With the failure of Asquith and Bonar Law to reach a compromise on the delayed bill, Law accepted that a compromise was unlikely, and from January 1914 onwards returned to the position that the Unionists were "opposed utterly to Home Rule".
[1] The campaign was sufficient to bring the noted organiser Lord Milner back into politics to support the Unionists, and he immediately asked L. S. Amery to write a British Covenant saying that the signers would, if the Home Rule Bill passed, "feel justified in taking or supporting any action that may be effective to prevent it being put into operation, and more particularly to prevent the armed forces of the Crown being used to deprive the people of Ulster of their rights as citizens of the United Kingdom".
[2]The Covenant was announced at a massive rally in Hyde Park on 4 April 1914, with hundreds of thousands assembling to hear Milner, Long and Carson speak.
By the middle of the summer, two million signatures were obtained,[2] together with £12,000 and a pledge to house 5-6,000 women and children.
During the Curragh Incident, Engineer Lieutenant Ranken of HMS Firedrake, as a signatory of the British Covenant, declined to be a party to propelling the ship.