"The REALITY though Carroll is that"
Whoops - your strain is showing - tsk-tsk!!
The reality is that, as you refuse to offer anything other than unlinked and unproven jingist opinions and as you are now just repeating something that has been fully covered over and over again (not to mention that you are reduced to childish-name-calling, you need to find the nearest garage - you're out of petrol.
Jim Carroll

From 'Ireland Since the Famine' F.S.L. Lyons (1971)

The Move to Civil War
"This suggestion was first made in May 1912 and came to nothing in face of George V's impeccably constitutional behaviour, but it was a worrying indication of how far the monarchy itself was likely to be involved in the crisis. On the other hand, the Unionists in general, and Carson in particular, devoted themselves to raising the tension in Ulster to a new high pitch. In September 1912, amid scenes of deep emotion, Carson led a vast concourse of Ulstermen in signing the Solemn League and Covenant. As loyal subjects of the King they pledged themselves, with¬out any evidence of conscious irony, to oppose the King's government and to use all necessary means 'to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland. And in the event of such a Parliament being forced upon us we further solemnly and mutually pledge ourselves to refuse to recognise its authority.'
What gave this tribal ritual its real menace was the fact, insufficiently appreciated either by the government or by the nationalists, that the Ulstermen were beginning to drill and to organise in support of their threats. As far back as Carson's Craigavon meeting of 1911 a Tyrone detachment of Orangemen had impressed all observers by their smart¬ness which, it appeared, was the result of conscientious drilling. During 1912 it was discovered that Justices of the Peace could authorise such drilling 'for the purpose of maintaining the constitution of the United Kingdom as now established' and more and more groups of ardent Unionists took up the idea. In January 1913 the Ulster Unionist Council made the crucial decision to form these groups into a coherent body - the Ulster Volunteer Force-to be limited to 100,000 men and organised on a military basis. To help them they had a retired Indian army general, Sir George Richardson (recommended by no less a person than Field Marshal Roberts) assisted by an able staff officer, Captain Wilfred Spender. The fact that the Volunteers drilled openly was ominous, but since they drilled for the most part with wooden rifles it was still open to the nationalists to laugh at them and to persist in the dangerous belief that they were bluffing. The time was fast ap¬proaching when this belief would become much more difficult to sus¬tain.
Meanwhile, in parliament and behind the scenes the pressure for some sort of compromise was mounting. Early in January 1913 Carson proposed in studiously moderate tones that the whole nine counties of Ulster be excluded from the Bill. It was, of course, a totally unaccept¬able suggestion and Carson himself made it plain that he was still not prepared to compromise on the main issue, but at least it indicated a willingness to talk about possibilities. And although his -motion was rejected, when Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, met Bonar Law at Balmoral in the autumn he found him also prepared to negotiate on the basis of some kind of exclusion. The hope of agree¬ment was faint, but it was enough for the Prime Minister himself to hold three meetings with the Leader of the Opposition between seriously considering whether they might not cause the House of Lords to refuse to pass the annual Army Act, without which no government could exist, since in the absence of an Army Act the Army itself could not be paid or even kept in being as a regular force. That the Con¬servative party should have come to this pass, at a time of deep inter¬national tension in Europe, was a staggering indication of how far the Irish crisis had corroded all the ordinary decencies and conventions of constitutional government. But before Bonar Law and his associates had made up their minds to reject this desperate plan, the initiative was seized by a group of Army officers stationed at the Curragh camp in Ireland. In a state of dire confusion - due partly to the highly charged atmosphere of the time and partly to a misunderstanding of orders-some fifty-eight officers proffered their resignations rather than face the prospect of having, as they believed, to 'coerce' Ulster. Worse still, one of the generals in Ireland, Sir Hubert Gough (himself a member of the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy caste) proceeded to London and, aided by the Director of Military Operations (Sir Henry Wilson, another Anglo-Irish soldier), extracted from the Secretary of State for War, Colonel J. E. B. Seely, a pledge that the government had no intention of using the Army 'to crush political opposition to the policy or principles of the Home Rule Bill'. This was too much even for the patient Asquith to stomach. Seely was obliged to resign, as were two generals, and Asquith himself took over the War Office for the time being. He at once repudiated Seely's pledge, but nothing could conceal the fact that he had very nearly had a mutiny on Ms hands and that he could not count upon the loyalty of the Army if he now moved to coerce Ulster. He did not move to coerce Ulster.
It was against this background of ever growing passion and bitter¬ness that Major Crawford now reappeared upon the scene. He had earned out his arms purchases in Germany (enabled to do so by large sums subscribed to a Defence Fund by English as well as Irish Union¬ists) and on the night of 24-25 April these were landed at three har¬bours on the east coast of Ulster (Larne, Bangor and Donaghadee) and distributed with extraordinary speed and efficiency all over the pro¬vince inside twenty-four hours.17 It is hard to say which impressed contemporaries more-the fierce determination that had inspired this
coup, or the inability of the government either to prevent it taking I place or to punish those who had perpetrated it. These two events- the Curragh incident and the Ulster gun-running - had, as we can now i see, a double effect upon the situation. On the one hand, the gun- [ running restored the military supremacy in Ireland to the Ulster Volunteers with, the inevitable result that the Irish Volunteers in the south were moved at once to imitate the northern initiative. And on E the other hand, with the situation deteriorating as fast as it was . doing, the government had more reason than ever to work for a f settlement and, since it could not coerce Carson, attempt to coerce Redmond.
In June 1914, therefore, Asquith, groping desperately for a com¬promise, even if only a temporary one, decided on an Amending Bill I to deal separately with Ulster. As introduced in the Lords, it provided i for county option for six years - precisely 'the stay of execution' already rejected by Carson. But since the Unionist majority in the 1 upper House promptly altered the proposals so as to provide for the exclusion of all nine counties for an indefinite period, it was plain that nothing was to be hoped for from this device. Reluctantly, and dreading i the failure which was almost inevitable, Asquith allowed himself to ; be pushed inch by inch nearer to the conference between the two parties that the King
Had been anxiously urging upon him for some time. The conference duly held its first meeting on 21 July at Bucking¬ham Palace, bringing face to face Asquith, Lloyd George, Redmond and Dillon on the one side, and on the other Bonar Law, Lord Lansdowne, Carson and James Craig. After a few days of intensive but l' entirely fruitless negotiation discussing maps and figures but always
getting back, as Asquith wrote to a friend, 'to that most damnable / creation of the perverted ingenuity of man, the county of Tyrone', the Conference ended in deadlock. It had proved quite impossible to agree on areas of exclusion which would not do injury to either Catholic or Protestant.
The breakdown of the Conference was announced on 24 July. Two days later the Irish Volunteers carried out their gun-running on the Ulster model, but improved upon the occasion by doing it in broad daylight. This, too, was a decisive event, more decisive than was realised at the time, even in Ireland. Superficially, the southern Volunteers were under Redmond's control, for the previous month he had insisted that his nominees should be given what he believed would be a predominant voice in the Provisional Committee which governed their organisation. His action earned him deep resentment but little real influence. The gun-running was planned and carried out without his knowledge, and although the intention of most of those who participated was probably no more than to restore the balance between their force and the Ulster Volunteers, the residuary legatees of this operation were the IRB, who had already permeated the Irish Volun¬teers for purposes of their own. The greater part of the guns were landed at Howth, on the north side of Dublin Bay, so that they could be distributed with the maximum speed. This was done despite the authorities' decision to call out the troops, but when the latter were returning to barracks a further incident Occurred of precisely the kind calculated to do most damage to Anglo-Irish relations. Harassed by a hostile but unarmed crowd, the troops turned and fired, killing three people and injuring thirty-eight.
The immediate political effect of this tragedy was to make it more impossible even than before for the nationalist leaders to compromise. Since Carson was equally adamant, there seemed no Way out short of that civil war which had been threatening for so long. But quite suddenly the domestic quarrel was submerged in the vaster European crisis. With the international situation worsening almost hour by hour, Asquith abandoned his intention of pressing on with an Amendment Bill. But would this mean also the abandonment of the Home Rule Bill itself, now so near the end of its long and weary course? The British arguments in favour of this were strong. With war imminent it would be folly to aggravate the internecine conflict. But a European war did not seem to nationalists a sufficient reason to baulk them of what seemed to them their just expectations. If Redmond did not succeed in getting Home Rule onto the statute-book he might not be able to hold back the surge of indignation that would sweep over Ireland. He him¬self was in a dilemma. Home Rule was the ultimate objective of his whole political career and naturally he did not want to jettison it at this eleventh hour. On the other hand, his sympathies with Britain in the war now breaking out were strong, far stronger than were those of most of his colleagues or of the country he led. At this agonisingly difficult moment in his career he took a momentous decision, one that in the long run was to cost him dear. On 3 August, in an emotional speech to the House of Commons, he pledged Ireland's support for the war and urged the government to leave the defence of Irish shores to Irishmen, to the Volunteers from north and south.
This generosity seems to have been, if not quite spontaneous, at least without political calculation, though it was a reasonable supposition that it might make Asquith a little more amenable to the demand that Home Rule should go on the statute-book. Whether this was so or not, or whether the Prime Minister was more impressed by the impassioned warnings Redmond addressed to him in private that the loyalty of the south could not be relied on if Home Rule were denied, it is impossible to say. He was, of course, being simultaneously pressed in the opposite direction by Bonar Law and Carson, and it was not until September that
The complex cross-currents that swirled round the Irish Volunteers are dealt with below, Part III, chap. 1. It was typical of the confusion of life in Ireland at the time that the purchase of the arms in Germany and their transport to Dublin were carried out by sympathisers who were mainly members of the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy class.
he finally escaped from his predicament by agreeing to place the Gov¬ernment of Ireland Act on the statute-book, but with two provisos. One was that it should not come into operation until after the end of the war; and the other was that it would not come into operation until after parliament had had an opportunity of making provision for Ulster by special amending legislation. And thus it came about on 18 September that tie nationalists and their allies found themselves in a House of Commons almost denuded of Unionists, welcoming the news that the royal assent had at last been given. And amid cheers and the singing of 'God Save the King' a long, bitter chapter in the history of two countries seemed to have been ended. Yet nothing could have been further from the truth. Asquith might have bought time by his com¬promise, but he had bought little else"