Maintaining the Cause in the Land of the Free: Ulster Unionists and US Involvement in the Northern Ireland Conflict, 1968-72

Abstract

Maintaining the Cause in the Land of the Free:Ulster Unionists and US Involvement in the Northern Ireland Conflict, 1968-72 Andrew Wilson (bio) From the beginning of the Northern Ireland "Troubles," Irish nationalists have received vital support from America.1 In the mid-1970s John Hume helped to create the congressional Friends of Ireland, a powerful political network which pressured the British government and worked for a constitutional-nationalist agenda on Capitol Hill. In addition, millions of dollars and substantial supplies of US weapons were channeled to the IRA and played a key role in sustaining its campaign of violence. While this Irish-American connection has been the focus of extensive media and scholarly analysis, there has been virtually nothing written about the small, but fiercely determined, unionist support network in the US.2 The following article aims to shed light on this previously neglected dimension of Ulster unionism by outlining the various initiatives that unionists took to counteract Irish-American nationalism in the early 1970s. It examines the major challenges faced by unionists in presenting their perspective in the US and assesses the degree to which their objectives were achieved. [End Page 212] Ulster Unionists and America, 1945–68 Unlike Irish nationalists, unionists have little constituency from which they can draw support in the US. Although over 250,000 Ulster Protestants migrated to America in the eighteenth century, and though most of the 44 million who claimed Irish ancestry in the 1990 census were Protestant, the vast majority are assimilated and have little or no interest in the politics of their ancestral homeland.3 Nevertheless, there was a small network of Ulster Protestant/unionist organizations active in the US after World War II which provided the leadership and membership of new groups that emerged in response to the outbreak of violence in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s. The Orange Order is the oldest surviving fraternal organization in America which has been overwhelmingly shaped by Ulster Protestants and their descendants. The first lodges were formed in eastern cities in the early nineteenth century and became closely associated with the Anglo-American nativist reaction against the growing numbers of Irish Catholic immigrants. As in Ireland, the annual "Twelfth" commemorations of King William of Orange's victory at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 were often occasions for conflict. The 1831 parade in Philadelphia, for example, ignited pitched battles between Orangemen and Catholic protesters. The worst violence occurred at the New York parades in 1870 and 1871, during which seventy people died and over one hundred were injured.4 In 1870 the Loyal Orange Institution of the United States of America (LOI) was formed to administer the network of lodges which had emerged throughout the country. Within a few decades the LOI claimed over one hundred lodges in twenty-one states and nearly 70,000 members. The LOI's vibrancy was reflected in its ability to host the annual convention of the Imperial Grand Orange Council of the World in New York in 1900.5 [End Page 213] By the first decades of the twentieth century, however, American Orangeism experienced a steady decline in activism and membership. In the 1920s a bitter internal feud led to the emergence of two rival bodies, each claiming to be the Supreme Grand Lodge. Although this schism was eventually healed, one historian concludes that the "injuries sustained" made the "institution in America incapable of recovering its original vitality and strength."6 Other analysts make the obvious point that "the scope for an organization devoted to maintenance of British constitutional and cultural forms was severely limited in the American republic."7 Leaders of the LOI were also perplexed by the inability of brethren to pass enthusiasm for Orangeism to their children—a point later encapsulated in a statement by New York Orangeman Derek Mills, who, when asked to comment about the health of his organization, lamented, "When we get together now, if we get together . . . , we're like a bunch of old ladies, sitting around chatting. We get together to see who's died since the last meeting."8 Yet, despite all the challenges and difficulties, the Orange Order continued to survive. In the...