Lisburn

So mum and dad are obviously here in OMA.

I'm up in Lisburn.

But my siblings are all over England, Wales sort of thing.

But see if there's an emergency, you hop on the plane immediately.

Where is it?

Bob Stewart's is, like, the backroads into Lisburn.

Um, like, if you're going from-

Yeah

...

Rosemary to Lisburn, Drumboe kind of direction.

Aye.

Had an unbelievable steak dinner.

But I want you to be part of this conversation today.

James in Lisburn.

Morning, James.

Morning, Stephen.

And on the 28th of June, an incident would occur that would cause an eruption of sectarian violence of such extent that nothing like it had been witnessed for a generation.

Three days before, in Lisburn, on the 25th of June, Protestant children threw stones and mud at the Sacred Hearts convent school outing, comprising three nuns and 80 children, hitting one of the sisters with a projectile on their way for a day out at Ballyhorning.

The children made it to their destination, shaken but safe.

But a larger mob waited for them on the return on the Ballynahinch Road.

He weighed the attacks of 20 to 30 Catholics in the shipyard, where one was almost kicked to death and another Catholic man almost roasted alive, to Bonar Law's assurance that I can imagine no extremity to which Ulster may go which may not have my warm support.

Turning to the upcoming Covenant Day, Devlin asked those gathered around him, What is Ulster? For that, he said, was the great question of the day.

For why had the term Ulsterman become synonymous with the Unionists? To those around him and in front of him, a smattering of liberal Protestants and a huge crowd of Catholics, Joe Devlin asked, with irrefutable logic, Are we not too Ulsterman? On the 18th of September, ten days before the signing of the Covenant, a unionist march of several thousand, starting from Shaftesbury Square, preceded by hordes of what the papers described as roughs, smashed the innumerable windows of ice cream parlours and other shops with volleys of stones, the whole way along Donegal Road and up into Sandy Row and the Lisburn Road.

But then the reports of disturbances suddenly stop in the unionist papers.

Behind them, 120 miles south of Belfast, the 6th Division, reinforced by the Infantry Brigade from England, would stand at the ready.

And as the west of Belfast and the Protestant heartlands were effectively ringed from the west, Three battalions would land from Western Scotland and ring them in from the east, from Lorne, Ballymena, West Belfast, Lisburn, and round and arring the Hollywood Bangor on each side of the loch, where Bangor would have the additional reinforcement of a naval brigade.

And in this manner, Ulster, and in particularly Belfast, the centre of the UVF resistance, would be choked.

In such a manner, the Government's Special Ulster Committee, primarily Jack Seeley and Winston Churchill, sought to either provoke the uvf or surround choke and politically and militarily throttle their defence again and again it was emphasised that this was only to be a big demonstration to overawe the british army were on the strict orders that there was to be no provocation ulster's bluff was merely to be called But this was a dangerous game to be playing with men determined to resist, because men these desperate were not the sort of men to involve yourself in a poker game with.