DAVE MANSELL campaign, and it was this more than anything which gained the Home Rule the undying opposition of the Ulster middle classes, to whom tariffs meant being cut-off from their lucrative British and British imperial markets and being forced to bear the major portion of the burden of Irish taxation. Traditionally the Ulster merchants and industrialists had been Liberals because the Liberals were the party of free trade, and before the election of 1885 Liberals had held 9 of the seats in Ulster. The Home Rule campaign of the 1880s, however, was to polarise politics in Ulster and to set them into a pattern which has persisted basically unchanged until today. The 33 Ulster seats (expanded to cope for the increased electorate) divided 17/16 in favour of Home Rulers against those who favoured the retention of the Union with England (« Unionists»), and the Liberal representation was annihilated: the middle ground had been removed from Ulster politics, and so far it has not returned. CONCENTRATION OF POPULATION IN THE TOWNS The 1840s femine had had different effects in Ulster than in the rest of the country. The starving rural agricultural workers, mainly Catholic, had moved towards the towns of the industrialised eastern counties, Antrim and Dawn, in search of poor relief and work. The Ulster peasantry generally was not totally dependent on the potato for its sustenance, and it was in a position to grow cash crops such as flax and oats, with the money from which it could supplement its diet. The main effect of the famine, therefore was to increase the percentage of Catholics in the towns such as Belfast, Derry, etc. The towns of the Lagan valley especially began to experience heavy industrialization in the 1850s. The linen industry was already concentrating in Eastern Ulster, and the HarlandWolff shipyard was founded in 1858. The development of a major ship-building industry in Belfast is often attributed to the inherent efficacy of the Protestant ethic at accumulating capital and utilising it to promote industry. In fact the native Protestant middle class in Ulster were almost as lacksadaisical about using capital as their Catholic counterpart in the south. Edward Harland had come to Belfast in 1854 to take up a managerial position in the shipbuilding firm recently founded by Ribert Hickson. In 1858 he was on the point of leaving to set up his own business in Livorpool when his harrassed employer, who had had little success, sold out to him. Harland 84
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTExMDY2NQ==