James Craig

James Craig (1871–1940)
1st Viscount Craigavon, first prime minister of Northern Ireland

Extract from RIA Dictonary of Irish Biography by Alvin Jackson

[Edward] Carson and Craig together dominated the unionist campaign against the third home rule bill. It is sometimes remarked that Craig acted as impresario to Carson's star turn; it might equally be suggested that Craig acted as high priest to Carson's deity. Either way, it was Craig who stage-managed his leader's public appearences in Ulster, beginning with an impressive rally at Craigavon (September 1911) and peaking (arguably) with the demonstrations preceding and accompanying Ulster day (28 September 1912). Craig's home at Strandtown, on the south-eastern outskirts of Belfast, served as a kind of protective shrine for Carson: here Craig might interpret his leader's oracular views, or induct devotees into the great man's presence. Here some of the most solemn ceremonial rites of unionism were performed (such as the introduction of Carson to his Ulster following, or the launch of the Solemn League and Covenant). Craig supplied Carson with the local knowledge and insights that he lacked; he seems to have been a more committed hardliner than his leader in so far as he had military experience (which Carson had not), was actively involved in the Larne gun-running of April 1914 (he helped to land weapons in Donaghadee), and does not appear among the ranks of those who (like Carson and Lord Londonderry (qv)) periodically counselled restraint. Indeed, from an early stage in the development of the constitutional crisis (at least as early as April 1911, when he was writing to Fred Crawford (qv), the chief gun-runner) Craig was directly involved with the importation of weapons. Carson had charisma; but Craig had a populist flair. Craig helped to create the context within which Carson enjoyed a form of apotheosis: Craig's fertile imagination brought forth the Covenant as well as the Boyne banner, a tattered silk flag that had once fluttered beside King William III (qv), and which was now carried before King Carson. Craig helped to create the means by which Ulster unionism, that most fissile of movements, sustained a unity and discipline in the face of grinding pressures. Craig, rooted in eastern Ulster, helped to popularise the advocacy of six-county exclusion among northern unionists. Craig, much more than Carson, may thus be seen as an architect of the partition settlement that evolved between 1912 and 1920.