I thought that the refusal said more about the attitude of the committee than Lord Carson himself. Carson was one of the few non- Royals to have been afforded a state funeral within the United Kingdom. I was then phoned by Rebecca Black and Ben Lowry of the News Letter. They told me that English Heritage had informed them that the case for erecting a blue circle honouring Lord Carson in London was not clear enough and that although it recognised he was an important figure in “Anglo-Irish” History, he was also a “controversial” one. After a full discussion the panel concluded that the case for adding him to the short list for the blue plaque was not clear enough. It was noted that there was already a prominent statue of Carson in Belfast.
What nonsense… As well as being a giant of Unionism and a former Conservative cabinet minister, Lord Carson had a glittering legal career during which he defended the London Evening Standard in a libel action brought by George Cadbury of the iconic chocolate brand. The Standard articles in 1908 alleged that Cadbury Brothers Ltd, who claimed to be model employers having created the village of Bourneville outside Birmingham, knew of the slave labour conditions on São Tomé, the Portuguese island colony from which Cadbury purchased most of their cocoa for the production of their chocolate. George Cadbury recovered one farthing in damages and this case has been described as one of Carson’s triumphs. I told the News Letter that I would like to see a plaque in honour of Lord Carson outside the Standard's offices as a champion of liberty.
Lord Carson also defended the Marquis of Queensbury against Oscar Wilde’s libel charge before going on to become Attorney General and later a Lord of Appeal. A blue plaque has been erected outside his house in Harcourt Street in Dublin which Dr Paisley and I visited last year. I was pleased to see that Morning View of the News Letter supported our efforts to get English Heritage to change its mind. But I think it is a poor reflection on the attitudes to Northern Ireland which persist in English circles. It is as if we are somewhere “out there” rather than being an integral part of the United Kingdom. And it says a lot more about the development of Irish Nationalist political propaganda and its effect on a naïve section of the English academic élite, especially those who claim to represent the socialist vanguard but are actually trapped in nationalist ideologies. And where are our Conservative friends in this Culture War period?