James Craig, 1st Viscount Craigavon

James Craig, 1st Viscount Craigavon

James Craig, 1st Viscount Craigavon PC , PC (NI) (born January 8, 1871 in Belfast , † November 24, 1940 in Glencraig, County Down ) was an avowed unionist , chairman of the Ulster Unionist Party and first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland .

Life

James Craig was born in the east Belfast suburb of Sydenham in 1871 to a wealthy distillery family who made their living from whiskey . His father owned a large country house called Craigavon. Craig received his education at Merchiston Castle School in Scottish Edinburgh . After working as a stock trader, he joined the British Army and fought as an officer in the Royal Irish Rifles in the Second Boer War . He rose to the rank of captain in 1902 .

Political activity

On his return to Ireland , he was elected Member of the UK House of Commons for East Down constituency. He held this seat from 1906 to 1918. From 1918 to 1921 he was an MP for the constituency Mid Down . Since 1919 he was a member of the government under Prime Minister Lloyd George in various positions .

Shortly before the First World War, Craig gathered the oppositional, unionist forces against the so-called Home Rule in the province of Ulster . To this end he founded and organized the paramilitary Ulster Volunteers and bought weapons from the German Empire . When the First World War broke out, many members of the Ulster Volunteers volunteered for the British Army, where they formed the Ulster Division, in which Craig also served as adjutant general and quartermaster of the Ulster division . After the war, Craig became Colonel of Honor of the Royal Irish Rifles .

In February 1921, Craig replaced Edward Carson as chairman of the Ulster Unionist Party . In the first Northern Irish general election in 1921, he moved for the constituency of County Down in the newly created House of Commons for Northern Ireland. In June 1921, Craig became the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. As a supporter of the Orange Order and a staunch anti-Catholic, he replied to Éamon de Valera's statement in 1934 that Ireland was a Catholic nation :

“I have always said I am an Orangeman first and a politician and Member of this Parliament afterwards… The Hon. Member must remember that in the South they boasted of a Catholic State. They still boast of Southern Ireland being a Catholic State. All I boast is that we are a Protestant Parliament and a Protestant State. "

In 1918 he was raised to the hereditary lower nobility as Baronet , of Stormont in the County of Down, and in 1927 as Viscount Craigavon , of Stormont in the County of Down, raised to hereditary peer . A seat in the House of Lords was associated with the latter title . Craig received honorary doctorates from Queen's University of Belfast (1922) and the University of Oxford (1926).

Craig died peacefully in 1940 on his estate in Glencraig, County Down, serving as Prime Minister. He was succeeded by Treasury Secretary John Miller Andrews .

family

From his marriage to Cecil Mary Tupper († 1960) in 1905, he had a daughter and two sons, from whom the older, James Craig , inherited his title of nobility in 1940.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/crights/pdfs/truth.pdf
2. ↑ Jonathan Bardon: A History of Ulster, 1992, p. 538.
3. ^ Northern Ireland House of Commons Official Report. Volume 34, Column 1095. Sir James Craig, Unionist Party, then Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, April 24, 1934.

literature

• Jonathan Bardon: A History of Ulster . 2nd Edition. The Blackstaff Press, Belfast 1992, ISBN 0-85640-476-4 , pp. 539 ff .

Web links

• Lieut-Colonel James Craig at Hansard (English)
• James Craig, 1st Viscount Craigavon on thepeerage.com

predecessor	Office	successor
New title created	Baronet, of Stormont 1918-1940	James Craig
New title created	Viscount Craigavon 1927-1940	James Craig