Northern Ireland

How Michael Collins secured an election victory in Armagh with the help of an east Belfast loyalist-turned literary academic

Eric Villiers is researching a biography on the life of east Belfast-born theatrical scholar William J Lawrence. Picture by Mal McCann
Eric Villiers is researching a biography on the life of east Belfast-born theatrical scholar William J Lawrence. Picture by Mal McCann Eric Villiers is researching a biography on the life of east Belfast-born theatrical scholar William J Lawrence. Picture by Mal McCann

Today marks 100 years since the first election to the new Parliament of Northern Ireland, but the victory of Michael Collins in winning his seat in Armagh was preceded by a surprising show of support - that of an east Belfast loyalist-turned republican who the world knew as one of the foremost authorities of Shakespearean stagecraft.

THE general election on May 24, 1921 was the first to elect members to the new parliament at Stormont following partition, and occurred in the dying days of the Irish War of Independence.

An already tumultuous time in Irish politics, when divisions had never seemed so unbridgeable, the poll added fuel to the raging fire when revolutionary hero Michael Collins secured the MP seat for Armagh.

However, a Co Armagh-based historian has shed new light on how that controversial victory was secured with an address at a rally where a well-known theatrical academic worked his magic on the attending crowds of Sinn Féin supporters.

Writer Eric Villiers is researching a biography of William J Lawrence, the east Belfast academic who rose to become what the poet TS Eliot dubbed "the supreme authority of the Elizabethan stage".

Born in 1862 into a loyalist background, and having begun his professional life as a whiskey salesman, the lofty heights of Shakespearean critical analysis appeared an unlikely career destination, but that's what he became after a period spent in darkened Dublin libraries, where his personal passion for literature led to the publication of his first book in 1892.

Equally unlikely was his shift away from unionist politics towards the republican movement led by Collins, who in 1916 took part in the Easter Rising, signalling the end of British rule over the island of Ireland.

Mr Villiers, in his research into Lawrence, discovered that the writer's life was full of twists and turns, including the collapse of his burgeoning literary career following the violent events of Easter 1916. As Ireland erupted in conflict and division, Lawrence moved to New Jersey in the US, where he took on menial jobs including washing dishes.

He was rescued from this fate in a chance encounter with a Harvard professor familiar with Lawrence's work, who returned him to academia, offering him a visiting professorship at the illustrious Massachusetts university.

But far from blaming Collins and his revolutionary colleagues for disrupting his life, Lawrence became a supporter of Sinn Féin, and the weekend before the 1921 election, returned to Armagh to speak at a rally in support of Collins, who would go on to win the seat.

Having run on an anti-partition ticket, Sinn Féin used the northern poll as an election to the Second Dáil, and Collins took one of six Stormont seats won by the party.

However, as he was one of Britain's most wanted men, Collins was unable to attend a rally in Armagh in support of his election, but Eric explained how WJ Lawrence instead offered his services in place of the Cork-born outlaw.

"It's interesting that by the time of the Armagh rally in the days before the 1921 election, Lawrence had already moved far from his loyalist roots," he said.

"He had faced trouble with the Orange Order for having attended meetings of the Young Irelander movement, and had written pamphlets for Sinn Féin.

"In the dying days of the 1921 election campaign, it was he who lent his voice to Collins at the Armagh rally, while Collins had been in a tunnel underneath the Marino estate in Dublin, test-firing Tommy guns that were newly smuggled in from America. He was presaging the 1980s strategy of the republican movement which involved taking power with an Armalite in one hand and a ballot paper in the other."

Details of Lawrence's speech remain unknown, but the support of a Protestant theatre expert dramatically espousing on behalf of the 'Big Man' of Irish politics on a makeshift Armagh stage had the desired effect, as Collins went on to secure the seat ahead of his assassination the following year, aged just 31.

"The personal papers I'm uncovering are depicting his personal political journey," Mr Villiers added of Lawrence, who eventually died impoverished in 1940.

"The first open air political rally Lawrence addressed was actually a unionist one in Comber when he was in his 20s. It was quite the journey to end up campaigning for Michael Collins."