Abstract
Propaganda has always had a role in Irish history: from the twelfth century, when the Leabhar Gabhaela (Book of Invasions)3 was written, through to the nineteenth, when two varieties of Irishman fought their Home Rule battles, the projection of inclusive and exclusive images was of central importance to the island’s political elite. Yet a glance at the current body of research implies that, just as the age of mass communications seemed certain to produce an exponential growth in the importance of propaganda, unionists somehow lost their ability to define, articulate and justify their beliefs. In other words partition, symbolically presented as the cutting of Ireland’s throat, seems to have cost unionism its vocal cords.
It will interest you to know that Lord Rothermere has promised… to place the Daily Mail and his other chain of papers entirely at our disposal to urge the public across the Channel to make this their venue for the holiday season… Our idea is that we can get at a large section of the population by starting this movement as each tourist on his return will be an agent for the Ulster cause.
James Craig, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, 30 January 1933.2
I am grateful to the officers of the Ulster Unionist Council and to the Deputy Keeper of Records at the Public Records Office for Northern Ireland for permission to quote from archives.
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Notes
P. Buckland, Irish Unionism II: Ulster Unionism (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1973)
J. F. Harbinson, The Ulster Unionist Party (Belfast: Blackstaff, 1973)
A. Jackson, The Ulster Party (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989).
L. Curtis, Northern Ireland: the Propaganda War (London: Pluto, 1984), p. 18.
A. Aughey, ‘Unionism and Self-Determination,’ in B. Barton and P. J. Roche (eds), The Northern Ireland Question: Myth and Reality (Aider-shot: Avebury, 1991), p. 1.
G. Walker, ‘Propaganda and Conservative Nationalism During the Irish Civil War, 1922–23’, Eire-Ireland (Winter 1987), pp. 93–117.
P. M. Taylor, The Projection of Britain: British Overseas Publicity and Propaganda, 1919–39 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 13.
Speaking in the Dáil debates on the Anglo-Irish Treaty, MacEntee said: & the provisions of this Treaty mean this: that in the North of Ireland certain people differing somewhat from us in tradition, and differing in religion, which are very vital elements in nationality, are going to be driven, in order to maintain their separate identity, to demarcate themselves from us, while we, in order to preserve ourselves against the encroachment of English culture, are going to be driven to demarcate ourselves so far as ever we can from them. Quoted in A. C. Hepburn, The Conflict of Nationality in Modern Ireland (London: Edward Arnold, 1980), p. 125.
D. Kennedy, The Widening Gulf: Northern Attitudes to the Independent Irish State, 1919–49 (Belfast: Blackstaff, 1988).
Information in this paragraph is taken from the Ulster Association Annual Report, 1922–23. Mary Harris also reviewed this report while the research for this chapter was being completed: it is referred to, in surprisingly similar language to that used here, in The Catholic Church and the Foundation of the Northern Irish State (Cork: Cork University Press, 1993), p. 128.
T. Gray, The Orange Order (London: Bodley Head, 1972), pp. 262–4.
This was defined by the Colwyn Committee in 1923 as follows: the extent to which the total revenue exceeds the actual and necessary expenditure in Northern Ireland shall be taken as the basic sum for determining the contribution… In determining the necessary expenditure there shall be eliminated:-(a) All expenditure on every service in existence in both Northern Ireland and Great Britain incurred in providing Northern Ireland with a higher average standard of service than exists in Great Britain. (b) Such expenditure … as is in excess of the strict necessities of the case in Northern Ireland. (c) All expenditure undertaken by the Government of Northern Ireland on services which do not exist in Great Britain. Quoted in J. I. Cook, ‘Financial Relations Between the Exchequer of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland,’ in F. W. Newark (ed.), Devolution of Government: The Experiment in Northern Ireland (London: George Allen & Unwin for the Institute of Public Administration, 1953), p. 39.
Craigavon to McKee, op. cit. (note 2). Of itself, this does seem Machiavellian in its callousness. However, it is also quite redolent of the views of Lord Derby, expressed in 1929 while Chairman of the Travel Association, that: The visitor who comes over here reads our newspapers, shares our recreations, talks with our people and makes friends with many of whom he keeps in touch afterwards … Such a person recognises the common interests of nations … In fact, he becomes an ambassador of this country. Quoted in F. Donaldson, The British Council: The First Fifty Years (London: Jonathan Cape, 1984), p. 16.
Marwick refers to Northern Ireland ‘only where events there affected society on mainland Britain’ while Brown’s declared interest is in ‘establishing the main outlines of the social history of independent Ireland since the Treaty of 1921.’ See A. Marwick, British Society since 1945 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982), p. 11
T. Brown, Ireland: A Social and Cultural History 1922–79 (London: Fontana, 1981), p. 15.
J. J. Lee, Ireland, 1912–85: Politics and Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 4.
M. Goldring, Belfast: From Loyalty to Rebellion (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1991), p. 15.
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McDougall, S. (1996). The Projection of Northern Ireland to Great Britain and Abroad, 1921–39. In: Catterall, P., McDougall, S. (eds) The Northern Ireland Question in British Politics. Contemporary History in Context Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24606-9_3
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