Ex-British PM and Ulster loyalist champion, Andrew Bonar Law, dies at home

London, 31 October 1923 - Former British Prime Minister, Mr. Andrew Bonar Law,  died at his London home yesterday. 

First elected as a Conservative party MP in 1900, Mr. Bonar Law, who held the British premiership from October 1922 to May this year, died in his sleep yesterday morning. He is reported to have suffered from a cancer of the throat. It had been announced the evening before his passing that he was suffering from septic pneumonia and his daughters and sons were with him up to a late hour that night.

Since news of his death became known, messages of sympathy have poured in from the King, from current Prime Minister Mr. Stanley Baldwin, and his predecessors, Mr. Herbert Asquith and Mr. David Lloyd George.

Messages have also come from the Dominion Premiers and from the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Mr. James Craig. Mr. Bonar Law was the son of Rev. Jas. Law, who had been born at Madybenny, Coleraine, and educated by the Irish Presbyterian Church, before being called to the pastorate in New Brunswick, where the future British Prime Minister was born in 1858. Indeed, the first time Mr. Bonar Law contested and won an election it was for the Blackfriars Division of the Glasgow constituency in Scotland.

As leader of the Conservative Party opposition in the House of Commons, Mr. Bonar Law was a prominent player in the Irish rule home crisis of 1912-14, most notably when he voiced his unwavering support for Edward Carson in advance of the UVF gun-running operation of 1913. He also memorally attended an anti-home rule rally in Balmoral outside Belfast in April 1912 where he reviewed and addressed a parade of 100,000 loyalists.

Later that same year, the then Conservative Party leader further emboldened militant Ulster loyalism when he declared: ‘I can imagine no length of resistance to which Ulster can go in which I should not be prepared to support them.‘

A decade later, after a series of tumultuous events in Europe and in Ireland and with a new Northern Ireland established, Bonar Law cut a less antagonistic figure. During his short term as Prime Minister, he declared that he would observe the terms of the Anglo-Irish treaty in letter and spirit. 

Away from the rigours of politics, Mr. Bonar Law, an inveterate pipe smoker, relaxed by indulging in his favorite pastimes of golf and croquet. He was also an accomplished chess player. Mr. Bonar Law tendered his resignation as Prime Minister on 20 May 1923 on medical advice.

Ireland 1912-1916: An Animated History from Home Rule to Easter Rising

[Editor's note: This is an article from Century Ireland, a fortnightly online newspaper, written from the perspective of a journalist 100 years ago, based on news reports of the time.]