Joseph Devlin

And even at this stage, the moderate Irish Parliamentary Party support still held out against Sinn Féin in nationalist Ulster, just as it was dissipating to Sinn Féin elsewhere.

Under Joe Devlin, the Irish Parliamentary Party organisation, had strong grassroots and connections in Ulster and the party machine was slick and this was helped along by the creation of the Irish National League at OMA in 1916 to campaign against the looming threat of partition as the only solution to the Irish crisis.

Even as late as February 1918 when D Valera himself came north with 20 cars full of Sinn Féin supporters to support Dr Patrick McCann in the South Armagh bile action Sinn Féin still lost to the Irish Parliamentary Party in two straight contests in South Armagh and East Tyrone and even when the war ended and the Khaki election saw Sinn Féin sweep the board in the South and West Ulster still returned four nationalist Irish Parliamentary Party MPs including Joe Devlin.

In truth What really finally destroyed the Irish Parliamentary Party, symbolised by the death of John Redmond in 1918, was continued British arrogance towards the Irish people.

In reaction to Germany's Ludendorff Offensive in the spring of 1918, which almost threw the Allies back into the sea, the British government, as high-handed as ever, would try to force conscription on a now reluctant Ireland.

Even urban workers and agricultural labourers could vote now and any woman over 30 who was a rape payer or married to one The number of seats was redrawn and Belfast now had seven seats instead of four and the results polarised Ireland irrevocably.

The Irish Parliamentary Party lost all but six of its 68 seats.

Four of those remaining being in Ulster where Joe Devlin held off a challenge by Dee Valera, the Sinn Féin candidate.

But by 1912 its membership had exploded, especially in Ulster, where the latent hate ran deep, and soon in Ulster alone it boasted over 433 revisions.

and Joseph Devlin, MP for West Belfast, had been the National President and Grand Master of the Order since 1905 when the Church Ban was lifted.

As Eamon Phoenix would state, Devlin failed palpably to comprehend the exaggerated image of an insidious Catholic power which the reinvigorated Hibernian Order conjured up in the minds of Ulster Protestants.

Whereas before he was regarded by Protestants as a political Demosthenes, his association with such an order engendered a view that he was a conspirator against the Protestant religion itself, and reinforced the view that Home Rule was simply a device for Catholics to take their ancient revenge for past wrongs, with such characters in the centre of the movement and on its wings.

that this meeting of those who have been coerced by a force of other employees at the above works to abandon their jobs unanimously resolve that the cause of their expulsion is the political and religious passions aroused against them amongst certain workers, chiefly through the actions of the unionist clubs recently established in those works.

The object of their hostility, referred to, is the expulsion and the boycott of workers holding different religious and political opinions, and we appeal to the good sense of the right-minded public for justice, and we respectfully ask employers to recognise our right to fair treatment and to assist in giving such protection as will enable us to follow our occupations and earn the necessary support for ourselves and our families.

stating that the harbour police were utterly inadequate the resolution of the expelled catholic workers appealed to the government and the heads of their trade associations to protect them in the shipyards a vigilance committee set up by senior roman catholic clergy took statements to plead the cases of all those expelled on the twenty ninth their appeal was published in the irish papers and Joseph Devlin MP, while contributing £50 to their fund, condemned this reign of terror on inoffensive men and their families and appealed for subscriptions to support those who he now politicised by calling them the wounded soldiers of Home Rule.

The Catholic Bishop of Down and Conor, John Tohill, at the first meeting of the Vigilance Committee, whilst desiring that nothing he said be given political significance, the bishop appealed to all right-minded people for donations for the relief of some hundreds of noble protestant workmen to-day walking the streets of belfast expelled along with their catholic brethren for no other crime than of daring to have aspirations of harmony with those that are the majority of their fellow countrymen so in not wanting to politicise it, he politicised it.

And more ominously, almost a third of their number were marching in Ulster, streets away from their Protestant neighbours in their UVF parades.

The leaders of the Irish Parliamentary Party, John Redmond, John Dillon and especially Joe Devlin, a strict constitutionalist, who had not long before swiftly quashed the idea of a Catholic force in Belfast, watched the rise of the Irish Volunteers with growing unease.

But the movement voiced and answered the frustration of the majority of Catholics who watched their dream of a separate Parliament being continually frustrated.

The Irish volunteer leaders had been formed as a broad coalition of Irish parliamentary party men, Hibernians, as well as secret members of the militant Irish Republican Brotherhood, who stated that they stood directly in the tradition of the rebels of 1798.

This was all too much for separatists within the ranks of the Irish Volunteers, about 12,000 strong under Eoin MacNeill, although some estimates are slightly higher, who broke away and retained the name Irish Volunteers.

But for the rest of the 130,000 or so now parading in Ireland's towns, cities and countryside, They stayed with Redmond and the Irish Parliamentary Party and renamed themselves the National Volunteers as their leaders threw themselves into the recruiting drive.

And foremost among these was the MP for West Belfast, Joe Devlin, Grand Master of the Catholic Ancient Order of Hibernians, who was credited by General Parsons as being the only man who could get the British Army recruits from Catholic West Belfast.

And Captain Willie Redmond, addressing packed rallies, answered the natural reticence of Irish nationalists by taking the King's shilling.