The Ulster Volunteers were formed in response to the Home Rule bill of April 1912 and the Covenant signed in September 1912, first by Edward Carson and then by almost half a million others. Guns were smuggled into Larne on the Clyde Valley in April 1914 but the advent of the World War saw the volunteers instead joining the British Army, specifically the 36th (Ulster) Division, and went over the top at the Somme.
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Copyright © 2000 Paddy Duffy (no date given)
T01189
This mural celebrates the 75th anniversary of the Ulster Volunteers, 1912, with a portrait of Edward Carson and a rifle mounted on the back of a car (based on an image from 1914, included below). The Ulster Volunteers joined the Royal Irish Rifles as part of Kitchener’s Army in WWI, and when the war ended some of the survivors joined the northern RIC and the post-partition RUC, but at that point it is impossible to track them as a cohesive group and the only connection to the Ulster Volunteer Force of 1965 is the name.
Shankill Road (on the wall of the PUP offices, just west of ACT and the Bayardo memorial), west Belfast
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Copyright © 1988 Paddy Duffy
T00128
Paddy Duffy Collection 