Edward Henry Carson Baron Carson

Edward Henry Carson Carson, Baron 1854-1935, Irish politician. After a successful legal career in Dublin, he was elected to the British Parliament (1892) and called to the English bar (1893). He soon established himself as a prominent London trial lawyer, especially after his brilliantly devastating cross-examination of Oscar Wilde in the Queensberry libel case (1895). Carson was solicitor general in the Conservative government from 1900 to 1905. He had long opposed Home Rule for Ireland, fearing dominance of Protestant Ulster by the Catholic South, and in 1912 he organized military resistance in Ulster against the attempt of the Liberal government to impose it. Faced with the threat of civil war, the government eventually conceded that Ulster should be excluded from the Home Rule settlement. During World War I, Carson served as attorney general (1915) in Herbert Asquith's coalition government and as first lord of the Admiralty (1916-17) and member of the war cabinet (1917-18) under David Lloyd George. He resigned as leader of the Ulster Unionists in 1921, was made a baron in the same year, and served (1921-29) as lord of appeal in ordinary.

Bibliography: See biography by H. M. Hyde (1953).

Carson, Edward Henry, Baron Carson of Duncairn (b. 9 Feb. 1854, d. 22 Oct. 1935). Irish Unionist leader Born in Dublin, and educated at Portarlington School, and Trinity College, Dublin. He qualified as a lawyer and was called to the Irish Bar in 1877. For his legal skill, he was awarded the distinction of QC (Queen's Counsel) in Ireland (1889) and England (1894). He was elected as Conservative MP for Dublin University in 1892, and held this seat until 1918, when he became MP for Belfast Duncairn. He was Solicitor-General for Ireland in 1892, and for England, 1900–6. He was Attorney-General under Asquith in 1915–16. Under Lloyd George, he was First Lord of the Admiralty in 1917, and a member of the War Cabinet in 1917–18. He is remembered principally as a formidable opponent of Irish Home Rule, and later as an advocate of Ulster remaining part of the United Kingdom. In 1912, in Belfast, he organized the signature of a covenant, in which thousands pledged that Ulster would not recognize the authority of any Dublin parliament. This gave popular backing to the Ulster Volunteer Force, a private army of 80,000, whose threat of civil war was only averted by the outbreak of World War I. Thereafter, he reluctantly agreed to Home Rule for southern Ireland as long as Northern Ireland remained under the British Crown. He entered the House of Lords in 1921.