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(Belfast Born, Bred And Buttered, By Joe Graham)

Chapter Three

The Founding of Northern Ireland -‘Carsonia’

Edward Carson, a Dublin Protestant, Lawyer and leading Orangeman, no doubt, could rightly be called the “Father of Carsonia”, the six county region otherwise known as “Northern Ireland”. He presided at the signing of the Ulster Covenant and the formation of the Ulster Volunteer Force, (U.V.F) . A statue to his memory takes pride of place in front of Stormont Buildings, the seat of ‘government’ or misgovernment, in the British occupied region for many years.

When “Carsonia” was established in 1921 Carson took a back seat and became “Lord Carson of Duncairn” and although James Craig became the first Prime Minister of the Coconut Colony. Carson was always seen as the spiritual leader of the unionists and the statelet. In 1920 he made his famous “up and at them Boys” speech in the British House of Commons, he said, “... ..it is clear Sinn Fein have beaten the British in two thirds of Ireland... Sinn Fein are trying to take over Ulster as well, but I hope and know , the Ulster people will not take it lying down “. and so at that the pogroms commenced with attacks on Catholics homes, churches and business’s. In another chilling speech he declared, “..we tell you we will take the matter into our own hands. We will organise.... As we feel bound to do in our own defence, throughout the province, The Ulster Volunteers... And those are not mere words, I hate words without action”.

Carson could not have picked a more suitable candidate, Sir James Craig, Lord Craigavon, for the position of first Prime Minister of “Carsonia”, or the so called “Northern Ireland Government”, for he was “as black as your boot”, strangely meaning, “As Orange as one can get”. Before long a song sang in the streets of Belfast related at how “Craigavon brought the Black and Tans to shoot the people down”. and one would not need a University Degree to determine the religion of those who were to be shot down. His reaction to the unionist thugs violently expelling the Catholic workers from the shipyards in 1920 gives a fair understanding of where he stood on such issues, he said, “Well done big and wee yards !”. Listen now to some of the later remarks of this first Prime Minister of “Carsonia”, .. “I haven’t a Roman Catholic about my place”,.. Roman Catholics are trying to get in everywhere, I appeal to loyalists therefore, wherever possible, to employ good Protestant lads and lassies ... I recommend those people that are loyalists not to employ Roman Catholics...”, I think you get the picture, Catholic people were in for a bad time from the unionist Government and its supporters.

Over twenty years later he was still advocating ‘not an inch to Catholics’, He made his most famous “Carsonian” speech in April 1934, when he said, “I have always said that I am an Orangeman first and a politician and a member of this Parliament afterwards.., all I boast is that we have a Protestant Parliament and a Protestant State”, so this was to be the lot of the Catholic residents in this corner of Ireland. there was another pogrom in the 1930’s, hundreds of Catholics families burned from their homes, mainly in the Sailortown and Little Italy areas of Belfast, families fled to safety in bigger Catholic areas, nearly completed houses at Glenard (Ardoyne) and at the new Whiterock estate were squatted in by some of the desperate families. many murdered, and then again in 1969 the sectarian unionist monster once again visited the Catholic people. The legacy of Carson prevailed, but let’s not jump too far ahead, let’s go back to the 1920’S.

Buck Alec Robinson was a cocky wee lad of eleven years when he first stood in front of a Belfast Court, 29th January 1913, and on this his first charge of larceny he was discharged. Brought up in the shadows of Belfast’s docklands, at Back Ship Street, which very name conjures up dank images of run down property and squalid living conditions, the future for this little boy looked far from ‘Rosey’ - yet his name is synonymous with the birth of this “Northern Ireland”. By the time he was nineteen years of age. Alec had made ten return visits to the courts before he was finally recognised as of potential worth to those involved in setting up a ‘protestant parliament for a protestant people’. Alec’s

‘C.V ’, no doubt, was his criminal record, below, which depicts a reckless, violent man. It would seem some one deemed him good material for a “Special Constable”

Date Offence Judgement

29-1-1913 Larceny Discharged

9-1-1916 Larceny Discharged

10-1-1916 Larceny Probation Act Order

27-7-1916 Larceny Discharged

24-3-1919 Assault Fined 10 Shillings

15-9-1919 Assault & Robbery Probation

21-1-1020 Assault Discharged

15-11-1920 Indecent Behaviour Fined 40 Shillings

11-4-1921 Breaking Curfew Fined 40 Shillings

28-7-1921 Riotous Behaviour Fined 40 Shillings

8-8-1921 Assault & Robbery 2 Months Prison

Not a lot is known about the young Buck Alec Robinson, other than what can be gleaned from the court records above, but the last item on the above list greatly interested me so I thought I would look a bit closer at the circumstances behind it and I feel I stumbled onto Alec’s initiation into the “Ulster Army”. Apparently, Alec, then nineteen years old, was taking a stroll along the Glencairn Road, which was then merely a beautiful lane with a few houses splattered here and there, a beautiful Irish Glen. As he came close to a big house there, coincidently called “Stormont House”, the home of the wealthy Unionist Thompson family, a young man came charging down the lane brandishing a hammer, he was in pursuit of two young lads. The young lads grabbed onto Alec and begged for protection and Alec, left with little choice, tried to remonstrate with the hammer waving upper class young man, who told him that the lads had been trespassing on his family property. Thompson. Jun. continued trying to grab at the lads who by now cowered behind Alec fear alight in their eyes and for ever dodging the swipes of the hammer. At that Alec grabbed the hammer and wrenched it from the rich man’s son and gave him a clout, sending him scurrying off to his mansion. He then sent the boys off safely home and continued on his stroll. Some short time later as he made his way homeward down the Ballygomartin Road, a black sedan car screeched to a halt alongside Buck Alec. Thompson Jnr, jumped from the car, but now he was accompanied by another man armed with a shotgun, an employee of the family, they ordered Alec into the car at gun point and drove to the Shankill Road R.I.C Barracks where Alec was promptly arrested and charged with assaulting Thompson Jnr. and with stealing his hammer. In my opinion, for what it’s worth, if Buck Alec ever deserved a medal he deserved one that day for his actions, he received two months prison. No doubt some astute figure approached Alec at some point around this time and suggested he could put his fighting ability to a ‘better’ use, and he was enlisted as a “C” Constable, of the R.I.C.

And so young Alec Robinson became a ‘Soldier of Ulster’ and soon he became known as Buck Alec , hated and feared by the Catholic citizens of Belfast, who were living under a concerted campaign of ethic cleansing by murder and arson, ked by a special unit within the police force, the Royal Irish Constabulary (R.I.C).

By 1920 the British war machine was in first gear throughout Ireland and so too was that of the I.R.A, a stalemate seemed to be in the offing, partition a solution. In the South the infamous Auxiliaries,(Black And tans), the uniformed dregs of British society had been armed and shipped over to burn, many believed murder and loot at will, to generally terrorise the Irish people. And it was from that same book that the Northern Unionists took a page.. to use the same tactics against the northern Catholics. The terror began in the north in January 1920, in Derry, when for the first time a Catholic Mayor to the City Council. There were skirmishes in the chambers by some unionists who could not resign themselves to the fact that a Catholic had been elected first citizen.

The campaign was stepped up when unionists attacked Catholic children returning home from an excursion on 18th June 1920, within a week eighteen people had been killed and hundreds more wounded, Catholic property was looted and burned in every part of Derry. The Catholic College, St. Columb’s, was attacked and special attention was paid to the Bishop’s residence.

The pogrom spread to other parts of the north and to Banbridge in particular where a local man Colonel Smythe, Commissioner of Police in Munster, was shot dead by the I.R.A in Cork, 17th July 1920, after he had ordered his men to “shoot anyone on suspicion ”,(summarily execute!).

The Unionists of Banbridge ran amok through the town and countryside burning the homes and business’s of their Catholic neighbours. Within days unionists of nearby Dromore, Co. Down launched an all out assault on the Catholic minority population, burning homes and attacking the Catholic chapel, burning the parish hall to the ground, resulting in the parish priest having to flee the town.

Ob the 15th of July 1920 the “Call To Arms”, was delivered to the unionists of the north in a sinister and anonymous letter published in the unionist “Belfast Newsletter” , which read, “After looking at the facts in the face the next thing is to counter them energetically in every way possible”, Catholic people were stunned and angry at the obvious incitement for them to be attacked, they seen this call to arms as inflammatory and incitement to murder and arson. They let their feelings be known to the editor of the newspaper, who arrogantly, though not surprisingly, responded, “... the letter was forwarded to us by a person of undoubted responsibility, who, in our opinion, is entitled to publicity for his statements and the opinions he holds on them”. and on that he refused to identify the ‘undoubtedly responsible person.‘

They say a ‘wink is as good as a nod to a blind donkey’, and so, one week later. at lunch time, the mass exclusion of Catholic workers from their place of work began throughout Belfast. In the shipyards Catholic workers fled, being pelted with rivets and bolts, some in desperation dived into the River Lagan to escape by swimming to the other side, within days thousands of Catholic workers had been driven from their place of work, a well organised campaign had began.

Some casual writers would offer no explanation as to how these sectarian mobs went on the attack, it would seem that the troubles ‘just broke out’ but this is far from the truth as the Unionists were planning and gearing up militarily even six years earlier. Robert. J. Adgey, a leading unionist at the time stated that as Chairman of the Belfast Police Committee, he ,” had a great deal to say and do as Chairman of the committee..” he went on to describe how as far back as 1914 he was gathering and spending £1000,000’s on guns and ammunition to be shared out among unionist workers. It is interesting to note that many of the big landowners and business people, whom the “Belfast Newsletter” would have seen as “undoubtedly responsible people”, bought hundreds guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition which they made available to their employee’s by deducting, or collecting, a few pence a week from their wages.. so you can be sure that when the unionists threw those first stones they had plenty of guns and bullets stock piled and ready for use. And just as important they had plenty of practise in the use of the guns, again made available by the wealthy unionist business people. To name just a few of the ‘undoubtedly responsible people’ who armed the unionist working class ,we had the shipyard, by way of its “Small Arms Gun Club” buying 2,000 .38 Calibre Revolvers ... Coomb Barbour’s Mills bought 1,000 Revolvers , Lord Donegall bought 1,000 revolvers for his ’workers’ ..Lord Leitrim purchased 1.000 revolvers for his men.. Most Public Employment Departments bought between 100 and 500 revolvers...all with ample ammunition, of course. For a period the cellars of The Custom House in Belfast was used as a firing range for unionists to practise their gun craft.

The first supply of guns Robert Adgey brought into the north of Ireland included, 73,000 rifles, 10 Maxim Machine Guns, 1,500 Webley Revolvers...in one other consignment he brought in 22,000 German Repeating Rifles with 400 rounds for each rifle .. Followed by 30.000,000 rounds of ammunition..30 million!.. enough to shoot the then half million Catholics in the north 60 times each!, this is no vague estimate, he documented it himself.

Robert. J. Adgey, was a pawnbroker with a shop at 97 Peter’s Hill and another at the corner of Kane Street and Kashmir Road, which was, coincidently, robbed by two I.R.A men in 1922, I wonder did they realise they were robbing the Quarter Master of the Six County Junta and Finance Officer for the U.V.F, ironically Adgey was awarded £2,000 by the court in compensation the hold up at his Clonard pawnshop. The premises above his Peter’s Hill shop was used by the U.V.F as a local office. Perhaps the last U.V.F. ‘war time’ letter of any significance was issued from there and it concerned the imprisonment of “Buck Alec” and the local U.V.F Commander, Geordie Scott.

The Springfield Road has always been a notoriously sectarian hotspot, right back as far as the ‘mid 1800’s and the 1880’s there were sectarian battles in the district.. And true to form on July 20th it was the scene for the first major unionist onslaught in 1920 when unionist gunmen, aided by British military shot two Catholic men dead, whilst Catholic Margaret Noade, from Short Strand was shot at Cromac Street by the British. At this point I am suggesting the route from which many people began believing that the British military worked side by side with the unionist gunmen, collusion is not a new word, it was not until later in the troubles when the British Government and Official Unionist Party had decided that they had subdued the six county region and they wanted the troubles to end that they discovered they had a problem with the sectarian monster they had created. Many of their gunmen refused to lay down their arms, particularly Buck Alec Robinson and others who we will get to later.

It is a well recorded fact that hundreds of Protestant and Catholics were killed in the 1920 troubles and much of what you read would seem to suggest it was a case of “one was as bad as the other”, a case of “six of one half a dozen of the other”, but if you look closer at the statistics you will find that a huge number of the unionists were killed by military fire whilst attacking Catholic homes, schools or business’s, some where actually shot while involved in sniping and in apparent mistake by gunmen of their own religion, or to put it crudely, “Own Goals”, to mention just a few, Twenty two year old Alec Turtle, a loyalist was shot dead during a gun battle, 2nd January 1922, in which a British soldier, Pte. Barnes was shot dead, many protestant people were shot dead by loyalist gunmen, and this fact is very often omitted. to name just a few such circumstances, 25 year old James Brown, a protestant who had been regularly visiting the Mater Hospital, the mere fact that he attended a Catholic Hospital convinced his assassins he was a Catholic and so on 13th February 1922, they shot him dead. Hector Stewart, a “B” Special, and neighbour of Buck Alec, from Ship Street was shot dead by R.I.C. the “A” Special Charlie Vokes was shot dead by British military Protestant Policeman J. Turner was murdered by R.I.C. Protestant Harry Little , of Bramcote Street, was shot dead as he went to help his Catholic neighbour whose house was under attack from unionists. Protestant Alec Morrison who was visiting Belfast from Ballyclare home was mistaken for a Catholic on the Albertbridge Road and was brutally murdered by Unionists.. Protestant man shot dead in a Catholic Of-License in Ohio street, a Protestant man burned to death with two Catholics when he visited their home in Peter’s Hill and their home was fire bombed by unionists. In another incident, a man in a unionist mob attacking St. Matthew’s Catholic Chapel threw a bomb at the chapel, a Catholic picked up the bomb and threw it back, two unionists in the