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This story was one of an impressive sequence of Topical Budget pieces
following the Irish crisis that resulted in the partition surviving to this day.
The great silent newsreel covered these enfolding events in surprising depth and
with impressive balance.
The focus here is on the loyalist side. The conference of the title was
indeed historic: Unionists there committed themselves to supporting the British
government negotiating the separation of Southern Ireland from the Union. They
did so on the basis that the North's position in the UK would be
copper-fastened. The rest (as the cliché has it, most appropriately on this
occasion) is history.
The film's fascination, however, is the remarkably full picture it conveys -
in a mere 30 seconds - of Unionism as a political and class coalition. Bandsmen
drumming on the streets suggest its working-class base; well-dressed dignitaries
leaving the conference demonstrate its 'Big House' aristocratic leadership. The
portrait shot of major national and local Conservative politician Sir Lamington
Worthington Evans emphasises not only his role in the conference but also Irish
Unionism's close ties to the mainland Conservative Party (which had merged with
breakaway Liberal Unionists only nine years earlier). The slogans on the drums
seek to appeal to wider mainland sentiment, stressing the loyal contribution
Ulster had voluntarily made to World War One. (While it's true that northern
protestants' sacrifices were great - not least at the Somme - northern unionism
and southern nationalism have effectively connived to suppress the equally
moving history of Irish Catholics' contribution to the British war effort, a
process that can be seen starting here.)
Significant to all of this is the placing of the conference, highlighted by
the Topical Budget story's title. Liverpool, like Glasgow, is a west coast
British city with close ties to both Catholic and Protestant communities in
Ireland, and a consequent history of sectarian tensions. Though hard to credit
now, for many years after 1921 working-class Conservatism maintained a presence
in the city largely on the strength of old communal feelings among some
protestants that can be traced to the traumatic events of 1916-22, and before
that to the 19th century immigration by Irish Catholics and Protestants that
contributed so much to the city's unique culture.
Patrick Russell
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