The tiger had swallowed the lady. The joke gave evidence of muddle-headedness in order to get over the undignified position he was in, in having to retreat from a policy held so steadfastly up to a couple of years ago. The men of moral courage and brains in his Party were expelled from it because they would not support him. I can sympathise with the Deputy, but I cannot sympathise with his effort to hide his disgraceful retreat, in the way he launched out into a violent attack on a distinguished servant of the State, a person who is not a member of this House. I think it was rather unworthy, and I think in that particular line of action Deputy Norton has not even the support of a section of Irish labour. I have too much respect for all sections of Irish labour, representative as they are of Irish athletics, and clean-minded Irish opinion, not to feel that they deplore the fact that Deputy Norton took that line as his mouthpiece this evening.
This country for the past eighteen months has been subjected to a great number of knocks, and to a great number of shocks, in order that Ministers may pose before the country and the world as strong men, strong men anxious to assert the right of government. When the strong men are up against it we have a number of little rabbits sitting silent in their seats, or running here and there, in and out of the Chamber. For three long hours no one was put up to give a Government defence or to attempt to give a Government defence to this House for invoking the powers of an Act which was carried in a very different state of affairs some years ago. From the hysterical shrieks of passion of Fianna Fáil, and those who to-day ornament its front benches, not one word was heard in defence. After three long hours the Minister for Justice was put up. I have too much respect for the Minister for Justice, both as a parliamentarian and as a lawyer, to suggest that he should be judged by his form this evening. He stood up and made statements about an organisation which had ceased to be, in order to justify the application of this particular Act to other organisations, and to other individuals. Speaking as Minister for Justice, in his first breath, he announced to this House and to the world, his absolute ignorance of the subject he was pretending to deal with. He has all the facts relating to the A.C.A. and the National Guard in his custody—every file, every document—but his very first statement showed that he had not looked at the first files relating to that particular organisation. He started his case by making a declaration which is substantially different from facts. He referred to the date on which the A.C.A. was founded as February of last year, being just a couple of years out in his reckoning. He is the one man who has relevant documents that his agents have not seen. I merely point out that particular exhibition of ignorance in order to show the reckless spirit in which this Act was brought into being, and in order to point out the lack of knowledge, or lack of correct knowledge, which that particular Minister was suffering from when the country was asked to suffer under this Act.
The Minister went on to make the case as the Government spokesman, and as Minister for Justice, why the operation of an Act that everyone on the opposite benches had cried out against with all their energy three years ago, should be brought into operation at present. Did he produce one scrap of evidence, or one quotation from the beginning to the end of his speech? I leave that to any impartial people inside or outside this House. He brought a report before this House from General O'Duffy as Commissioner of the police. He misread and misquoted that particular report. He took a section of the report and even misquoted that. He alleged that that report contained a certain statement. After saying that, when challenged to read the report, which never contained any such statement, he sprang from that into an airy ventilation of his own views, observations and opinions. But no case was made, nor did he attempt to make a case, for the application of the Public Safety Act to present circumstances. I feel I am at one with the Government in my opinion that in advocating acceptance of this motion before any impartial tribunal, I should be in the position of a man pushing an open door. I maintain that I am at one with the Government in that opinion and that that is evidenced by the fact that, with great theatrical management, with alleged conspiracies, with fires in Government Buildings, with the withdrawal of arms permits from everybody who obeyed the law and applied for a permit to keep a gun and with wild, hysterical speeches by the President of the Executive Council, the stage was set for the bringing into operation of this particular Act. Yet, they have not attempted to bring one member of the organisation the Act was supposed to deal with before any impartial tribunal since.
There was supposed to be a conspiracy and a plot to upset the Constitution of this State or to challenge in arms the armed forces of this State. We had a plot manufactured in this country many years ago to be used against the Irish people—a thin, hollow plot. It was naturally distasteful to the Irish people and the people reacted and recoiled with such sheer disgust that the Administration responsible for the hatching of the plot lasted a very short time in this country. But that Administration was foreign, and the minds that hatched that plot to libel decent Irish people were foreign. Here, we have them imitated by Irish people sitting on the Government Benches of an Irish Parliament. If you wanted to get after particular men, to hound your enemies or political opponents out of public life after hounding them out of their means of existence in this country, you could have done it according to some Irish precedent or you could have done it according to some decent precedent. The way you went about it and the manner in which you did it was typical of your whole administration so far. The ordinary people—even those unaffected by your plots, your alleged conspiracies, your little fires at Fianna Fáil banquets—are beginning to see through the humbug and vindictiveness of the whole thing. Having brought that Act into being, having prepared the public mind by framing a whole series of plots, threats and menaces to the State, having hung round the shoulders of men, whose only crime was fearless defence of the State, portions of your own discarded mantle in order to try to put your political opponents in the same position as that occupied by your Party some years ago, you have libelled some of the finest and greatest Irishmen that ever lived. The ordinary man and woman up and down the country are aware of that and nobody is better aware of it than the electorate on which the Labour Party will rely one of these days for votes.
This Act, brought into being to meet an alleged conspiracy against the State—a formidable organisation of armed men plotting to overthrow the Government—was, in its application, used against seven or eight brokendown little farmers, who were lodged in jail for three weeks without a charge. This Act was introduced in a way which showed the characteristic cowardice that has been the outstanding feature of all the acts of this Government. A date was chosen on which the Dáil would not be sitting. A time was chosen when the Deputies of the Irish Parliament could have no voice or say as to the circumstances existing or the justice or injustice of applying such an Act in present circumstances. Now, weeks after this particular device for bludgeoning political opponents was selected by the Government, we have a front bench populated by mutes, robot-men waiting for the button to be pressed by the great magician. There is not one of them to stand up and attempt to justify the operation of such an Act. But, relying on a clear mind and a glib tongue, a trained lawyer is put up to make the best possible case without any material. Even that trained man, that expert in such a type of debate, made no case that would impress any impartial person inside or outside this House. We have the statement made that a man was caught with a gun here and that a man was found armed there—two, three or four men out of an organisation of some 30,000, and that in a country which lately had a civil war, with practically every man in the population armed. I venture to say that if you take 1,000 clergymen or 1,000 St. Vincent de Paul workers or any ordinary class of the population, you will find, up and down the country, a higher percentage armed than you did inside what was known as the A.C.A. Would that be an argument for applying the Public Safety Act to the St. Vincent de Paul Society or to the clergymen of this country—because one of them here and one of them there had been found to have a gun? It is to be remembered that, from the top, there were the strictest orders that could be written to members of this organisation against the carrying of arms without a Government permit. I venture to say that if you look up your records and disclose the contents of the files with the same amount of elation and irresponsibility that you do when these can be used against a political opponent, you will find that a bigger percentage of the permit-holders for arms were members of the A.C.A. than of the rest of the population. These orders are in your custody now, because every document has been taken over. I can quote from the documents in your custody the very strictest orders, issued right from the beginning, to those who had arms without permits, that they should either apply for permits for these arms or surrender the arms. Deputies on the Government Benches know that those orders were obeyed, that they applied for permits. I know that the holding of arms without permits by members of that organisation was true of a lesser percentage than would be the case if you applied the same standard test to the general public. Two years ago, we had the then Deputy de Valera and all the Deputies who now ornament the Government Front Bench in full cry against the viciousness of a Government that attempted to apply such an Act against organisations throughout this country that had openly gloried and boasted of their murders, referring to them as executions; against organisations that had for years attempted by murder and intimidation to tamper with the courts of this country; and an organisation whose sinful and criminal activities were so broadly and generally known that they were brought under a ban in a joint pastoral of the Catholic Bishops of this country. Hot upon the murder of a plain servant boy in Tipperary, who was hauled out of his bed and his mutilated remains found at a cross-roads next morning, identified only by the trousers he wore; hot upon the murder of a police officer returning to his young wife, whose orphan children were born three weeks after his brutal murder; in an atmosphere such as that, and following a ban which was the result of consideration by the Irish Bishops, when the Government of this State attempted to apply an Act of this kind to these organisations, every man who sits on that Front Bench nowadays was in full cry against the undemocratic, brutal methods of Government as applied to the people.
The Labour Party were so horrified and appalled at the application of an Act such as this to a country such as ours, even in conditions such as those, that they expelled two members of their Party, one a Deputy who represented the constituency in which these two murders had taken place. They expelled them from membership of the Labour Party. Yet here to-day we have that Labour Party, and we have that Fianna Fáil Party applying that same Act to an organisation, whose only offence in the eyes of the Government is that the men at the top were big and brave enough for the first time in this country to go out and recruit young men, to go through the highways and byeways preaching respect for the law, and preaching to all they met that, irrespective of who was head of the Government, or of the Party that was the Government of this country, the State was bigger than Governments, that the State was greater than parties, and that it was the duty of the decent youth of Ireland to stand for support of the State, no matter what set of politicians was governing. Their aims and their objects were published throughout the land. There was nothing secret about that organisation. The Press and the police were invited to every meeting held. When hordes of journalists and trained detectives walked into the headquarters to put their questions—ten questions at a time—was there ever any of the ambiguity that characterises that Front Bench over there latterly? Was there any question ever asked that was not answered by a plain, blunt yes or no? All these statements, interviews, speeches, correspondence, all orders issued down to the country, and all correspondence and queries up from the country are in the custody of the Government at the present moment and in the custody of the Minister who spoke here an hour ago. Was there anything in all these documents, in those 18 months, of which any Irishman should be ashamed, or for which he should hang his head? If the same searching examination, if the same magnifying glass were applied to the utterances of the men who sit over there now, if the same thorough investigation of their records, their letters, and their speeches, were made it might not be in the interests of this House, or the position of respect which this House should hold in the eyes of the Irish people, to have one-tenth of them produced or read.
Now when a ban has been put on that organisation of the youth of the country, put on by a Government misusing their powers and applying an Act, the qualifying conditions of which applied in no way to that organisation, and when by their propaganda and by their provocative acts up and down the country they have failed in one attempt after the other to provoke the men of that organisation into a breach of the law, they finally attempted one desperate expedient. Those men were organising to honour the memory of dead patriots who had been leaders of theirs. The organisation for that ceremony was going on for six months, published in the public Press, posters up at every railway station, advertisements on dead walls up and down the country. For six months the detailed organisation for that particular ceremony was going on and for six long months no action was taken by the Government, no hint that it should be called off. But, in order to demoralise those men, or, alternatively, seeing that young blood is hot blood, to provoke them into an open and violent breach of the peace, nine or 11 hours before that solemn ceremony was to take place, when men would have already left their homes, when all arrangements had been made, on the very eve of the ceremony, we got a Government proclamation, a Government ban.
I should like the Government to take notice of how that was accepted. Leadership of young men is difficult. Young men are hot, young men are fiery, young men do not understand bending even before pressure, young men do not like to be asked to turn from their path even because of authority. But what was the reaction of the man who is head of that organisation, a man who was hounded out of the highest position in the police force of this country, a man who has been hounded ever since by Ministers, particularly by the President in his new role? He put his whole future, his name, his prestige, into the melting pot in order to stay within the law. He called off that parade. We are living in a country that often had big men, but the biggest act, the bravest act of one of the biggest men was that O'Duffy called off that parade. He played the game that Ministers thought he was not big enough to play, and the men behind supported him because the men behind him knew that there was no necessity for them to give any public demonstration of physical courage, because they felt that the men who had fought and bled for democracy in Kilmallock and other places up and down the country had given sufficient evidence of their physical courage. Through that movement and through that ban the organisation grew in strength. That organisation had been definitely non-party. In facts real or distorted quoted by the Minister for Justice in referring to the A.C.A., we heard to-day of information that he was getting with regard to the A.C.A., but there was no ban; there was no invocation of the Public Safety Act. The A.C.A. was a non-party body; it was not a political menace; but the A.C.A. changed its constitution to the extent that it would become a political party. Then a political menace grew up, and then we had the Public Safety Act invoked.