home Rule.

It was perhaps signed by about 3,000.

Which is proof that not all Protestants were on the side

-of the Covenant. It wasn't just one story.

-It certainly wasn't.

And in certain areas like the Route area around Ballymoney

where Protestant Home Rule sentiment was strong, in fact,

a very strong nexus of feeling, Ulster Day was hardly acknowledged at all,

thanks to the influence of people like Armour and others.

But throughout the bulk of Ulster, from Cavan to the Giant's Causeway

to the streets of Belfast there was this occasion of solemnity,

of Protestant solidarity, preceded by church services attended by

the gentry, and of course, in Belfast,

by people like Carson and Craig.

The Nationalist newspapers may have been witheringly dismissive

of what they described as "Carson's circus",

depicting it as a grotesque farce that would lead nowhere,

but if they believed the signing of a Covenant was the final act of

this political drama, they clearly misread the Unionist script.

Carson and Craig never believed signatures on a piece of paper

could halt the Home Rule Bill's path through Parliament.

They never saw the Covenant as a kind of petition to present

to Parliament, in fact, it was never presented to anybody.

Instead, the Unionist leaders saw the Covenant as their mandate,

a mandate to resist Home Rule in Ireland and if necessary,

to create an alternative government in Ulster.

But a government without an army is a government without teeth.

Within four months of Ulster Day, in January 1913,

Unionist leaders took a momentous decision that would set them

on a collision course with the British state.

Recently, unearthed minutes from those Unionist meetings record

plans for the establishment of a provisional government

and the creation of a military council.

The die was cast.

The men of Ulster, those between the ages of 17 and 65, would be asked

to join the ranks of a new militia, the fighting arm of the resistance.

It would be called the Ulster Volunteer Force.

In effect, those who had signed the Covenant would be urged to

follow through on their pledge and stand as brothers-in-arms.

The new military council wanted a force of 100,000.

James Craig in a speech in Ballymena in 1913, went even further.

"I will not rest content", he said, "until every man who calls himself

"an Ulsterman is in the ranks of the Ulster Volunteer Force."

Those gathered to hear him speak that day shouted, "We are ready!"

CHEERING

HORSE WHINNIES

Thousands of Unionist women

also volunteered to serve as part-time nurses

but not only that, when their husbands, sons

and brothers drilled, they drilled alongside them.

Wealthy local businessmen were among those who offered money

to equip the new force.

First they needed guns which would have to be imported from abroad.

It was a dangerous move but British law permitted militias to organise

and arm themselves so long as their purpose was to defend the Empire.

It was a loophole that Carson, the lawyer, turned to his advantage.

The Unionist campaign to mobilise an armed force would be entirely legal.

As MPs in Westminster debated the passage of the Home Rule Bill

and Unionist militia men wondered when, if ever, they would start

drilling with real rifles instead of broom sticks, 500 delegates

from the Ulster Unionist Council assembled here in the Ulster Hall.

And revolution was on the agenda.

If the organisation of a militia was made possible by a legal anomaly,

what was about to take place in the Ulster Hall

was illegal to the point of treason.

These minute books from the Ulster Unionist Council

show that they voted that day in January 1913

to delegate their powers to a provisional government.

Carson was named chairman of its central authority

and departments were formed dealing with finance and law,

education and defence,

transport and health,

customs and excise,

even a post office.

When the public announcement

of a planned provisional government was made,

it was accompanied by the sound of flute bands and drums.

UVF parades were held across the province,

co-ordinated from the force's new command centre

here at the old town hall in Belfast,

now part of Belfast's Laganside Courts.

It's an irony that this place is now a courthouse,

given how much illegality was dreamt up between these walls in 1913.

James Craig served here as a UVF staff officer

and working alongside him was a man

who would play a crucial role in making that new force battle-ready.

When Fred Crawford opened a vein

and spilled his blood on the Ulster Covenant,

he knew what that signature represented -

a willingness not just to risk his own life but the lives of others

in the fight against Home Rule.

GUNFIRE

And Crawford's blood was stirred by an adventure.

He had travelled the world

and saw action in the Boer War as an artillery officer.

When he returned to Belfast,

the same year Carson was elected to Westminster,

he was drawn into the battle against Home Rule.

Crawford's military experience

and his developing contacts with arms dealers

made him the perfect candidate

to serve as the UVF's director of ordnance

but the force's efforts to get hold of guns

would have to be conducted very secretly.

In December 1913,

Asquith's government used robust new legislation

to close the loophole that permitted arms importation.

Where others felt inhibited by this change in the law,

Crawford was in his element.

He loved to play the cloak and dagger role of a secret agent,

scuttling from one fake identity to another,

scouring Britain and Europe for contacts.

And Crawford had a plan.

If he pulled it off, he said,

it would be a coup and a humiliation for Asquith's government.

He faced opposition from some within the UVF Military Council,

who clearly thought Crawford was, to say the least, out of control.

But he knew he needed the support of one man above all others.

At Carson's home in London's exclusive Belgravia district,

Crawford set out his plan -

one that he knew could cost him his life.

He told Carson he would go through with it

only if he had the Unionist leader's total support.

Carson listened carefully, then looked Crawford in the eye

and said, "Crawford, I'll see you through this business

"even if I have to go to prison for it."

Then he added, "You are the bravest man I have ever met."

Crawford replied, "I leave tonight."

His destination was Germany,

where he had already sourced thousands of rifles and machine guns

and millions of rounds of ammunition.

Now all he needed was a vessel that would transport the arms to Ireland.

Meanwhile, in Britain, tensions were rising.

The hawks in Asquith's government,

not least Winston Churchill,

wanted the army placed on a war footing.

As rumours reached Belfast

that arrest warrants for Unionist leaders had been signed,

Craigavon House, the place where Carson first announced the Covenant,

was now under UVF guard.

James Craig's wife Mary kept a meticulous record

of the extraordinary events

taking place just outside her drawing-room.

Look at this page from Mrs Craig's scrapbook.

What looks like a domestic image,

Sir Edward Carson at their home visiting with them,

and below it, British Army troops marching into Holywood barracks,

just along the street from Craigavon House, but in fact,

Craigavon House was itself a military compound at that point,

and these images

are the images of war in the air.

With Parliament in uproar and Belfast under siege,

the unfolding drama would now move along the coast

to the County Antrim port of Larne.

And at the centre of that story was Drumalis House.

A century ago, this was the home of the Smileys,

a well-known Unionist family, and Carson was a frequent visitor here.

Today, the building is home to the Sisters of the Cross and Passion.

The peacefulness of this setting today

is a world away from the escalating tensions of 1914,

when armed lookouts studied the horizon

from the roof of this stately home,

ready to give the signal that

the riskiest venture in the history of unionism was about to begin.

How big a gamble was this for Carson?

It's a ferocious gamble

but the entire policy of militancy is a gamble, in my view.

I think that militancy is about

stoking up the pressure within the constitutional process at Westminster

to narrow Asquith and the Liberal government's room for manoeuvre.

I think what happens between 1912 and 1914

is that Asquith is not budging

and the Unionists therefore have to increase the pressure,

so the culmination of this is the gunrunning of April 1914.

Was this an act of treason?

That's an extraordinarily difficult question to answer

because it involves, obviously, the technical legal question of treason

as opposed to, if you like, the wider question

of betraying somehow the British identity that they sought to embrace.

I think we can set out a variety of things in a clear-cut way.

They are engaged, through the gunrunning, in acts of legality.

The gunrunning is illegal.

If you look, however, at the Covenant

I think it perhaps gives us some clues

as to the Unionist mindset at this time.

The Covenant sets out, in my view, a listing

of what the motivating factors within Unionist resistance are

and the first of these factors

is the material well-being of the Unionist people

and the wider population of the north of Ireland.

There's also referencing to civil and religious equality

and the unity of the Empire comes, I think, some way down the list

of what the Unionists are prioritising

in terms of their motives.

What's Germany's relationship to all of this

and the Kaiser's role in this gunrunning?

The arms, of course, originated in Germany

and it's also the case, of course,

that Germany has a vested interest in...

in stirring the ugliness of Irish party political passions

in the context of an earlier arms race with Great Britain

and on the eve of the Great War.

The Germans wanted guns in here?

The Germans benefited from weapons arriving in Ireland, yes.

While Britain and Ireland were on a knife edge,

Crawford was still in Germany

and had found a Norwegian cargo boat

with the decidedly un-terrifying name of the SS Fanny

to bring the guns to Ulster.

In March 1914,

25,000 rifles and more than three million rounds of ammunition

were secretly transported from the docks in Hamburg

and loaded onto the steamship

before it set course for Ireland.

It was a journey against the odds

as Crawford and his cargo had to evade capture

while they made their way through the English Channel

and into the Irish Sea.

At Tuskar Rock, off the coast of Wexford,

the cargo was transferred to a coal ship called the SS Clyde Valley,

which was a frequent visitor to Irish ports

and therefore less likely to attract attention

as it carried its new cargo to the port of Larne.

Though not before Crawford renamed the Clyde Valley the Mountjoy,

after one of the vessels that came to the rescue of Ulster Protestants

during the siege of Derry in 1689.

Crawford's Mountjoy reached its final destination

here at Larne on the evening of the 25th of April.

With great haste, the ship's deadly cargo was carried to Drumalis House

and quickly dispersed in convoys of motor cars

to arms dumps across the north of Ireland.

It was all done

before the authorities knew anything was happening.

Guns like this were brought in that night under the cover of darkness.

This is one of the original Mauser rifles from Hamburg

and after 100 years...

it still fires.

GUNSHOT

The next day's newspapers were full of accounts of the gunrunning.

Asquith, fuming with indignation,

described the event as an unprecedented outrage

and considered ordering the arrest of UVF leaders.

Advised that this would only inflame the situation, he relented

and instead, ordered a cruiser and 18 destroyers

to patrol the coasts of Antrim and Down.

Even the hardline Churchill was moved to talk of compromise,

imploring Carson to seek an amendment to the Home Rule Bill

to secure the interests of Protestant Ulster.

Another consequence of the UVF's illegal gunrunning

was almost inevitable.

While some nationalists laughed at the irony of Unionists arming

to defend themselves from their own British government,

the Republican leader Padraig Pearse said, "The Orangemen with a gun

"is not as laughable as the Nationalist without one."

And so within three months of the Larne gunrunning plot,

the Irish Volunteers pulled off their own coup

at Howth, just north of Dublin.

They landed 1,000 rifles, also from Germany

but this time, in broad daylight.

The stakes were now very high indeed.

Two armed militias were now drilling in Ireland.

With the outbreak of fighting,

supporters from England would almost certainly be drawn in

to take up arms themselves

and could even divide the loyalties of the British Army.

Without a resolution, Britain itself could sink into Civil War.

In an anxious effort to avoid open war on the streets of Belfast,

Dublin, and quite possibly Liverpool, Glasgow and London, too,

Asquith's government tabled a compromise -

an amendment to the Home Rule Bill

that would keep the Ulster counties

within the United Kingdom for another six years

while a parliament in Dublin was established.

To Carson, it was merely a stay of execution.

To Redmond and the Irish Nationalists,

it was an assault on the very idea of Home Rule.

But while politicians argued,

militiamen in fields just like this one in south Antrim

practised their shot.

GUNSHOT

On the 21st of July 1914,

in a desperate attempt at mediation,

the King, George V, intervened.

He invited both sides to a crisis summit here at Buckingham Palace.

For the first time in Irish history,

a formal peace conference, what today we'd call "all-party talks",

had been convened, involving both Unionists and Nationalists.

Under the King's roof, Asquith and Lloyd George listened for three days

as Carson and Redmond bickered and debated

with any hope of a compromise diminishing by the hour.

The summit ended in deadlock.

But events in Europe were already crowding out their arguments.

12 days after the Buckingham Palace conference ended in stalemate,

Britain declared war on Germany -

a war that would ultimately cost 35 million lives

and redraw the map of Europe.

The Home Rule Bill was passed into law in September 1914

but with an accompanying provision

that delayed its implementation until after the war.

Now, despite the intensity of the Unionist campaign to resist the bill

it was greeted in Ulster with silence.

No violence on the streets,

no protests, no demonstrations.

Against the backdrop of war in Europe, it was practically ignored.

The UVF, established to defend Ulster

against what they saw as a treasonous British government,

was soon to become the 36th Ulster Division of the British Army.

They were to suffer devastating losses,

a sacrifice they saw as the fulfilment of the promise

they had made in the Covenant to defend the Empire.

Many of the Irish Volunteers

who armed themselves in response to the UVF

also marched to war as the 16th Irish Division.

They also bravely spilled their blood,

alongside their Ulster counterparts

and wearing the same uniform.

Home Rule would eventually come to Ireland,

but not as anyone had predicted.

In the partition of the island

that followed the War of Independence in 1921,

the south would govern itself as the Irish Free State.

The six north-eastern counties of Ulster,

those where Home Rule was most resisted,

were renamed Northern Ireland

and granted their own devolved parliament here at Stormont.

It's one of the many ironies of this story

that a campaign aimed at resisting a parliament in Ireland

would eventually lead to just that.

As an Irish Unionist from Dublin,

Edward Carson ended his political career

disillusioned by the partition of Ireland.

Likewise, the Unionists of the other three counties of Ulster

who signed the Covenant - Donegal, Monaghan and Cavan -

felt betrayed, excluded from the new state of Northern Ireland.

Carson lived out the rest of his life in London.

The man who once sanctioned illegal gunrunning

was to become a British law lord.

He's buried in St Anne's Cathedral in Belfast,

a city he never lived in

and which he said he hardly knew.

James Craig would serve for 19 years

as the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland.

The agreement he helped to broker,

which divided Ireland into two states,

was, he said, a pragmatic necessity,

the only way to ensure that the Protestant Unionist tradition

could be protected and given a future.

Craig's buried just feet away from Parliament Buildings, out of sight,

still permitting the charismatic Carson to steal the limelight.

And here at the base of Carson's statue,

which dominates the approach to Stormont,

these bronze reliefs record episodes in the story of a Covenant

that continues to prompt political debate to this day.

To some, it's the birth certificate of the new Northern Ireland,

a symbol of loyalty and sacrifice.

To others, it's the reason why this island was divided,

the trigger that fired us into open conflict

almost half a century later.

However we read it, this much is clear -

this continent, with its half a million signatures,

united two very different men, Carson and Craig,

in a struggle that would define both their lives

and ours.

A Covenant that's still cherished by Unionists

but which needs to be understood by everyone on this island

if we're ever to make sense of our common story.

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