Letter from John Strachey to Edward Carson, 27 July 1916 Letters 1916-1923 John Strachey

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Letter from John St Loe Strachey (1860-1927) to Edward Carson (1854-1935). Carson was a prominent Unionist Politician. Originally a practicing solicitor from Dublin, Carson's opposition to the proposed third Home Rule bill made him the figure head of Unionism throughout the island. He was the centerpiece of the speaking tour that culminated in Ulster Day (28 September 1912), when just under half a million signed Ulster's solemn league and covenant pledging to use ‘all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a home rule parliament in Dublin’. Carson inaugurated the Larne gunrunning in 1914 which armed the UVF, many of whom Carson would encourage to join the British Army throughout the First World War. Strachey was a British journalist and newspaper proprietor.

 Public Record Office of Northern Ireland Carson Papers, D1507/A/18/1/29 https://letters1916.ie/item/4365 English John Strachey 1916-07-27 1 Wellington Street, Strand, London, W.C., England Edward Carson Newlands Corner, Merrow Downs, Guildford, England Male 1927 Politics Politics

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 The Spectator 1 Wellington Street, Strand, London. W.C. Private Newlands Corner Merrow Downs Guildford. Friday July 27th. 1916. My dear Carson, I feel I must write to you to express my unbounded admiration for the manly, honest and generous part you have played in the late negotiations. i have tried to say this publicly in the "Spectator", both in my leaders on the Fiasco and on the Future and also in a Note to your letter in regard to Hugh Cecil. But I desire to go beyond a mere public laudation. After all that has passed you could not have stultified yourself by changing your ground and in effect refusing to accept exclusion and the 'clean cut' when it was offered to you as it was. But quite beyond this, for of course I realize that there was nothing Machiavellian but only what was perfectly straightforward in your attitude, you have by your wise action made the British public understand in a way they never understood before that the Union is a necessity, not a arbitrary evil, and that if you try to abrogate it on just terms, i.e. with exclusion, you bring — Ireland being Ireland and the Irish people the Irish people— the whole Home Rule structure down. This is why ever since I have been in the Irish controversy and especially in the two years before July 1914 I always rubbed in Ulster for all I was worth and tried to force people to concentrate on Exclusion. I knew that if they would do this, exclusion, though honestly asked for, was almost certain to act as a chemical which would dissolve Home Rule. Exclusion was the thing that brought all the unrealities, all the rhetoric, invective and flummery of the Irish question to the test and showed that the Union, whatever else it might be, was a grim necessity. Further the "exhibition', as the doctors might say, of exclusion, might prove how false were all the Colonial analogies and force people to understand the existence of the two Irelands. Do you remember the marvellous passage in the "Duncaid" where Pope talks of the "uncreating word". The exclusion of Ulster is absolutely just per se and absolutely necessary if Civil War is not to be permanent, but it is also the "uncreating word" as far as Home Rule is concerned. In some ways I am very sorry that Exclusion should both be necessary and "the uncreating word" for I like other people am weary of the Irish problem and would be only too thankful to see it got rid of. But after all facts are facts and weariness cannot alter them, or rather if one tries to let it alter them one is sure to commit some hideous cruelty. To my mind we have just got to bear the Irish question and admit that it is one of the many problems in life which are insoluble, or at any rate insoluble under existing conditions - unless of course some miracle is somehow worked in the next few days. Perhaps some day the nature of the Southern Irish will change and we shall get a new heaven and a new earth across the water, Bothas instead of Redmonds, Smuts' instead of Dillons. Then of course there will be a dozen easy solutions. I am ashamed to have inflicted so long a letter upon you, but I have been deeply moved by the injustice with which you have been treated by Unionists who ought to have known better. Yours very sincerely, J. St Leo Strachey John Strachey Letter from John Strachey to Edward Carson, 27 July 1916Letter from John Strachey to Edward Carson, 7 October 1916 Edward Carson Letter from David Lloyd George to Edward Carson, 29 May 1916Letter from Sir Dawson Bates to Edward Carson, 2 December 1915Letter from William Robert Young to Edward Carson, 9 July 1916Letter from Alexander McDowell to Edward Carson, 20 July 1916Letter from Hugh de Fellenerg Montgomery to Edward Carson, 31 May 1916Letter from Hugh de Fellenberg Montgomery to Edward Carson, 9 June 1916Letter from Hugh de Fellenberg Montgomery to Edward Carson, 9 June 1916Letter from Frederick Hugh Crawford to Edward Carson, 8 March 1916Letter from Edward Carson to Thomas McGregor Greer, 12 July 1916Letter from Sir Edward Carson to Sir Robert Ponsonby Staples, 10 December 1915Letter to Edward Carson, 19 November 1915Letter from William R. Young to Edward Carson, 2 November 1915Letter from J.M. Wilson to Edward Carson, 3 November 1915Letter from Turner Oliver Read to Edward Carson, 12 November 1915Letter from William R. Young to Edward Carson, 12 November 1915Letter from Harold Tennant to Edward Carson, 17 November 1915Letter from Henry Mulholland to Pembroke Wicks, circa November 1915Letter from Wilfrid Spender to Edward Carson, 25 November 1915Letter Wilfrid Spender to Edward Carson, 3 December 1915Letter to Edward Carson, 4 December 1915Letter from Robert Thompson to Edward Carson, 18 December 1915Letter from W.T. Bailey to Edward Carson, 22 December 1915Letter from General Nevil Macready to Edward Carson, 1 May 1916Letter to Edward Carson, 2 May 1916Letter from Horace Plunkett to Edward Carson, 4 May 1916Postcard to Edward Carson, 4 May 1916Letter from D.P. Barton to Edward Carson, 5 May 1916Letter from Edward Carson to Herbert Asquith, 9 May 1916Letter from Herbert Asquith to Edward Carson, 10 May 1916Copy of a letter from John Crozier to Edward Carson, 9 May 1916Letter from J.M. Wilson to Edward Carson, 11 May 1916Letter to Edward Carson, 15 May 1916Letter from David Lloyd George to Edward Carson, 3 June 1916Letter from G.L. Moore to Edward Carson, 6 June 1916Letter from sir William Robert Robertson to Edward Carson, 7 June 1916Letter from Nevil Macready to Edward Carson, 8 June 1916Letter from Arthur Warren Samuels to Edward Carson, 14 June 1916Letter from Frederick Stringer Wrench to Edward Carson, 15 June 1916Letter from Somerset Francis Saunderson to Edward Carson, 15 June 1916Letter to Edward Carson, 17 June 1916Letter from Somerset Francis Saunderson to Edward Carson, 17 June 1916Letter from Charles Clements to Edward Carson, 21 June 1916Letter from Ronald McNeill to Edward Carson, 22 June 1916Letter from John Crozier to Edward Carson, 26 June 1916Letter from Charles F. Down to Edward Carson, 28 June 1916Letter from Charles Clements to Edward Carson, 29 June 1916Letter from Archibald Salvidge to Edward Carson, 30 June 1916Letter from Charles Clements to Edward Carson, 1 July 1916Letter from Charles Clements to Edward Carson, 3 July 1916Letter to Edward Carson, 5 July 1916Letter from Horace Plunkett to Edward Carson, 5 July 1916Letter from Charles F Down to Edward Carson, 8 June 1916Letter from Herbert Samuel to Edward Carson, 13 July 1916Letter from William Martin to Edward Carson, 13 July 1916Letter from Travers R. Blackley to Edward Carson, 11 July 1916Letter from Travers R. Blackley to Edward Carson, 13 July 1916Letter from Pembroke Wicks to Edward Carson, 14 July 1916Letter from Somerset Francis Saunderson to Edward Carson, 15 July 1916Letter from Edward Carson to William Martin, 17 July 1916Letter from Herbert Samuel to Edward Carson, 21 July 1916Letter to Edward Carson, 21 July 1916Letter from John Strachey to Edward Carson, 27 July 1916Letter from Alexander McDowell to Edward Carson, 5 October 1916Letter to Edward Carson, 7 October 1916Letter from Sharman D Neill to Edward Carson, 7 October 1916Letter from John Strachey to Edward Carson, 7 October 1916Letter from Rosalind Hamilton to Edward Carson, 10 October 1916Letter to Edward Carson, 14 October 1916Letter from David Lloyd George to Edward Carson, 14 October 1916Letter from J. Beatty to Edward Carson, 16 October 1916Letter from Edward Carson to Richard Dawson Bates, 21 April 1919 Newlands Corner, Merrow Downs, Guildford, England Letter from John Strachey to Edward Carson, 27 July 1916 1 Wellington Street, Strand, London, W.C., England Letter from John Strachey to Edward Carson, 27 July 1916