A Winston S. Churchill album photograph and signature from 8 February 1912 in Belfast, the day of Churchill's famous, controversial, and fraught Home Rule speech by Winston S. Churchill - 1912

Grand Central Hotel, Belfast, 1912. Hardcover. This extraordinary album signature by Winston S. Churchill made on 8 February 1912 in Belfast, the day of his famous speech on Irish Home Rule, comes from the personal collection of Churchill bibliographer Ronald I. Cohen. Churchill still had half a century of public life ahead of him when he signed this album, which is a striking, early artifact of the Churchillian appetite for contrarian controversy that would characterize his career.

Churchill's signature is inked in black above a pasted contemporary portrait photo of him measuring 2.75 x 2.5 inches (6.89 x 6.35 cm). Inked directly below in three lines in a different hand is "Grand Central Hotel | Belfast | 8th Feb 1912". On the facing page is pasted a seven-line, bordered quote, printed on glossy photo stock: "It has become of importance to the public | liberties that the meeting should take place | In Belfast on the eighth of February, and I | Intend to hold it there in lawful exercise | of the elementary rights of citizenship. | Yours faithfully | WINSTON S. CHURCHILL".

The Album measures 4.75 x 3.5 inches (12.07 x 8.89 cm), bound in dark red leather gilt-stamped "Album" on the front cover, with decorative endpapers and gilt page edges. Condition is very good, the leather showing only light wear to extremities. There is little else within apart from the Churchill quote, picture and signature. Pencil notation on the front free endpaper verso and similar notation on the upper left of the verso of the signed page may be a collector's personal cataloguing. The only other album signature is inked in blue on the page following Churchill’s, plausibly that of Irish actor Tom Patrick Dillon (1895-1962). That signed page was previously excised and laid back in. The balance of the album remains blank.

In supporting Home Rule, Winston broke with the political heritage of his father, Lord Randolph, who had vigorously supported the Ulster Unionists. In the fall of 1911, Home Rule moved to the fore in political debate. Churchill prepared to speak in favor of Home Rule in the Ulster Hall in Belfast – the same hall where his father famously opposed Home Rule in 1886, declaring "Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right." This was an anticipated, significant, and controversial event. Tensions were so high that the meeting was "transferred from the Ulster Hall which lay in the strongly Protestant area to a large marquee at the Celtic Road football ground in the Catholic working-class district."

"Extraordinary precautions had to be taken to protect Churchill and his wife who had insisted on accompanying him. The Manchester Guardian reported that the railway line from Larne, where the Churchills landed in Ireland, to Belfast was patrolled by police to prevent sabotage." The request to autograph this album must have been a pleasant distraction for the Churchills. "A hostile crowd of nearly 10,000 greeted them outside the Grand Central Hotel in Belfast, where they were staying." Of the drive from the hotel to Celtic Road, The Times reported "As each car made its way through, men thrust their heads in and uttered fearful menaces and imprecations." The Manchester Guardian reported that "the back wheels of the Churchills' car were lifted eighteen inches off the ground by the angry crowd before the police beat them off." (Gilbert, Vol. II, pp. 466-7)

Churchill addressed a crowd of 5,000 Irish Nationalists, saying: "We look forward to a time... when this island… shall be transformed into a new centre of union… when the accursed machinery by which hatred is manufactured and preserved will be broken for ever." Remembering his experience in South Africa and in marked contrast to his father's inflammatory rhetoric, Churchill said "We have made friends with our enemies - can we not make friends with our comrades too?" The Home Rule crisis was sidelined by the outbreak of World War I, but Churchill would ultimately introduce the Irish Free State Bill, which won passage in 1922.