It was in furtherance of the scheme for creating this false impression across the Channel that Lord Pirrie and his so-called "Ulster Liberal Association" invited Mr.Winston Churchill and the two Nationalist leaders to speak in the Ulster Hall on the 8th of February, 1912, and that the announcement of the fixture was made in the Press some three weeks earlier.
The Unionist leaders were not long left in ignorance of the public excitement which this news created in the city.

A specially summoned meeting of the Standing Committee, with Londonderry in the chair, was held on the 16th of January to consider what action, if any, should be taken; but it was no simple matter they had to decide, especially in the absence of their leader, Sir Edward Carson, who was kept in England by great Unionist meetings which he was addressing in Lancashire.
The reasons, on the one hand, for doing nothing were obvious enough.

No one, of course, suggested the possibility of preventing Mr.Churchill coming to Belfast; but could even the Ulster Hall itself, the Loyalist sanctuary, be preserved from the threatened desecration?
It was the property of the Corporation, and the Unionist political organisation had no exclusive title to its use.

The meeting could only be frustrated by force in some form, or by a combination of force and stratagem.

The Standing Committee, all men of solid sense and judgment, several of whom were Privy Councillors, were very fully alive to the objections to any resort to force in such a matter.