Life
1871-1940; b. Belfast, 8 Jan.; seventh of nine children of a wealthy distiller
and farm-owner; brought up at Craigavon, the family home, with visits
to Tyrella at Dundrum Bay; ed. privately and Merchiston, Edinburgh; became
stockbroker; served in S. Africa War; invalided home, June 1901; inheritance
on death of f.; did not reopen his accountancy practice; selected as Unionist
candidate for North Fermanagh, Mary 1903; m. 1905; elected MP East Down,
1906, increasing his majority in subsequent elections; organised Ulster
Volunteers for armed resistance, culminating in demonstration of 50,000
who marched from Belfast centre to Craigavon on 23 Sept. 1911, to be addressed
there by Edward Carson; detailed plan for provisional govt., submitted
to Ulster Unionist Council, 31 Jan. 1913; Quarter-mast.-gen. Ulster Regt.,
France, 1914-16; his br. Charles wounded and captured in Flanders, June
1917; parliamentary secretary; knighted 1918; succeeded Carson as leader
of Unionists, Feb. 1921; Prime Minister, June 1921; Viscount Craigavon
of Stormont, 1927; abolished PR, 1929; told House of Commons, 1934, ‘We
are a Protestant parliament and a Protestant state’; d. Glencarrig,
214 Nov., bur. Stormont; He was opposed to sectarian education (i.e.,
separate establishments for Catholics); the standard life is by St. John
Ervine (1949). DIB
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Quotations
1903 election: Craig’s notes for his election programme are given
in St. John Ervine, Craigavon: Ulsterman (London: Allen & Unwin
1949), p.113: ‘to settle the land question on equitable terms, to
resist Home Rule, to secure better conditions of life for agricultural
labourers, to knit the Empire more closely by means of preferential tariffs,
and to maintain the Portestant religion in the place where it prevailed
in Ireland.’ (Quoted in Calton Younger, A State Divided, 1972,
p.162.)
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