St John Ervine, Home Ruler whose horror at violence in Ireland persuaded him to become a unionist

Although primarily a playwright and a theatre critic, in 1915 St John Ervine, as a Home Ruler and opponent of Ulster unionism, produced a study entitled ‘Sir Edward Carson and the Ulster Movement’.

In 1949, as a committed unionist, he published a biography of Northern Ireland’s first prime minister, ‘Craigavon, Ulsterman’. Predictably the former is hostile, while the latter errs on the side of adulation.

In 1915 Ervine thought Carson possessed all the attributes of ‘the stage Irishman’: ‘He is quick-tempered, impulsive, rash in speech, devil-may-care in his manner (up to a point), obstinate and thoughtless … there is nothing in Sir Edward’s character that in any way approximates to the common picture of the Ulster character’.

Nevertheless he candidly admitted: ‘If I had to choose between Sir Edward and Mr John Redmond, I would prefer Sir Edward to be my leader. He has force of some sort, and even a certain dignity of utterance, whereas Mr Redmond has no force at all, but is merely an unimaginative orator.’

Turning to James Craig 34 years later, he observed: ‘I have only to add that the liking I have felt for Lord Craigavon, a liking which was aroused entirely by his genial and friendly disposition has grown with the greater intimacy which writing his life has brought me.

‘The testimony to his extraordinary likeability is, I find, almost universal … His political opponents, however much they differed from him, no matter how much he sometimes incensed them, admired and liked him.’ 

No political passion could disturb the great regard he felt for the two nationalists, both Ulstermen, whom he most frequently encountered, Joseph Devlin and Jeremiah McVeagh [MP for South Down, 1902-22]; and their regard for him was no less than his for them ...  ‘We Ulster people hold him in particular pride.  He was our man, blood of our blood, bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh. Ulster sets its seal upon him, and he set his seal on Ulster. In accent and mind and manner, in body and belief, James Craig, born and bred and buried in the County of Down was unmistakably marked by his people and his country.  He was an Ulsterman’.

John Greer Ervine was born in Ballymacarrett on December 28, 1883. (He only became St John when he embarked on a literary career.) William Ervine, his father and a printer by trade, died shortly after his birth. Sarah Jane Ervine (née Greer) may have been a deaf-mute.

The predominant influence on his early life was his maternal grandmother, a strict but kindly evangelical whose roots were in north Down and who ran a small shop on the Albertbridge Road.

Educated at Westbourne Presbyterian Church School, Ervine was extremely bright and could have benefited enormously from an extended education. However, he left school at the age of 14 to work as a clerk in an insurance company.

Three years later he moved to London and embraced socialism, becoming acquainted with Herbert Morrison, the future Labour cabinet minister, and George Bernard Shaw, not quite yet the celebrated playwright he would become by the outbreak of the Great War, a Home Ruler and a member of the Fabian Society.

Ervine had aspirations to become a playwright and gave Shaw a manuscript of a play he had written. Shaw was encouraging and supportive. Ervine became a political and literary protégé of the great man and briefly served on the committee of the Fabian Society.

Between 1911 and 1914 Ervine contributed four plays to the Abbey theatre in Dublin: ‘Mixed Marriage’, ‘The Magnanimous Lover’, ‘The Orangeman’ and ‘John Ferguson’. In 1915 he was appointed manager of the theatre.

Defining the ethos of the Abbey theatre with precision is difficult. R F Foster (in ‘Vivid Faces: the Revolutionary Generation 1890-1923’) has described the connection of the Abbey to nationalist politics as ‘an ambiguous and thorny subject’ but he has also noted that it was ‘a recognised and vital forum for the cultural propaganda of nationalism’.

As Ervine was a Home Ruler rather than a separatist, he sought to forge closer links with British regional theatres. This put his vision at variance with that of the theatre’s actors, prompting mass resignations and, in due course, his own dismissal.

He was in Dublin for the Easter Rising and was appalled, especially by the deaths of Michael Lahiff of the Dublin Metropolitan Police and the journalist and pacifist Francis Sheehy-Skeffington. He passed the scene of Lahiff’s murder shortly afterwards and ‘saw a pool of congealed blood. I was almost sickened by the sight’.

In October 1916 he joined the Royal Dublin Fusiliers – because he equated the Allied cause with the cause of civilisation – and served in France between April 1917 and May 1918 when he was wounded and had a leg amputated. He was extremely proud of his war service.

His horror at the violence of post-war Ireland assisted his conversion to unionism.

In the 1920s and 1930s he was the theatre critic of the ‘Observer’ and was briefly a critic on the ‘New York World’. He also achieved success as a dramatist in the West End, beginning with ‘The First Mrs Fraser’ in 1929, and locally with plays like ‘Boyd’s Shop’ (1936), ‘William John Mawhinney’ (1940) and ‘Friends and Relations’ (1941). The ever-popular ‘Boyd’s Shop’ used to be regularly staged by Young Farmers’ Clubs throughout Ulster.

He also produced biographies of Shaw (whom he never ceased to admire), Parnell (which was remarkably sympathetic), Oscar Wilde and General Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army.

Those who bemoan Ervine’s drift to the right politically, should bear in mind he was not unique in this. By the 1950s many early-20th-century Fabians were voting Tory and complaining of the difficulty of obtaining decent servants.

The Lyric Theatre used to stage superb productions of Ervine’s plays. Perhaps the 50th anniversary of his death might prompt a revival of interest in the man and his work.