Carson declares that Home Rule will never be law in Ulster

Wales, 28 May 1914 - Speaking at a meeting in Mountain Ash, Wales yesterday, Sir Edward Carson stated that although Home Rule may well have been placed on the statute books, it will never become the law of the land in Ulster.

In front of a crowd of around 12,000 supporters, Carson declared that the third reading of the Home Rule Bill was the first act in a gruesome tragedy and that Ulster would no longer be the pawn in the political game. The rhetoric continued with Carson annoucing that he was an Ulster Covenanter who would keep his covenant to the bitter end. 

Amid cheers, the Unionist leader stated that the Ulster Volunteers had been jeered at for two years for parading with wooden guns. Those jeers have fallen silent now that those wooden guns had been replaced by 35,000 rifles and 3,000,000 rounds of ammunition.

Carson told the crowd that the government had two choices; to strike Ulster out of the Bill or to put the Bill to the country. He demanded that 'the Government make up their minds once and for all, are they going to coerce Ulster or are they not'.

[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.]