The Opposition are not prepared to agree to this motion and they consider that they are fully justified in resisting it and resisting this Bill in every legitimate way they can. We do not look upon this from a Party point of view. This is a very serious question and we have very serious responsibilities with regard to it. We should certainly not be tempted, even for a moment, to create a state of things in this country dangerous to public order and in contradiction to the principles of liberty and democracy simply because we might derive Party advantage therefrom or because we might have a better chance of winning the next General Election. Now I wish I could get Ministers to believe in the sincerity of that statement.
When the President made a speech here on the 1st March I began to think that the prospects of reasonable accommodation between the Government and the Opposition on this matter were not so remote as they might seem. Unfortunately, he made another speech the next day in a different tone and there has been no attempt since the 1st March to carry any further the proposal for accommodation and co-operative action that he sketched in that speech. Now, I think it is desirable that we should realise, if the statements made solemnly on both sides are to be taken at their face value and are to be taken as sincere, that we ought not really to be flying at each other's throats in a desperate struggle over this measure. The President said the other day that he hated everything that tasted of coercion from the bottom of his heart. In spite of that he goes ahead with a Bill which, I think, to any unprejudiced person does very decidedly taste of coercion. The Government are going ahead with this closure motion which also tastes of coercion. In other words, they have adopted the policy which they so often complain of in another connection: the policy of the big stick. Is it really wise, is it desirable in the interests of this country, to settle this question by the use of the big stick? The President said that he believed in patience. He also used these words—I quote from column 2492 of the Official Debates—
"Now I believe in liberty. I believe in liberty for the individual. I believe in democratic liberty. I believe that as human beings we are not to be dedicated to some idol of the State, but that the State——"
and then he used the words "in the main" which do not appear in the Official Report—
"should be organised for the benefit of the individual."
Now I accept the principles there outlined by the President. I think everyone who is a true democrat, or a true lover of liberty, must accept those principles. I also accept the view that we do not want militarism in politics: we do not want even the appearance or the colour of militarism in politics. We do not want a state of things prevailing here similar to what prevailed for a great many years in several of the South American Republics where the normal method of changing a Government was a military or a quasi-military revolution. We want to teach the people of this country what democracy really is, and that is something that I am afraid a very large proportion of them do not yet understand. We want to teach them that they should think out the nation's problems for themselves and that politics are not something that should be regimented; that people should not take their opinions readymade from organisations, particularly if those organisations have something in the nature of a military flavour.
We are all agreed—any thinking person, any true democrat, any true lover of liberty must be agreed—about all these things and I would ask the supporters of the Government not to suppose that we, on this side, are so lacking in conscience, so lacking in love of country, that we are prepared to imperil these principles for the sake of Party advantage. Of course, we realise that this Blue Shirt movement has brought us great Party advantage and is likely to bring us more. We realise that it has a glamour for the young people apart from its merits, its very great merits. We realise also that what the Government have hitherto done and what they are now doing, in the way of using coercion against that organisation, is playing into our hands from a Party point of view, that their attempts under the Public Safety Act have brought us enormous advantage from a Party point of view and that this Bill, if and when it is passed into law, and the resentment created by it, will do great good to us and a great deal of harm to them. Therefore, from a purely Party point of view, I do not think we have anything to gain by adopting a reasonable and conciliatory attitude and yet I wish to adopt a conciliatory attitude because our duty is not to the Party but to the country. I would a thousand times sooner see the present Government stay in office indefinitely than have them turned out of office as the result of such methods as injure the cause of true democracy and true liberty.
I put it to the Government that we have a great deal more reason for being suspicious of their bona fides in this matter than they have of being suspicious of ours. When the first attempts were being made to stifle our Youth movement several months ago, immediately before the Party merger —or it may have been immediately after the Party merger—I myself had an interview with the Minister for Justice and the Attorney-General and, while I do not think it proper to publish afterwards what is said at such interviews by anyone except oneself, I think I am entitled to repeat what I said to them. I said that, assuming they were genuine in the fears they expressed of the revolutionary activities of the National Guard, assuming that they really believed that this engaging of extra police and all the rest of it, had been necessary to protect this Assembly against a Guy Fawkes plot in the cellars of this House, and that they were able to produce to me at any time evidence of such revolutionary activities going on in our Youth movement, that I would exert myself to the utmost to see that such activities were stopped and that failing that, if those activities existed and were not stopped, I was prepared to go out into the open and denounce them. No proof of such activities was ever produced.
Shortly afterwards, when I was abroad, a colleague of mine was approached by the Government in connection with that undertaking and was informed of a minor matter that the Government complained of in the activities of the Young Ireland Association and the thing they complained of was promptly stopped. Apart from that they have not been able to reveal to us anything of an objectionable nature in the activities of our Youth movement. Later on, when the Young Ireland Association itself was banned, I had an interview with the President and I made certain suggestions to the President, as a personal matter between the two of us, which in my opinion would have removed every semblance of militarism from our Youth movement and I asked him whether, if I could get these suggestions accepted, he would withdraw the ban on the movement. I regret to say I was unsuccessful in securing his agreement.
Now the Government proceeded as long as they could against our Youth movement on the basis that it was actually revolutionary and they brought certain proceedings suggesting that the head of the movement was advocating the murder of the President. It was only when they had made themselves thoroughly ridiculous in attempting to prove that our Youth movement was a revolutionary movement, that they turned to this method and that they based their case against it, not on its alleged criminal character, but simply on the fact that it introduced an undesirable element of militarism and provocation into politics, similar to what had been introduced in various Continental countries. The impression that is necessarily made on an impartial mind by the line the Government has taken is that their real interest has been to crush our Youth movement as such, that they were anxious, first of all, to see it taking a criminal direction and that, having been disappointed in that, they are now trying another method; that they found in fact that under the application of the Public Safety Act, much to their dismay, they were compelled to imprison for the most part supporters of their own and not supporters of the Opposition, and that here is a Bill which they hope will release them from that painful situation.
How deep does this objection of the Government to militarism in politics go? I would like to think that it did go deep but, to my mind, the suggestion that it is the Blue Shirts who have introduced a note of militarism into Irish politics is too ridiculous to be entertained for a moment. Certainly throughout the two years and a bit of my own participation of an active character in Irish politics, militarism has been rampant, and a dangerous form of militarism, not the mild and glamorous form of militarism, if you like to call it so, that is exhibited by the Blue Shirts who come out into the open to defend freedom of speech, who are attacking nobody's property, nobody's personal liberty, but a very much more sinister and more dangerous form of militarism, a form that has lurked in the background and has incited people to commit outrages upon their fellow-citizens in the darkness of the night and with masks upon their faces, and has glorified all that under the name of patriotism.
And the worst of it is that the Government have encouraged that form of militarism, that dangerous form of militarism. Throughout their career as a Government they have encouraged it by the sort of language that they used about the Opposition and the tone that they took about the Opposition performing the duties that any Opposition worthy of the name must perform, that any Opposition with a sense of its duty to its country must perform. They encouraged it by allowing parades in military formation. Did any of us ever hear a whisper of objection from the Government Benches to parades in military formation until the appearance on the scene of the Blue Shirts? Why, even now it is considered nothing at all out of the way for the Minister for Justice to attend a funeral and have volleys fired over the grave, not by the forces of the State, but by some private citizens. In what other country is it considered right and natural and normal for volleys to be fired over anybody's grave except by the authorised forces of the country?
The Labour Party are now full of zeal on this question of eliminating militarism from politics, but when did their interest in the question begin? Is their record any better than the Government's? I have not heard from any Labour speaker, except Senator O'Farrell, a denunciation of the sort of thing to which I am referring. I have not heard any objection raised by Labour representatives to the existence of the I.R.A. or the activities of the I.R.A. I wonder if the Government, who are talking so much about the dangers of militarism, have any idea of preventing military parades in the future on the occasion of various anniversaries by their own friends. I think we ought to object to displays of militarism by those who have dangerous ideas about the authority of the State much more than to displays of militarism, if they are displays of militarism, by people who accept the authority of the State and who uphold outspokenly the very principles of democracy that are challenged by the other people of whom I have been speaking.
If the Government want us to co-operate with them in making the position of democracy impregnable in this country, they must show us, first, that they are genuine in wishing us to have the liberty that we ought to have and, secondly, that they are genuine in objecting to militarism among their own friends as well as among those whom they dislike. There is too much military spirit in this country. The politicians on both sides, to take a minor example of it, have got too much into the habit of using military metaphors, and there is far too much talk all the time of marching on to victory, far too much use of clichés that really have no sense in them at all but that serve to put the youth of the country in a wrong frame of mind about politics. There is far too little recognition of the fact that there is nothing left for us to fight for, that there is no possible object in stirring up a bellicose spirit.
What the country does need is a spirit of conciliation. With the way things are going here, one cannot be altogether surprised that you find the feeling in the North hardening more and more against reunion. I think, in dealing with all these subjects, we should keep an eye on the North of Ireland; we should never forget the existence of the North of Ireland and it should colour our policy in all its details. I confess that it distresses me each time I read such a pronouncement as was made yesterday by Lord Craigavon, that a united Ireland was something which was never, never going to exist. Not that I think pronouncements of that sort have any great effect. You cannot keep back the tide by ordering it to stay back and I am convinced that in the long run the unity of Ireland is something which no person, however evilly disposed, can prevent. But we can postpone it and we postpone it, among other ways, whenever we encourage in the South any spirit of militarism and when we stir up the feeling that there is some sort of independence that we have not got and that we still have to fight for. I do not want to go outside the proper limits of the debate on this motion, but I think it is desirable to insist on this, that politicians on both sides who dislike militarism should never miss an opportunity of making the people understand that we are independent and that if we want a Republic to-morrow there is nothing in the wide world to stop us from deelaring one.
The Fianna Fáil Party explain the difference of their attitude as between the I.R.A. and the Blue Shirts by saying that the I.R.A. is something which has its roots in the past. Does it make it any the less dangerous that it has roots in the past? I would think it actually makes it more dangerous. Is the 12th July a praiseworthy institution simply because it has been celebrated for a great many years? I do not think it is. I think that because it revives bitter memories that go back into the 17th century it ought not to exist. Take what view you like about the results of the Sinn Fein movement, one thing at any rate is certain about it, that even during the golden age, as the President appears to regard it, of 1919-1921, it produced phenomena in this country that nobody could possibly wish to see except during a period of revolution. An organisation and methods which keep alive revolutionary ideas and which lead people to think that the same paths to glory exist to-day for the young Irishman as existed during the period of revolution, are greatly to be deplored. It seems to me that the fact that the I.R.A. has its roots in the past is all the more reason for coming out openly and saying that it ought not to exist to-day. I am still waiting for anyone on the Government Benches or anyone on the Labour Benches to say those simple words: "The I.R.A. ought not to exist."
The Government are proceeding with this Bill, but if in the course of the discussion on it, or before it reaches the Seanad they get a change of heart, and really wish to have the Opposition co-operating with them in rooting out every form of militarism in this country, I do not believe that co-operation would be found impossible. We believe in liberty and democracy. We believe in them 100 per cent. We believe that the Blue Shirts have saved them, and it is because the Blue Shirt movement was necessary to save them that we have encouraged it. The Government have apparently thought we ought to be perfectly satisfied if lorry loads of troops and multitudes of Civic Guards are sent around to protect our meetings, and if our meetings are held in an atmosphere which suggests that we are traitors to be defended from an indignant public by the forces of the State. We are not satisfied with that —not for a moment. We do not believe that more than an infinitesimal fraction of public opinion looks upon us in that light. We believe that we have the bulk of decent opinion in this country with us. We believe that we are entitled to show our strength. We believe that if there were no troops or police in this country we have enough opinion behind us to hold our meetings without disturbance, and we believe that we owe it to our Youth movement that an atmosphere fatal to democracy has not been established in our regard. For these reasons, we have no hesitation in opposing this Bill and opposing this motion.
