Carson’s Speech

Introduction from Chronology

Carson, giving a 12^th July speech to Orangemen at Finaghy, outside Belfast, tells the British government that if “having offered you help, you are yourselves unable to protect us from the machinations of Sinn Féin  … we will take the matter into our own hands. We will organise.” and states “We must proclaim today clearly that … we in Ulster will tolerate no Sinn Féin  – no Sinn Féin organisation, no Sinn Féin  methods … And these are not mere words.  I hate words without action.” 

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Referring to unionist socialists and trade unionists, Carson also condemned “These men who come forward as friends of labour” saying that their aim was to “bring about disunity among our own people”. He exhorted them to return to the unionism lest the find themselves “in the same bondage and slavery as in the rest of Ireland”.

A number of British newspapers, including the [London] Times which supported Unionists in 1914, criticised Carson for his speech. On July 13^th, the Times says “what was illegal to Connaught [was] equally illegal in Ulster” and said that loyalism had “no prerogative which entitled it to defy the law”. However, northern unionist papers praise his speech.

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