In December
1921, Major Somerset Saunderson declared, ‘Now I have no country.’ He echoed
the sentiment of many others after the Anglo-Irish Treaty sealed the deal on partition.
Like other Ulster Protestants who found themselves marooned on the wrong side,
Saunderson was bereft of hope… and he was bitter.
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| Castle Saunderson now a shell at convergence of Cavan, Fermanagh and Monaghan |
He never
returned from England after writing that epitaph to Hugh Montgomery of
Fivemiletown. Today, Castle Saunderson in Cavan, near its convergence with
Fermanagh and Monaghan, is a shell overlooking the River Finn where it flows into
the Erne.
Somerset Saunderson’s
reaction is particularly noteworthy because his father, Colonel Edward
Saunderson, was the first leader of Irish Unionism in the House of Commons. In
his 2005 biography of Edward Carson, Geoffrey Lewis calls Saunderson the ‘authentic
voice of Ulster Presbyterianism’ (he was Church of Ireland). Elected as a
Liberal MP first for Cavan and later as a Conservative for North Armagh, he was
‘an Orangeman, pugilist and boat-builder and a man of narrow piety’.
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| Col. Saunderson: Carson's mentor |
He was also
the mentor and inspiration for Carson and, like his parliamentary protégé, his
roots were outside the six counties that would become Northern Ireland, but he
was decidedly of Ulster.
The
Saundersons were by no means unique in their fervour for Ulster and Unionism. I
was struck by this recently at the start of our decade of centenaries amidst
all the promised hoopla to mark the momentous year of 1912 when Ulster Unionism
struck out on its own. I noted the unmarked passing of the 100th anniversary of
Ulster Unionism’s first major rally. It took place in Omagh right at the start
of January, long before April’s big gathering at the King’s Hall and Carson’s Trail
to the Covenant.
It could be
said that Omagh set the scene for 1912 when it drew a remarkable crowd of 30,000.
They came from west, mid and south Ulster and many of them came by rail. I had
a look at Omagh train arrivals for that day before the rally commenced at
11.35am.
There was the
usual scheduled service from Belfast through Portadown and the other from Derry
via Strabane. But there were also 18 special trains bringing passengers from
Cavan, Bailieboro, Belturbet, Cootehill, Bundoran, Clones, Castleblayney,
Smithboro, Monaghan and Glaslough.
Among Omagh’s
platform speakers – with Carson and the Marquis of Hamilton –was Lord Dartrey whose
ancestor, incidentally, had introduced the Act of Union at Westminster in 1801.
The Dartreys or Dawsons from Monaghan, are now gone, like the Saundersons and
Farnhams of Cavan; commemorated only in local street names.
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| Carson inspects UVF bicyle detachment at Raphoe, Co. Donegal |
Yet though the
big families would fade from view, there was no doubting the continuing commitment
of ordinary unionists on the periphery of Ulster. Monaghan, Cavan and Donegal
blood flowed among the signatures on that Solemn League and Covenant. Two full
battalions of Ulster Volunteers were raised in County Monaghan alone and with
others from Cavan and Donegal many of them marched off to fight for King and
Country in the 36th Ulster Division.
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| Over the top at the Battle of the Somme |
Yet despite obvious
enthusiasm for the cause, they endured a decade of trauma and political uncertainty
before they were told in no uncertain terms at the Ulster Unionist convention
on 10 March 1920 that they were ‘surplus to requirements’.
In the immediate
aftermath of the Ulster Hall shunning, Lord Farnham wrote to Montgomery, 'Apart from breaking the Covenant, what
we feel more than anything is that we can no longer call ourselves Ulstermen.
We in Cavan were prouder of being Ulstermen than anyone in the whole Province.'
Montgomery replied, 'There is no use arguing about the meaning of the word "Ulster". Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan are part of Ulster, but they are not part
of the Northern Ireland segregated in the Bill.'
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| Creating a combined Ulster Protestant identity. |
And therein
lies the nub. For a decade before partition, Ulster Protestantism had forged
its new identity as being different from the rest of Ireland and of being
united in Covenant. When the covenant was broken, the Ulster Unionists of
Cavan, Monaghan and Donegal were not only denied political redemption; they
were robbed of their identity.
Although
Monaghan Unionist leaders such as Colonel J. C.W. Madden dismissed this new ‘Belfast-made
covenant’ of 1920 and Monaghan County Grand Chaplain remarked that in Belfast they
are ‘all Home Rulers now’, that was face-saving rhetoric.
The grave
prospect facing the Protestants of Monaghan, Cavan and Donegal was summed up by
Monaghan’s Orange Grand Master and erstwhile Ulster Unionist Council member Michael
Knight who said they must “no matter what eventually takes place, rely upon
ourselves and upon ourselves alone”.
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| Trinity's R.B. McDowell |
So as leaders
of the new Northern Ireland administration set about forging a new political
identity and styling themselves as ‘Ulster,’ what befell their former fellows in
the ‘lost counties’? If we read the late Trinity historian R.B. McDowell’s history of
southern unionism, Crisis and Decline, they just ceased to be Ulster unionists
and joined the exodus. But while many did migrate across the new frontier,
aided in some cases by those intent on shoring up vulnerable Unionist numbers
in Fermanagh and Tyrone, many others didn’t give up quite that easily.
Just like
nationalists marooned in the six counties, many southern Protestants in the
border counties placed their faith in Article 12 of the new treaty – the
boundary clause. When the Commission was eventually convened, it received
representations from those pockets of Ulster Protestants left behind by the
tide. As with most representations, they did not want to remain cut off from co-religionists
by the new frontier.
So numbers
were bandied back and forth, largely based on electoral registers and the most
recent census of 1911. From these, we reckon that a total of 70,000 Protestants
were living in the three Ulster counties of Cavan, Monaghan and Donegal at the
time of partition. The pattern of population and the ratio differed widely
between the counties and, of course, within the counties themselves. So while Donegal’s
35,000 Protestants represented about 18% of that county’s population;
Monaghan’s 19,000 notched up at almost 30%. East Donegal’s Laggan Valley was an
Ulster Presbyterian stronghold, but north Monaghan’s population was remarkably similar
to contiguous districts of Fermanagh, Tyrone and Armagh.
It is worth
noting in passing that J.R. Fisher, former editor of the Northern Whig appointed
by Westminster as Northern Ireland’s Boundary commissioner, had noted that
dispersal of population. He had urged Sir William Craig to consider a new boundary to
include all Donegal and North Monaghan with a frontier line from the southern
tip of Upper Lough Erne to Bessbrook. This would shorten the border by almost two-thirds
and leave out most of South Armagh. That would avoid, said Fisher, 'an Afghanistan
on our north-west frontier, while including most of those we want and leaving
out those we don’t.'
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| Boundary Commisioner Eoin MacNeill, left, on the frontier |
In the event,
the Boundary Commission recommended few changes from the county lines of
partition. East Donegal was to transfer to Northern Ireland, part of east
Fermanagh around Clones was to go to the Free State and the small district of
Mullyash, between Castleblayney and Darkley, was to go north in exchange for
Crossmaglen and Forkhill.
Not that any
of that mattered because another deal was done and the line stayed where it
was. The Protestant minority in Free State southern border counties were, as
Michael Knight warned in 1920, on their own. Yet in many respects, they
remained different from the Protestant pockets elsewhere in the Free State. Protestant
celebrations continued through the 1920s, but ended when a parade of Black men
from Monaghan and Cavan was attacked in Cootehill. Henceforth, lodges paraded locally
without fanfare and then went north for the big events.
Of course they
migrated steadily down the years, drawn to Northern Ireland by family ties,
marriage and employment prospects as much as by the desire to recover their
Ulster Protestant credentials. The imposition of Irish language requirements
for public service jobs in the south alienated many. The overtly Roman Catholic
veneer of public life proclaimed in the mammoth Eucharistic Congress of 1932
set the tone, and the 1937 Constitution accorded a ‘special position’ to the
Catholic Church only removed in 1972.
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| A current map illusrates migration patterns along the Border |
Protestant
sons went north for jobs in the public sector and police, daughters went for
nursing, teaching and other careers, as well as for marriage. Yet as late as
1934, East Donegal’s Protestants drew up a petition for transfer north with
7,000 signatures.
Yet it wasn’t
all lost. In the years immediately following partition, Monaghan’s Protestant
leaders devised a political strategy. While denied their Ulster Unionist
credentials, they organised as the Protestant Association and forged an
organisation that would maintain their presence, even during the darkest times.
For years, they more than held their own in the affairs of Monaghan county
council and urban district councils in Monaghan town and Clones. As late as the
1960s, the Clones council chairman Bobby Molloy declared openly that he was 'still
an Ulster Unionist'. A decade
later, an elderly neighbour from across The Diamond in Clones, told RTE’s Tommy
Gorman that when she died, they could turn her upside down and they would see ‘Ulster
Protestant’ stamped on her… well, she did get carried away and I’m sure nobody
looked!
In national
terms, a pattern was established of electing a Protestant to Dáil Éireann,
first for Monaghan alone and latterly in the combined Cavan-Monaghan
constituency where Heather Humphreys recently took over from Seymour Crawford. Protestant
politics in the three counties now leans towards Fine Gael but for a period
Erskine Childers managed to wrest Monaghan’s Protestant vote away to Fianna Fáil.
But there was
sea change with the onset of the Troubles. Already inclined to the reputed posture
of Larne Catholics, Protestants in the southern border counties retreated from
view. Clones High School, where many pupils came from adjacent areas of
Fermanagh, closed some years after the GNR rail connections with Enniskillen
and Belfast. So having grown up in a town with a strong Ulster Protestant demeanour
in the 1950s and 1960s, I watched from afar as Clones changed, particularly
after Bloody Sunday when huge numbers of Protestants left for Canada, Britain
and even Bangor.
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| The grave of Bill Fox |
Local Protestant
politician Senator Bill Fox was killed in a botched IRA raid, the first member
of the Oireachtas shot by the IRA since Kevin O’Higgins in 1927 and now all but
forgotten in the fray. Interestingly, Fox had lost his Dáil seat when some Protestant
electors became uneasy over his campaigning about border road cratering, which also
imposed a huge impediment on Protestant farmers and church congregations.
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| A fictional voice |
Meanwhile, I
was researching my Masters thesis on the Boundary Commission, slowly realising
that a huge voice from our shared past had gone silent. I later wrote a
fictional voice for them, The Sons of Levi. That was after the peace process
began and I remember at that time, having many encounters with people who had
kept nervously to the shadows. One young man was about the same age as my older
son Ross and had grown up in a strong Protestant community near Doohat Orange
Hall. He described his schooling and social life, not much different to my
son’s. I asked him if he ever went into Clones, a ten-minute car journey. He
looked at me in horror: ‘No way, that’s a rebel town!’
Huge efforts
by the Clones Community Forum and other peace-funded bodies has restored a more
balanced view among all sides since then, not least the trapped minority of
Ulster Protestants. The wonderful work of President Mary McAleese in building
bridges has restored their place and their pride in who and what they are. The
Ulster-Scots Agency, the Border Minorities group and other initiatives have begun to give them back a voice of their own.
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| Border Counties Band Forum lists traditional Ulster Protestant marching bands |
Slowly, the
trapped minority of the ‘Lost Counties’ of Ulster is emerging from the shadows.
Rossnowlagh’s pre-Twelfth in Donegal and the quaintly named Drum Picnic – a
traditional parade of Ulster marching bands in Monaghan – are providing public
showcases for their culture.
On both sides
of the Border, more and more people are realising that there never was a ‘clean
cut’ as Britain’s Prime Minister Lloyd George promised in 1921. So the learning
process goes on as we lick at old wounds and expose them to fresh air. We sense
now that there was hurt and a deep sense of betrayal on both sides and that
this persisted for the past century. With acceptance of our different stories, healing
can take place along with the learning. For as I have discovered, we are
reflections of each other, no matter on which side of the mirror or the Border
we find ourselves by accident of birth.
© Darach MacDonald
