Ulster demo

Andrew Bonar Law, recently elected leader of the Conservative Party and the Leader of the Opposition, was guest of honour at a meticulously planned Ulster unionist demonstration at the Royal Ulster Agricultural Showground at Balmoral on Easter Tuesday 1912. Whereas Winston Churchill’s speech in Celtic Park on 8 February 1912 had an audience of 5,000 nationalists and liberals, Law was astounded to find himself with an audience of between 100,000 and 200,000, one of the largest political demonstrations in British history. He spoke eloquently, invoking the siege of Derry as a paradigm for Ulster’s plight, identifying the Parliament Act of 1911 as the equivalent of the boom constructed by the Jacobites across the Foyle during the great siege.