"SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT" SIGNED AT THE "ULSTER DAY" CEREMONY IN BELFAST

28 September 1912

Backed by the Tory Party in Britain and deeply embittered by the passage of the Parliament Act of 1911, northern unionists staged the great "Ulster Day" ceremony on 28 September 1912 as a mass protest against the apparently imminent prospect of Home Rule. All over the province, but above all in Belfast, unionists lined up to sign the document called the "Solemn League and Covenant." Over 218,000 Ulstermen signed it on that day or shortly afterward, some doing so in their own blood. Women were not permitted to sign the document itself, but 229,000 unionist women signed a declaration of support.

SEE ALSO Politics: 1800 to 1921—Challenges to the Union; Unionism from 1885 to 1922

Being convinced in our consciences that Home Rule would be disastrous to the material well-being of Ulster as well as of the whole of Ireland, subversive of our civil and religious freedom, destructive of our citizenship, and perilous to the unity of the empire, we, whose names are underwritten, men of Ulster, loyal subjects of His Gracious Majesty King George V, humbly relying on the God whom our fathers in days of stress and trial confidently trusted, do hereby pledge ourselves in solemn covenant, throughout this our time of threatened calamity, to stand by one another in defending for ourselves and our children our cherished position of equal citizenship in the United Kingdom, and in using all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule parliament in Ireland. And in the event of such a parliament being forced upon us, we further solemnly and mutually pledge ourselves to refuse to recognise its authority. In sure confidence that God will defend the right, we hereto subscribe our names. And further, we individually declare that we have not already signed this covenant. God save the king.

Ronald McNeill, ULSTER'S STAND FOR UNION (1922), pp. 105–106.