THE ULSTER CONFLICT that they were never able to contemplate unconstitutional action which would antagonize the nationalist majority amongst whom they lived. Up to 1914 the southern protestants were able to oppose Home Rule because what they lacked in local strength they made up for by their influence in the English parliament, particularly in the prelominantly conservative House of Lords over one hundred peers possessed land in, or were sons of families in, the south of Ireland. Thus, when Gladstone's administration of 1892 (once again dependent on the Irish parliamentary party for its tenure of office) introduced the second Home Rule Bill and got it through the House of Commons, the southern Unionists were able to pressurize the lords to reject it. In Ulster the opposition to Home Rule was slower to take political shape. As already noted Parnell's candidates took 17 of the 33 Ulster seats in the 1885 election, and this was partially due to the fact that there was no co-ordination amongst the anti-Home Rule candidates, who fought each other as well as Parnell. The shock of the election result, together with the imminent possibility of Home Rule after Gladstone's conversion, galvanized the anti-Home Rulers into activity. The conservatives organized the Ulster Loyalist Anti-Repeal Union which soon teamed up with the Orange Order and tried to identify itself with the Protestant churches. It grew rapidly thanks to a series of extremely militant public meetings at which there was talk of armed resistance to imposed Home Rule (it was at this time that the slogan « Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right » was coined). The Ulster Liberals were slower to throw in their lot with the newly emerging Unionist movement, but when Gladstone's Home Rule bill was introduced into the House of Commons in April 1886, they broke with him and joined with the conservatives in a mass meeting held later in the month to condemn the bill. Although the Liberals preferred to maintain a separate organization, the Ulster Liberal Unionist Committee, the joint meeting sowed the seed of an alliance which was to survive for many years until it was formalised in the establishment of the Ulster Unionist Council in 1904/5. The Home Rule Bill never became law because Gladstone was deserted, in the parliamentary vote, by two sizeable minorities in his party, the right wing (as had been predicted) and the radical wing led by Joseph Chamberlain who believed that progress lay in a sort of social imperialist expansion and development of the British Empire. Following the defeat of 91
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTExMDY2NQ==