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James Craig,

Lord Craigavon

1871–1940

 

A central figure in the creation of Northern Ireland, and a staunch unionist in the face of a rising tide of Irish nationalism, James Craig, the son of James Craig of Craigavon, a wealthy Belfast distiller, was born on 8th January 1871.

      By this time Belfast was beginning to emerge as the major industrial centre on the island of Ireland, imitating Glasgow in its growth and outstripping Dublin, Cork, and Limerick.  Indeed, it rivalled some of its Scottish counterparts.  It was this new industrial growth, and the prosperity that it generated largely for Ulster Protestants, that Ulster Unionists were anxious to protect by retaining what they saw as their essential link to the United Kingdom.

      Craig's childhood was dominated by the emergence of the Orange Order from being a quasi-secret society.  It had once even been banned, accused of plotting to put the Duke of Cumberland on the throne in place of Queen Victoria.  It now established itself as a powerful element in Ulster life and Irish politics.  Though feared by the Catholic majority, the Orange Order had important links of religion and friendship with influential persons in high places in British society and government.

      Craig was privately educated in Ulster, and then at Merchiston's college in Edinburgh.  He became a stockbroker by profession, and fought with the Royal Irish Rifles in the Boer War, that great imperial adventure in which some Irish nationalists supported the Boers.

      He was elected a unionist member of Parliament from East Down, a strongly Protestant area of Ulster, in 1906.  With Edward Carson, a Dublin-born barrister, he became a leading figure in the party, which was allied with the British Conservative party.  They were determined to resist the intention of the Liberal government to grant home rule to Ireland.  Carson, with a busy London legal practice, was active in government at Westminster, while Craig was the organizer of the Ulster volunteers at home in Belfast.  They armed in defence of the union in 1912, importing weapons from Germany to do so.  It was their actions, together with a series of rebellions by women suffragettes, trade unionists, and Irish Nationalists which doomed the Liberal Party, leaving open the way to the rise of the Labour Party.

      Craig was the Ulster representative at the Buckingham Palace Conference on the Third Home Rule Bill, when the king hoped to hold all the parties together.  Home rule was passed by Parliament and given royal assent, but it was suspended for the duration of the First World War.  Craig fought on the western front from 1914 to 1916.  He was quartermaster general of the 36th (Ulster) Division, which consisted mostly of Ulster volunteers.  He was knighted in 1918, and served as a parliamentary secretary in the government from 1919 to 1921.

      By now home rule, in the old sense, was a dead letter.  But if the rest of Ireland was to have some measure of self-government, Ulster unionists were determined that they would have home rule for themselves.  This they received under the Government of Ireland Act of 1920.  Its measures were not enough for the south, but they gave Craig (by now first lord of the admiralty) and his followers a parliament in Belfast, which the king opened for them the following year.

      Elected for North Down in 1921, in June of that year Craig became the first prime minister of Northern Ireland.  The rest of Ireland came to different terms with the British, and in 1922 the Irish Free State under MICHAEL COLLINS [3] and Arthur Griffith came into existence.  With Collins, Craig agreed on the protection of northern Catholics, who had been the victims of pogroms in 1920, in return for a settlement of the border.  Though a commission investigated the border and reached a settlement, hopes that Northern Ireland would be unviable were not to come true.  Craig maintained himself and his statelet.  He was elevated to the peerage as Lord Craigavon of Stormount in 1927.

      In 1929 he abolished proportional representation, which had been intended to secure the rights of the Catholic minority in the six counties of the north, saying the people did not understand the dangers of it.  The nationalists had adopted a policy of not attending the Belfast parliament (for a time EAMON DE VALERA [2] was an Ulster MP!).  In 1934 Craig could tell the Ulster assembly, 'We are a Protestant parliament for a Protestant people.'  It was a definition that excluded the Catholics from the civic life of the country they lived in.  Whatever he did of practical value for the status and economy of Northern Ireland was balanced by policies of discrimination and prejudice.  It was the same racial intolerance that in other forms stalked other parts of Europe.  The Ulster unionists may have felt that they were defending an outpost of Christian civilization against barbarians, but the Catholics of the country felt they were being treated like blacks in the southern United States.

      A friend spoke of his 'sagacity, honesty of purpose, and courage,' and that he possessed qualities of a high order, that he was 'a man of undoubted courage, high character, sound judgement, and devotion to duty, and his powers of leadership were conspicuous.'  To his political opponents among the liberals and nationalists, he had every appearance of being bigoted, outdated, and vindictive.

      Craigavon died on 20th November 1940, soon after the Second World War began, leaving Northern Ireland with an entrenched unionism which would take another two generations to resolve into a state that had room for all.  Yet in politics, the spirit of 'that old bull Craigavon', as the poet Louis MacNeice called him, roams free whenever the Orange Order parades through Catholic streets or defies the will of the British government.  Among all the elements that affect the future of Northern Ireland, the heritage of Lord Craigavon looms large.