Ulster Covenant Day – an anniversary to remember

Today is the anniversary of the signing of the Ulster Covenant in 1912. The event was one of the largest demonstrations of popular resistance to government-imposed betrayal in the whole of British history. Its impact resonates to this day.

The Ulster Covenant, also known as Ulster’s Solemn League and Covenant, was signed by just under half a million men and women from Ulster, on and before 28 September 1912, in protest against the Third Home Rule Bill, introduced by the British Government in that same year. Sir Edward Carson was the first person to sign the Covenant at the Belfast City Hall with a silver pen. The signatories, 471,414 in all, were all against the establishment of a Home Rule parliament in Dublin. The Ulster Covenant is immortalised in Rudyard Kipling‘s poem “Ulster 1912“.

The Covenant had two basic parts: the Covenant itself, which was signed by men, and the Declaration, which was signed by women. In total, the Covenant was signed by 237,368 men; the Declaration, by 234,046 women.

In January 1913, the Ulster Volunteers recruited 100,000 men, aged from 17 to 65, who had signed the Covenant, as a unionist militia. They later went on to form the 36th Ulster Division, which fought with unbelievable heroism at the Battle of the Somme in 1916.

A British Covenant, similar to the Ulster Covenant in opposition to the Home Rule Bill, received two million signatures in 1914.

Resistance to betrayal by corrupt and cowardly elites is in our DNA!