THROUGH THE ARCHIVES: Ulster PM’s tribute ‘grand old warrior’ Crawford

From the News Letter, November 6, 1952
The Prime Minister of Northern Ireland Lord Craigavon speaking with Mr Robert Gransden the Secretary to the Cabinet in 1940The Prime Minister of Northern Ireland Lord Craigavon speaking with Mr Robert Gransden the Secretary to the Cabinet in 1940
The Prime Minister of Northern Ireland Lord Craigavon speaking with Mr Robert Gransden the Secretary to the Cabinet in 1940

The Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Viscount Brookeborough, paid tribute to Lieutenant Colonel Frederick (Fred) Hugh Crawford, the old gun-runner, who had died at his home on the Malone Road in Belfast the previous day aged 91.

The PM’s tribute read: “A grand old warrior – a fearless figure in the historic fight that was to keep Ulster British – has answered the last roll call. Among those who battled for Ulster through the years of stern and rigorous campaigning none showed greater resourcefulness than Colonel Fred Crawford. His loyalist contemporaries rightly held him in admiring regard for his inflexible resolution and his passionate devotion to Ulster’s cause. To younger generation of Unionists he has bequeathed a fine example of political sagacity and personal integrity. Ulster’s debt to him is incalculable.”

While many unionists in Northern Ireland held Crawford in high regard for his gun-running efforts he was much harder on himself, reflecting on time before his death Crawford had said: “Even now I shrink from the mental agony of that time. Our hopes dashed to pieces at the very start. What would the Ulster Volunteers think when they heard of this naked failure to deliver the guns after all the promises made to them time and again from every Unionist platform in Ulster?”