On the following day, January 17th, an immense sensation was created by the publication of the Resolution which had been unanimously adopted on the motion of Captain James Craig, M.P.  It was: 

“That the Standing Committee of the Ulster Unionist Council observes with astonishment the deliberate challenge thrown down by Mr. Winston Churchill, Mr. John Redmond, Mr. Joseph Devlin, and Lord Pirrie in announcing their intention to hold a Home Rule meeting in the centre of the loyal city of Belfast, and resolves to take steps to prevent its being held.”

There was an immediate outpouring of vituperation by the Ministerial Press in England, as had been anticipated by the Standing Committee.  Special Correspondents trooped over to Belfast, whence they filled their papers with telegrams, articles, and interviews, ringing the changes on the audacity of this unwarranted interference with freedom of speech, and speculating as to the manner in which the threat, was likely to be carried out.  Scribes of “Open Letters” had a fine opportunity to display their gift of insolent invective.  Cartoonists and caricaturists had a time of rare enjoyment, and let their pencils run riot.  Writers in the Liberal Press for the most part assumed that Mr. Churchill would bid defiance to the Ulster Unionist Council; others urged him to do so and to fulfil his engagement; some, with more prudence, suggested that he might be extricated from the difficulty without loss of dignity if the Chief Secretary would prohibit the meeting, as likely to produce a breach of peace, and it was pointed out that Dublin Castle would certainly forbid a meeting in Tipperary organised by the Ulster Unionist Council, with Sir Edward Carson as principal speaker.

However, on the 25th of January Mr. Churchill addressed a letter, dated from the Admiralty, to Lord Londonderry at Mount Stewart, in which he said he was prepared to give up the idea of speaking in the Ulster Hall, and would arrange for his meeting to be held elsewhere in the city, as “it was not a point of any importance to him where he spoke in Belfast.”  He did not explain why, if that were the case, he had ever made a plan that so obviously constituted a direct premeditated challenge to Ulster.  Lord Londonderry, in his reply, said that the Ulster Unionist Council had no intention of interfering with any meeting Mr. Churchill might arrange “outside the districts which passionately resent your action,” but that, “having regard to the intense state of feeling” which had been aroused, the Council could accept no responsibility for anything that might occur during the visit.  Mr. Churchill’s prudent change of plan relieved the extreme tension of the situation, and there was much speculation as to what influence had produced a result so satisfactory to the Ulster Unionist Council.  The truth seems to be that the Council’s Resolution had impaled the Government on the horns of a very awkward dilemma,