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1911 The Irish population was now at 4,381,951 with the Catholic proportion still at at 73.9 % yet Irish illiteracy was only 12 % while the ability to read and write was recorded at 84 %. James Connolly became the Ulster Province organizer for the Irish Transport and General Workers Union involving a strike of seamen Catholic and non - Catholic and tried to get them to merge into the Irish Socialist Republican Party inspired by Lalor’s previous Plan of Campaign. - The non - Catholics in Ulster now met at Craigavon, the home of James Craig there, in resistance to Irish Home Rule. - James Larkin the great Irish Labour leader became the President of the Irish Trades Union Congress. - Helena Molony was arrested for participating in a Sinn Fein Party protest against an English Royal visit and the Irish Womens Suffrage Federation was formed. - Sir Roger Casement who was born at Ballymena in Co. Antrim in Ulster was knighted by the British Government for services to humanity and this positive trait in his character would cause him to also stand up for the cause of Irish Freedom, which would see him eventually also executed by the British Government.

August: The British House of Lords was composed of 800 Lords, including a great number who did not attend and was controlled by a Conservative majority who were not an elected body but had derived their powers of veto going back to the Norman Barons who had stood up against King John. During the hundreds of years of oppression by England on Ireland they had added to the country's woes because of this as they continued to frustrate any improvement in the life of the ordinary people of Ireland. Because of their continued rejection of Supply to the Liberal Government they were to finally come undone and the Liberal Government won the day after they threatened to create as many Liberal Peers to enter the House of Lords as it would take to get a majority and the non - elected House of Lords finally had to succumb to the elected House of Commons. Under a new Act of the Westminster Parliament they were now suddenly deprived of the power of absolute veto - to reject the wishes of the House of Commons who were the actual elected body on behalf of the people. This then not only removed their veto on the Supply Bills, which had bought it all about, but further restricted their veto to 2 years on any other matters, which could then come into law without their consent. They had used this power against Ireland's interests for many Centuries and the Unionists too had now also lost their greatest control over Ireland with the loss of the veto by the Conservative majority in the House of Lords, but despite this they still had the Conservatives to themselves. John Redmond's prestige had risen as the Irish Nationalists considered that Irish Home Rule was only a matter of time, although it would still take 2 years to bring it in, which was to leave every thing open to criticism for too long including the Irish Parliamentary Party.

September: Edward Carson the Unionist M.P. from Trinity College in Dublin was in Belfast in Co. Antrim in the north - east of the Ulster Province where the Ulster Volunteers were founded by him at this time as an armed group and began drilling 100,000 men throughout the local Orange Lodges in direct opposition to the British Liberal Government. They were ready to form their own Government and believed the argument was to be won not by the ballot but by the bullet and they were never interfered with as they were backed by the British Conservatives and the British Generals in occupation of Ireland including Sir George Richardson the British commander. Their other supporters also included Field Marshall Lord Roberts and the Conservative lawyer F.E. Smith who all said they would not suppress a revolt by the Unionists. A Plan of Resistance was drawn up, which was uncompromising where if Irish Home Rule was to pass in to law they intended to totally ignore it and set up their own Government in Ulster. The Ulster Council began to draw up a constitution preparing to take over the civil administration but Sir Edward Carson was pretty sure that John Redmond the Irish Parliamentary Party leader would not accept Irish Home Rule without the Ulster Province being included. Edward Carson was a non - Catholic Unionist Dublin lawyer who basically represented the wealthy middle class who controlled the economic and political life in the Ulster Province but it was really to be James Craig the whiskey millionaire Unionist M.P. for East Co. Down that the masses there would eventually turn to as he was one of their own.

November: Arthur "Bloody" Balfour resigned as the Conservative leader and Andrew Bonar Law a Canadian born Conservative was now the leader of the Unionist Party in England, who was the son of an Ulster Presbyterian clergyman from Coleraine in Co. Derry in the north - east of the Ulster Province who had been born in 1822 AD.

The Irish Republican Brotherhood - I.R.B. now suffered a split under John Mac Dermott, who originally hailed from Co. Leitrim in Northern Connacht, who although he was a cripple who used a walking stick to get around, was still to be the driving force for the forthcoming 1916 Easter Uprising as he rearranged the younger brigade who wanted Ireland to be free in their lifetime and the overbearing rule of the British Government gone from Ireland and as the older I.R.B. members retired they began their military drilling in preparation for achieving their goal. - Anna Parnell, the younger sister of Charles Stewart - Parnell the Anglo - Irish non - Catholic Land Lord who had stood alone in the parliamentary fight for political Irish Freedom, land rights and justice, died at the age of 59 when she was drowned while in England. - Excavations of the fort at Lenystone Rath in Co. Kildare in Mid - Leinster this year under the Long Stone - Chloc Fhada, uncovered a stone Cist of an Irish Chief from the Bronze Age..- One of the Cairns - Megalith Graves from the Bronze Age at Carrowkeel too on the Bricklieve Mountains were also opened up, which was 3,000 to 4000 year old, that had been in use for over a 1,000 years. The Megalith builders built in slate, stone or cut into rock.

+On to 1912

Situated on the western bank of the Hunter River, midway between Muswellbrook and Denman the doorway to the Heart of Australia's "Horse Capital" in the Hunter Valley in New South Wales., Australia.

John & Sue Markham

RAINBOW FARMS 603 Roxburgh Road., Muswellbrook., 2333.

02 65 479 100 - Fax: 02 65 479 102 E - Mail: www.rainbowfarms@bigpond.com