[5] In the south, Crawford found allies in the Reverend James Owen Hannay (better known as the novelist George A. Birmingham) and his personal network of Irish Irelanders.

[6] These included Gaelic League President Douglas Hyde and the principal ideologue of the emergent Sinn Féin movement, United Irishman editor Arthur Griffith.

[2] He suggested that the Gaelic League needed an injection of "Ulsteria", an "industrial awakening on true economic lines: it is wrong when people crave bread to offer them 'language and culture'".

The Irish Protestant, January 1904, suggested that "Rome Rule" was being abetted by "official [Party and Government] Unionism" that, in the fond hope of Catholic support, had "effaced Protestantism from its programme".

In remarks to a meeting in Belfast in December 1904, Crawford had concluded:[13]the woes of Ireland were mainly attributable to British mis-government--to the fact that Ireland had been governed, not on national but on sectarian lines; that the act of union had made, not for the uplifting and strengthening of the national and secular forces of the country, but for the conciliation and increased power and wealth of an intolerant irreconcilable ecclesiasticism that knows no country and recognises no superior civil authority.Although, he was not advocating home rule.

[16] Crawford's call for "the national control of state-paid" education was (in the spirit of Thomas Davis) "sympathetically regarded by a prominent section of Gaelic revival activists" as well as by the IRB veteran Michael Davitt.

On one hand is the Orangeman, warm-hearted and generous despite his fanaticism, and who, in the sacred name of Protestantism, opposes the principles of good government imperishably associated with the Reformation and with the revolution of 1688.

It called Davitt "the great apostle of democracy", citing his defence of Jews in the face of the Limerick boycott, his alliance with the Labour Party and his support of a system of state education.

Against unionist criticism of the Land League, he describes Davitt and his Fenian allies as "waging a war" that was "legally ... indefensible", but morally not only "justifiable but a sacred duty".

[16] In the February 1906 general election, Crawford and the rural lodges of the Independent Orange Order among whom he eclipsed Sloan as the dominant figure, supported the successful agrarian-reform candidates T. W. Russell in South Tyrone and R. G. Glendinning in North Antrim.

Crawford had actively supported the syndicalist James Larkin in the April to August Belfast dock strike and lockout, taking part in his public meetings.

[19] Inviting readers to look to the Protestant past for inspiration, Crawford had also authored a series of articles (January–February 1907) on Thomas Davis, founder of the Young Ireland political and cultural movement.

[21] Ultimately it was on the grounds of his perceived nationalism that in May 1908 Crawford was dismissed: the owners of the Ulster Guardian "would not allow the paper to be used directly or indirectly in support of devolution or Home Rule".

In south Dublin he was "loudly cheered" when, speaking for the Home Rule candidate he claimed that a younger generation of Protestants was breaking away from "the evils of class and religious ascendancy" and that "national unity was more apparent than ever".

[23] In 1918 Crawford became the founding editor of the Statesman, in which he ran articles that mirrored his commitments to the Protestant Friends of Irish Freedom in New York and to the Self-Determination for Ireland League of Canada and Newfoundland (SDIL).

[1][24] Introduced as "a stout-hearted son of Ulster", in April 1920 Crawford appeared on a Clan-na-Gael platform in New York City with Éamon de Valera in commemoration of the 1916 Rising.

In Fredericton, New Brunswick, the audience drowned his words with "God Save the King"; in Moncton Crawford was attacked upon leaving the venue, and, according to the Orange Order's press organ, the Sentinel, forced to kiss the Union Jack;" in Newfoundland Catholic Archbishop, Edward Roche, cautioned the SDIL against sparking a sectarian war; and in Vancouver B. C., on the Canadian west coast, Crawford's public appearance was banned after his first riotous reception.