This historic photograph is of members of the Ulster Volunteers at an encampment at Wheatlands near Belfast, Ireland. My father, Frederick Buchanan, is on the front row, extreme left. The Ulster Volunteers were formed at the height of the controversy over Home Rule in 1912. My grandmother, Mary Jane Lyons Buchanan, was strongly opposed to Home Rule and called it “Rome Rule.”
Apparently my ould faither echoed his mother and joined the Ulster Volunteers to show his solidarity with those who opposed the Home Rule legislation which was introduced at Westminster in 1912. Sir Edward Carson, the leader of the Unionists, wanted to preserve the Union between Britain and Ireland, believing it to be in the best interests of his fellow countrymen.
When the Westminster Parliament introduced the Home Rule Bill (1912), Carson took a leading part in the formation of the Ulster Volunteers, who drilled openly to show that they were prepared to resort to arms rather than be ruled by an Irish parliament in Dublin.
The Ulster Unionists planned to set up a government of their own if the Home Rule Bill was passed. It wasn’t, but the Ulster Volunteers continued as an idea, and in 1921 Ireland was divided into two political entities – the South with a Catholic majority and the North with a Protestant majority. Freddy Buchanan volunteered for the Royal Navy in1917 and swore allegiance to the British crown. After years of poverty he ended up back in Scotland looking for work as a radical Socialist. Such are the turns of life!
