Ulster Difficulty
| Source: | The Irish Revolution | 1923 | William O'Brien |
| Section: | Introduction (VI) | Start of Section |
VI.
To return to the comparison between the two Policies, if the second can be described as a policy which was merely the destruction of the first:—We from the start advocated, as every body advocates now, a special consideration for the apprehensions, and even the historic prejudices of our Protestant countrymen in
Ulster, and in the other three provinces as well——our assailants scoffed at the Ulster Difficulty, and up to a late period joyously relied upon the weapons of contempt and ridicule to conjure it down, while the aid of the Southern Unionists was fiercely repulsed as though it covered some treacherous intrigue against the Home Rule Cause. Kindly Irishmen, of Unionist traditions, of the stamp of Lord Dunraven, Mr. Lindsay Talbot-Crosbie, Mr. Moreton Frewen, Lord Rossmore, and Col. (now Sir) W. Hutcheson Poë, who from cautious Home Rule beginnings advanced to the acceptance of full Dominion Home Rule, were vilified more and more savagely the further they advanced, as "landlord swindlers," as "our hereditary enemies," as "blackblooded Cromwellians," and as crafty "anti-Irish conspirators," to whom we had, "in a moment of weakness mortgaged the future of Ireland."
| Next: | Ulster Covenanters |
| Previous: | Parnell Split |
| Contents: | The Irish Revolution |
| Category: | History |
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William O'Brien was a County Cork M.P. who participated in the negotiations for Home Rule in Ireland. In this account, first published in 1923, he provides an insight into the politics and politicians of the time - John Redmond, John Dillon, Arthur Griffith, Sir Edward Carson, Bonar Law, Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, etc. - and gives his analysis of the origins of the Easter Rising of 1916 and the subsequent Irish Civil War. From his own perspective, O'Brien was very much anti-Partition, and was evidently frustrated at the failure to give adequate reassurance to the Northern Unionists.
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