Frederick Crawford: The 'fearless fighter' for unionism who organised the 1914 Larne gunrunning

The first member of this remarkable Ulster family to settle in Ulster, the Rev Thomas Crawford, was ordained at Donegore in 1655. The family produced a long line of Presbyterian ministers and medical doctors, but Fred’s grandfather moved into the manufacture of chemicals in Belfast and the family abandoned their ancestral Presbyterianism for Methodism.

Of his Ulster-Scots ancestry, Crawford proudly observed in ‘Guns for Ulster’: ‘From these settlers sprang a people, the Ulster-Scot, who have made themselves felt in the history of the British Empire and, in no small measure, in that of the United States of America.’

Crawford was educated at Methodist College, Belfast, and University College, London, where he distinguished himself as an athlete and a rifle shot.

One frosty morning in December 1881, when Crawford was serving an apprenticeship at Harland & Wolff, a gangway collapsed, throwing several hundred men into the dock. Crawford modestly recalled: ‘I was the means of getting some of them out with a certain amount of inconvenience to myself and a good ducking which I did not relish as the dock was partly frozen over’. For this exploit he was awarded a bronze medal by the Royal Humane Society and a solid silver cup and an address by his fellows in the shipyard.

Through serving as an engineer with the White Star Line, Crawford missed the drama of the first Home Rule crisis of 1885-6.

His return to Ulster in 1892 to join the family business coincided with the onset of the second Home Rule crisis. He became convinced that if Ulster was to successfully resist Home Rule, Ulster must ultimately rely on armed resistance, a belief from which he never deviated.

As a member of Lord Ranfurly’s Ulster Loyalist Union, in 1893 Crawford imported small quantities of weapons and formed a secret society called Young Ulster. A condition of membership required the possession of either a revolver or a Winchester carbine and one hundred rounds of ammunition.

It was also during the second Home Rule crisis that Crawford allegedly approached Lord Ranfurly with a scheme to kidnap Gladstone on the promenade at Brighton and whisk him off to a remote South Sea Island and abandon him there with a supply of writing material, a few axes, a grindstone and ‘a really good library’. To Crawford’s irritation, Lord Ranfurly, is supposed to have declined to fund the project. Actually, the story is a complete fabrication.

In 1894 he enlisted in the Mid Ulster Artillery. He subsequently was transferred to the Donegal Artillery. Like James Craig, he served in the Boer War. He achieved the rank of major, was decorated and mentioned in despatches. During this conflict he acquired a great deal of knowledge about modern weaponry and warfare. After the Boer War he remained on the Army List and attained the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

With the return of a Liberal government at the end of 1905 and the Liberal landslide in the general election of 1906, Crawford feared the introduction of a fresh Home Rule bill.

This did not materialise immediately because the Liberal government with its huge parliamentary majority was not dependent on the votes of Irish nationalist MPs. Attaching little significance to this fact, Crawford returned to his firm conviction that if Ulster was to successfully resist Home Rule, it must ultimately rely on armed resistance.

However, by January 1910 the Liberals had lost their huge independent parliamentary majority and were wholly dependent on the support of Irish nationalist MPs.

In November 1910 Crawford was the key mover and shaker in the establishment of a secret sub-committee of the Ulster Unionist Council to import guns. In March 1911 the UUC approved the first major expenditure for the importation of guns and by the early summer of 1911 at least 2,000 guns had already been imported.

Although Crawford’s Scottish ancestors may have signed 17th-century covenants in their own blood, he did not follow their example by signing the Ulster Covenant in this way.

When the Ulster Volunteer Force was formally established by the UUC in January 1913 Crawford became director of ordnance.

During the course of 1913 Crawford imported thousands of rifles, some machine-guns and significant quantities of ammunition. However, in June 1913 he suffered a major setback when the customs authorities and the police managed to seize a thousand rifles and bayonets in Belfast.

Crawford was becoming increasingly frustrated at the piecemeal acquisition of arms. He favoured more ambitious large-scale gunrunning.

Two crucial factors tilted the argument decisively in favour of Crawford’s method of proceeding.

First, in December 1913 the UVF leadership in Co Antrim pressured the Unionist leadership for large-scale gunrunning because the Co Antrim volunteers had only 200 rifles for 10,700 men. Other counties, including Donegal and Monaghan, had demonstrated more initiative in arming their volunteers.

Secondly, a bold political stroke was required and by 1914 was essential because, according to the terms of the Parliament Act of 1911 (which deprived the House of Lords of its veto), Home Rule would reach the statute book by the summer of that year. Nothing then would stand between Ulster and Dublin rule but armed resistance.

In January 1914 Carson and the Unionist leadership sanctioned Crawford to undertake a daring mission to Germany, worthy of a John Buchan at his very best, to purchase guns and ammunition and land them in Ulster.

Only 12 men knew about the mission. Carson told Crawford: ‘Crawford, I’ll see you through this business, if I should have to go to prison for it’. Those words meant a great deal to Crawford. He always referred to Carson as the leader and esteemed it a great honour to be asked to be one of the pall-bearers at Carson’s funeral in October 1935.

When Crawford died in November 1952 Basil Brooke, the then prime minister of Northern Ireland, accurately described him ‘as a fearless fighter in the historic fight to keep Ulster British’.