I move:
That the Dáil do now adjourn.
Adjournment Debate:Northern Ireland Situation.
Following from last night, perhaps I might go back a little in time and try in the short time available here to indicate to the House my view of the whole sorry situation in the Six Counties today. Fifty years ago the beginning of this situation was brought about by a contrived boundary and Border, and a contrived majority within that boundary and Border which could only be maintained and sustained by the manner in which the Unionist junta or, more properly, the Orange Order have, by discrimination, maintained their contrived majority over the years. This, of course, brought in its trail all that has caused the final blow-up that is now so much a cause of concern to all in this country and, indeed, outside it.
Let me say straight away that I do not blame the Unionist Government over the years nor the Orange Order, who pull the strings behind the Government, for their discrimination, much though I might condemn it. The drawing of a line in order that there could be contained within the area that is now the Six Counties the greatest possible geographical area consistent with the contrived Unionist majority is the root cause of the trouble and the reason why Unionists, Orangemen or otherwise, have had to discriminate in housing, jobs and a thousand other little ways to ensure, for as long as possible, that they would maintain the majority that gives them government, power and influence. All this would be totally useless to them were it not for the guarantees—and the repeated guarantees—of the British Government since the setting up of the Six Counties and all over the years since then, not only of the military assistance that they are now enjoying while other people are suffering because of it, but more particularly the guarantees of the financial assistance that enables such a government to enjoy privileges and to dispense their various gifts to those who are nearest to them. This does not mean that all those who support the Unionist regime have got even a fair share in the dispensation of these gifts from that government either today or all down the years. There are Unionists and Protestants in the Six Counties who are as badly treated as the Catholics and Nationalists whom we hear much more about, but apparently they are too blind to see this.
This is, and has been, the position. This, in my estimation, is the root cause of the whole situation. As I say, I do not attach blame to those who have perpetrated these deeds of discrimination because the very setting-up of this puppet state 50 years ago, and the manner of its setting-up, could only bring in its train an effort by those in control to maintain that control at any cost. While Britain persists, as she is now persisting, in supporting that regime by money and by arms we will have an effort to continue that Government by those in control of the power and the influence and to retain the power and influence that it gives. So long as that situation continues, we will have the efforts of the minority, the oppressed, the discriminated-against minority, to break out of this position and to get for themselves the freedom which the Twenty-six Counties got the hard way 50 years ago. In talking of getting this freedom the hard way, is there not evidence for all of us to see that no freedom has been won by any people in any part of the globe without violence? There were many parts where Britain predominated, suppressed and colonised. In all the lands in which this was attempted Britain's voke was only broken the hard way by violence meeting violence. It is true to say, in my estimation, that we are now nearing the end of the Six Counties and, perhaps, nearing the ultimate unity of our territory and ultimately the true unity of our people because of the hard way being taken by the minority there. They have suffered beyond the bounds and the limits of human endurance over the past 50 years and are now asserting themselves and will not be denied.
It would not be proper to make it appear that nothing has happened in the interval and in the interim over those 50 years by way of effort by the minority to break their way through to freedom. Various efforts have been made to try to break from under the British yoke and tyranny in the Six Counties over the past 50 years. On each occasion it has been a rather puny effort in relation to what we have seen in these past three years, puny, perhaps, because of the fact that our people were so well suppressed, so well beaten down, so demoralised, so lacking in leadership, perhaps, that they did not have the courage to go ahead and go through with it. Neither did they believe that, with their minority numbers and their lack of weapons, they could combat and defeat the greater forces of the Crown. Perhaps all of these things brought to an end various efforts and various outbreaks during those 50 years.
With more education and better educational opportunities, perhaps, and particularly with better communications developing over these years, we have seen emerging in the Sixties, and particularly in the mid-Sixties, a realisation not only by the minority— indeed one might say not by the minority—but also by members of the in business and commerce, a realisation if not yet an outspoken declaration—and the majority, the Unionists themselves, were beginning to realise it and, indeed, were beginning to talk of it not only amongst themselves but with their Catholic collegues in business—that there was no future, as they saw it, for the 6-county regime, and that unity must come.
This I believe and have had knowledge of as early as 1965-66 and into 1967. This may have sparked off the ultimate efforts that were made by the minority together with some of the majority to get a university in Derry. Subsequently they formed their civil rights movement and they joined together in Derry city and Derry county to try to get their just rights. This may even have shown the way to those who were to follow. Whatever may have been the causes, there is no question whatsoever but that in the late Sixties, or in the latter half of the Sixties, we found emerging this demand that is still being made in the Six Counties for ordinary rights for all the people in the Six Counties. The peaceful protests and the marches began. They began and they are still going on. They are in evidence every day with every clash that takes place between the minority, whether armed or unarmed, and the mighty armed forces of the Crown that occupy that territory today.
Protesting in an orderly fashion to seek one's just ends is, without doubt, fully justified. Let nobody cod himself into the belief that, in the circumstances that exist in the Six Counties, you can in fact march for your rights, or participate in civil disobedience and persist in that civil disobedience or in passive resistance of whatever kind, without the ultimate decision having to be faced of either bowing the knee to the violence that will be perpetrated on the demonstrators and the marchers, or defending your rights further by meeting violence with violence. To say this may again, as has happened in the past so far as I am concerned, beget misrepresentation from the media and from others but, whether it does or not, it is my firm conviction that this is the situation in the Six Counties, always has been and always will be as long as it is sustained by Britain financially and militarily. It never will be the position that orderly marches and protests will gain their ends in themselves without violence flaring up because the oppressors see these protests going to a point where they are getting worldwide publicity and they determine to put them down at any cost and with any violence that is necessary.
So we come to the early days of the Civil Rights Association. People now laud the efforts of the civil rights movement while at the same time condemning violence. The violence they condemn, by some queer confused thinking, is the violence only that they attribute to the minority of our people in the Six Counties, without any word of the violence that is being caused daily, year in and year out, by the forces of occupation and by the forces under the control of the Government in Stormont. How is it that violence seems only to demand condemnation because it comes from the minority who in turn are forced into violence in order to protect themselves from the violence of the oppressor when the minority try to assert their rights, and try to get even their civil rights by peaceful protest? How can we stand up and condemn violence in the case of the minority without trying to find out what is the root cause of that violence, and without going to the other side and seeing what violence is being perpetrated by the army today?
Surely this is confusion to the greatest possible degree and surely it ignores the real facts underlying the entire sorry situation that exists in the Six Counties today and has existed there for years past. Let us look at the beginning of the civil rights movement and remember the first big parade in Derry on 5th October. Remember the parades that followed. Above all, remember the march from Belfast to Derry and the spectacle that was shown to all of us later in its most vivid form, the battle of Burntollet. Remember those things in 1971 and wipe out once and for all the confusion that has developed and has been created over these recent months by people speaking out against violence without referring back to who is really the cause of the violence, and without referring to the fact that violence is not confined to members of the minority only, or people fighting on behalf of the minority, but that the violence really stems from and has been continued over the years by those who wear the uniform of the Crown. These are the people who are responsible for the violence.
When we hear talk today about the importing of arms, when we hear talk of arms being seized and so forth, the idea always seems to be that it is wrong to have anything to do with arms if you belong to the minority. Not a word is mentioned about the import of arms, and about the munition ships that frequently come into the ports of the Six Counties to supply the oppressor so that he can continue his violence, the only end in mind being not that they can settle the gunmen, and not that they can get rid of the violent men, but that they can drive them back to where they come from and ensure that the "Croppy" will again lie down and that there will be a return to "normality", as we have heard it spoken of by several recent Prime Ministers, as they are called up there in the Six Counties.
To them normality means that the minority should further and finally again accept their second-class citizen role, and accept discrimination in housing and jobs, so that their contrived minority may be continued in that manner, and so that the majority Government in the Six Counties may go on in their merry way dispensing their influence, and dispensing their gifts, and being helped towards the payment for those gifts by a British Government. Whatever was their justification 50 years ago, militarily speaking, in trying to hold on to the Six Counties to guard the north-west approaches to their own island, they have no justification whatsoever in their own right today. Indeed, in the eyes of the world they stand condemned and would be well relieved at this time to be rid of them now that they have shed or have had taken from them all their foreign possessions one by one, all of them violently and all of them, one might say, given up hastily in the finish after being retained too long.
Britain stands condemned in the eyes of the world today and will continue to be condemned, to her own international loss, unless she sees the light. To see that light it is necessary for us here to combat the story of "not an inch" of Mr. Faulkner and his ilk in the Six Counties, to combat it by every means at our disposal to help Britain and the British people to see that there is a second side, a side with right on it, apart from Mr. Faulkner's "not an inch" and his talk about 1,000,000 Protestants in the Six Counties who will be thrown to the wolves if unity should come about.
Why are we not more vocal in our highest places here in bringing it home to Britain and her people that the 1,000,000 people—or the 1,000,000 reasons as some of the British politicians describe them—who are said to be the reason why we cannot have unity overnight or maybe at all, have no more to fear and indeed less to fear in regard to any possibility of discrimination in the future in a united Ireland than any other member of our community down here at the moment? Surely this is the greatest lie in history and surely it is one about which we are doing least to convince the British of its falsity. Surely we must realise that we are not facing our responsibilities if we do not push this story to combat Mr. Faulkner. Are we to allow their story from the Unionist point of view only to get through to Britain, to Mr. Heath, to his Government and, above all, to the British people who do not understand, who do not know, and above all, do not want to know what is going on in the Six Counties now and has been for the past 50 years, done in their name and with their money?
I want to get this across—to give Mr. Heath an opportunity of making some sort of judgment, of realising that it is his Government who are fully responsible for the continuance of Partition and all the violence that has erupted and will continue to erupt in the days that lie ahead. Surely we can do more than condemn violence; we can do more than preach peaceful means; we can do more than make it appear that those who do not fully subscribe to peaceful means bringing a solution are preaching violence.
We want to make it clear to Britain that the next move must be hers. It is not right or helpful to say that this matter can be settled between Irishmen. It can, but there is the necessity for Britain to take her paws out of the nest, to take herself out of the Six Counties before there can be any rational or reasonable discussion with the people who are in control in the Six Counties today. You cannot expect, and you will not get, any reasonable or rational approach or even useful discussion with Mr. Faulkner or his successor, if there is one, until Britain has taken away the guarantee that she repeatedly gives that she is going to maintain the Six Counties regime until the majority in the Six Counties are satisfied to come in with us.
What about the minority in the Six Counties? What about their suffering for 50 years, suffering that was never agreed to by the Irish people as a whole? What about those who are immediately outside the borders of the Six Counties who were to be brought in to what is now the Six Counties but who were left out because on a count of heads at the time of the Boundary Commission it was found it would be too dangerous to bring them in as their numbers would be nearly equal and it would not be possible to carry on? What about their loss? What about the damage to their way of life? What about the denial, as a result, of their civil rights over the years? Are they not to be considered? Are their numbers not to be counted with the minority immediately inside the Six Counties? If they were so counted it would be found that those affected by Partition and by the Border, even those immediately affected, would be greater than the Unionist majority in the Six Counties, and that would be ignoring the real reason why one should have an end to Partition, because even though they are the minority within, many of our people in the Border counties have suffered most as a result of Partition and without their consent and against their will. It is true to say that all of our people, the entire land, has suffered as a result of Partition, and regardless of any question as to who inside the Six Counties wants an end to Partition, we in the rest of the country have a right to bring about the end of Partition in any way we can.
It is not good enough, as I said at the outset, to start talking about a million reasons why you cannot end Partition unless that million agree. Are we to continue in the future, as we have done in the past 50 years, to look to the million and say that they do not want it, so we cannot have it? Is there no right on the side of the majority in this island of ours? Have we no right to say there must be a second half to be played, that 50 years is a long enough first half, that it is time the whistle was blown and that we should change ends? In doing so we could affirm and re-affirm that the million who would come in with us then would be treated in the same manner as every other citizen has been treated and as their co-religionists, particularly, have been treated on this side of the Border. Despite the provocations of Partition they have been treated well; they have been treated fairly, and if anything, we have leaned over backwards to try to make it so, to give them the treatment that their brethren in the Six Counties today fear they would not get if they came into a united Ireland.
These are the fears on which the whole support in the Six Counties for Partition has been built and contrived by the Orange junta at the top. By these fears, by the introduction of religion as the reason for the division they have contrived, and pretty successfully contrived, to make almost the whole million of those people believe that they would be wiped out if they were to be brought into a united Ireland. All of this is for the selfish end of maintaining power and influence and getting the soft money from Britain. The real reason for the perpetration of the injustices in the Six Counties over the years is the selfish motive of holding on to the material gains, what they can get for nothing from the British Government whether it be Labour, Liberal or Conservative, as it is today.
Moving on nearly to the present time we find 1969 becoming the focal point in this whole matter. We find evidence, particularly with the eruptions in the Bogside taking place, that the people are newly risen, newly convinced of their rights and newly encouraged in standing up to the forces that over the years have successfully repressed them whenever they made any effort to try to assert themselves. In the Bogside they demonstrated not only to the world, which was important, but to themselves that they, as a minority, even with their bare hands, were more than a match for the bully boys in the B Specials, aided and abetted by the RUC and backed up by Orange mobs, no doubt not accidentally there but contrived to be there behind the uniformed forces as they have been over these 50 years.
The knowledge emerged in the Bogside and later in the Falls that the minority of 40 per cent in the Six Counties, or, indeed, such a minority in any other land in this world, if determined enough, cannot be suppressed for all time. It is that knowledge that makes the continuance of the situation in the Six Counties inevitable until the end product is in sight, namely, that unity of our country is, in fact, if not immediately available, at least in prospect by a vital change being made by those who hold the key, the British Government, responsible for all, all of her difficulties, all of her troubles, all of her violence, all of her destruction and all of the deaths that have taken place. Britain is responsible and let nobody really have any doubt about that and Britain will continue to be responsible so long as she continues blindly to go her way, as she has done for these 50 years past and, indeed, the centuries before, supporting this puppet regime with her money, with her arms and her guarantees, all based on the spurious pronouncements that these people are British, that they are loyal to the crown. They are no more bloody loyal to it than I am and the evidence in the last war and in the previous wars is there to be seen. Who got the greatest number of awards, who got the highest awards awarded after death, who got them as a result of the battles fought during the last war by the British Army? Were they Unionists, were they Orangemen or were they Catholics and Nationalists? Go and look them up and you will find eight to one would be Catholic and Nationalist. Where were the loyalists of the Orange Order and of the Unionist Party at that time? Were they not sheltering under the "no conscription" situation that was not least brought about by our Taoiseach of those days who protested, who made one of his greatest speeches to the British at that time, that there should be no conscription in the Six Counties Who availed of it most? The people who were better off, the people who did not have to join an army, the Unionists and the Orangemen. And so when the count from the Six Counties came at the end, those who got the greatest number of awards for fighting in the British forces for Britain, to protect Britain from the holocaust of those days, from Hitler, from Nazism and all the rest were Catholic and Nationalist, Catholic from the population in the Six Counties. So much for the loyalty, so much for belonging to the British Empire, so much for being citizens of Great Britain. They are citizens when it suits them and only when it suits them and particularly when it pays them.
That is why I have said repeatedly and will continue to repeat: Take the money out of this, take the Army and its protection away. Do not even take it away, promise to take it away. Do as Deputy Cosgrave said last night and as I have said on many occasions. Get a declaration of intent from Britain that she is not going to continue to support financially and militarily the junta in the Six Counties. Give us a time limit of even a year before the beginning of the phased withdrawal of the British Army and an ultimate wiping out of the financial assistance over a ten or 20 year period. I have no doubt that the people who most vigorously oppose and talk against the unity of our country today would be the quickest to come to negotiate from Belfast with those representing a Dublin Government, to do the deal that they could best do to secure their own interests in the future united Ireland that would undoubtedly follow such a declaration by Britain.
This is what we want and by looking for that we are not, and I am not, preaching violence in the Six Counties. I regret the destruction, I regret the deaths and the losses that have taken place and I regret what I know further of such that are going to come, that are inevitable. As inevitably as night follows day there will be more such and probably worse until there is a realisation brought home to the British Government that she is the keystone in this matter, that she must move and that it is not enough to make speeches or take an odd trot across, go around in a conducted tour to see what has been happening here, what is going on, and go back and make speeches in Westminster. This is not the answer. We know it and it is time they knew it but I think that because we know it so well we are not sufficiently hammering it home to them as to convince them to counteract Mr. Faulkner's talk of "not an inch".
His "not an inch" depends on how much the inch is worth and it is worth in current money coming in £200 million. Even four years ago the figure emanating from the highest sources there, to my knowledge, was capital and current running at an input of £400 million into the Six Counties. That was as long ago as 1967 or 1968. Whether it be £400 million, £200 million or £100 million that is the price of the inch that Mr. Faulkner and his predecessors have held on to and refrained from giving and protest that they never will give that inch. Its money's worth is a very valuable inch to them and we are not counteracting that inch by making Britain realise that there will be no rational approach, no reasonable talk—as these people could and would talk from Belfast-until the value of the inch has been taken away or is in prospect of not continuing indefinitely as it now is.
In 1969 we had the breaking of this thing on us, this whole thing that was the Bogside and all that has followed from it. At that time we were all appalled by what had taken place and was taking place in the city of Derry. We had made, by our Taoiseach, perhaps, the most important speech called for from any Taoiseach since the foundation of this State and well and truly was it made to such a degree that after it had been made we would have had, I have no doubt, the greatest unity of purpose of the greatest number of people within the four shores of Ireland, the greatest belief, the greatest unity in our determination as expressed in that speech to not stand idly by. This we must recall, this we must remember, because I say again it was the best speech that any Taoiseach ever made, the most important that any Taoiseach was ever called on to make and it was made to such good purpose that it did have behind it the greatest unity and the most united people as a race in this land of ours that ever had emanated, I would safely say, at any stage in our history. For reasons that I do not understand we moved away from that particular ideal as expressed at the time and we have continuously, in my estimation, moved further from it since then. Not only have we been standing idly by since then but worse, in my estimation, than that we seem to have become convinced of the right of the majority in the Six Counties and of Great Britain to continue Partition because the violence that is apparently necessary to bring an end to it is something that we so abhor that the end would not justify the means. This is as I see it clearly and with all honesty. In this regard the arrest of John Kelly was the first thing that awoke me to the real change, as I saw it, that took place between August, 1969 and the early months of 1970. We have had other evidence that has created nothing but confusion in my mind as to what is our role, what is our outlook, what is our policy.
Not so long ago there was the threat of internment being brought in here. Some of us predicted here that it was encouragement to people in the Six Counties to introduce it there. Whether they took their cue from this, whether it was a bargain for the suppression of the march in August, one way or another it was introduced into the Six Counties resulting in the deaths and other horrible events that have taken place since then. When it was introduced in the Six Counties, quite properly there was condemnation of it from here but, at the same time, there was no evidence—in fact, there was a refusal—to indicate it would not be introduced here at some time in the future.
I admit that internment in the Six Counties and internment as it might be necessary on this side of the Border could be two different kettles of fish, indeed two different kettles of two different kinds of fish. Nevertheless, the confusion is there still not just in my mind but in the minds of a host of our people throughout the land. We condemn internment in the Six Counties but, at the same time, we are not prepared to say it will not be introduced here in the future. May be that is a wise decision. I do not know, but it confounds confusion still more.
There is also the matter of the Chequers meeting. I had two questions down in that connection but because of the intervention of, I think, the August bank holiday I was ruled out of getting an answer to either of them on the last day on which the Dáil sat. The announcement of the Taoiseach's projected meeting with Mr. Heath on 20th October was made either the week before the Dáil recessed or during the last week of the session. I had a question to the Taoiseach but it was ruled out because there was a Saturday, Sunday and a bank holiday following the day I put my question in. Although I put the question in after lunch on Friday, technically speaking it was not regarded as having been in for the full four days before question time on the following Thursday.
The question I asked was if, in view of the explosive situation then obtaining in the Six Counties, the Taoiseach had sought an earlier meeting with Mr. Heath and, if so, why had he not got it. I did not get the answer then and I have not got it since although perhaps it is of no consequence at this time. However, at that time leading up to the 12th August, I was interested that we should have had one of these long-awaited meetings — meeting which have been far too few during the years between the Taoiseach and the British Prime Minister. If there was to be a meeting what was the point of announcing it just before the danger point in the summer of 1971 and arranging the meeting in October? I wanted to try in some way to get it before the difficulties really came on us, as they later came on us, and as a result of which the meeting was brought forward. In fact, the meeting took place to discuss matters that only a week before Mr. Heath by telegram told the Taoiseach were none of his business.
Does anyone in this House doubt that it was because of the renewed flare-up of violence as a result of internment that these talks took place at that time and since, or that further talks will take place in the future? Does anyone believe that we will get meaningful talks from Britain and from the Premier of the Six Counties, or the leader of the majority, Mr. Faulkner, or whoever is there in his place unless they are forced into doing it? Unfortunately the only force that is putting them into that position is the force of the minority who are being branded as gunmen and terrorists here and elsewhere.
This is evidenced not only by our own sad history and our dealings with the British Government but is evidenced by the dealings of all oppressed and suppressed people Britain has had to deal with over the years. Ultimately Britain had to give all of them their freedom because she could not hold them any longer and this has been the only reason for giving them freedom. This is the sad fact that is staring us in the face and no amount of abhorrence of violence will wipe away that fact, namely, that it is only by forcing Britain to the table that it is possible to get her to the table, quite apart from obtaining rights from her.
This is my firm belief and I believe it is shared by those who have had the experience—which I did not have—of our previous troubles with Britain and our negotiations with her 50 years ago. She was brought to the table, she was brought by violence to the table. It was not violence created by the Irish people but it was as a result of the violence perpetrated on our people by the forces of the British Government. They have not changed and, unfortunately, I do not believe they will change. Therefore, we find ourselves with violence in the Six Counties, unprecedented in these years. Unfortunately, it is my firm belief that violence will continue, that it will escalate, that there will be more deaths and destruction and that all this will go on—continuously or spasmodically—until such time as there is a realisation by Britain that she must undo and retreat from her promises and her emphasis in sustaining the 6-county regime as she says "until the majority are agreed to unite with the rest of the country". We must get this across to her. Otherwise all may be lost and there will be great and grievous losses of life, limb and property in the immediate years ahead.
The SDLP members now representing the large majority of the elected representatives of the minority are out of Stormont after 50 years of Opposition in that establishment. After 50 years they have demonstrated to the world that it is not for the want of trying to make that establishment work that it has failed. They are out now and it is the best thing they could have done to demonstrate to the world that this farce that is the 6—county Government is not in truth a Government but is a contrived majority to rule and suppress those who are not prepared to go along with them. Whatever may have been the spark that brought about that withdrawal by those who are now known as SDLP members, they have done the right thing at the right time. I hope they adhere to this course and demonstrate the fact that as there is no Opposition in the Stormont Parliament, Opposition has no meaning in the Government of the Six Counties and that after many years of trying they are no longer prepared to try. Their attendance and participation in Stormont could only be taken now and in the future as an indication to the outside world that there is a democratic Government operating in the Six Counties, with the participation of the representatives of the minority. I believe, no matter how they came out, that they have done the right thing at the right time in the right way and I only hope they will stick with it and expose by their action to the world what a farce and a sham is this 6-county Government.
I should also like to mention something that was said here last night by the Minister for Justice. He spoke about extradition and all the furore that is being kicked up by people like John Taylor and others about the number of wanted men who are down here, the number of criminals as they describe them up there, who are across the Border being aided, sheltered and so forth. I listened to the Minister. If I have got it wrong, or if I have got it right, and he feels it is not what he intended to convey, I want to put it on record what I understood it to mean: that was that because of the national law here, the law of our own land and because of the international conventions, to which we subscribe, he made it clear to me that he regretted because of these two barriers that he could not in any circumstances aid the extradition of the people John Taylor says are down here and that they want back up above to give them the hammer as they have been giving others they have now interned, whom they have maltreated, ill-treated, brutally assaulted and injured not only in internment but indeed in the days between their arrest and internment. In the days before there was any internment there has been brutality in the Six Counties that has not been published.
I felt, instead of having a ban on RTE, we should have been seeking to expose the brutality in the Six Counties before internment was introduced. What was the point in my raising a voice about RTE's lack of coverage of what was going on in the Six Counties? What about the brutalities that have taken place before there was ever internment? What about the three people in Derry in the last few weeks before internment, one of whom was kicked to the point that he lost an eye, another was kicked to the point where apparently he had to get part of his intestines removed and another, the father of a boy who was being sought by the police, merely because he was that boy's father and in the house, when the boy was wisely absent at the time the forces of the Crown came for him, was battered to insensibility. I do not even know if today he is back to his former health or ever will be.
These things have been happening and, far from RTE overexposing them I charge that RTE for the year before the ban were not exposing, were not fairly treating and giving proper publicity or coverage to the brutality that was taking place in the Six Counties. While they did a good job in the year before, during the past year some of the most striking pictures, some of the most striking news that came by television from the Six Counties over our network was film relayed from the BBC. Then we have this effort to curb RTE further. My claim is that they were not sufficiently exposing things for a year before the ban came on.
Lest we might find that one swallow should not make a summer what about the ridiculous ban by whomsoever placed, on the playing of ballads on RTE? Why is it there? What sort of a nonsensical lot of half idiots are we that we are afraid to play our own national ballads over our own network and that by doing this we will suppress in some way any tendency to violence, no matter how well provoked or by whomsoever provoked, here or on the other side of the Border? I do not know what it was for but we have the ridiculous situation of there being some sort of a ban on national ballads or martial ballads, or whatever they are. I do not know much about what it is. All I know is that before there was a ban on this matter of news of the Six County situation there was a ban of some kind already there by whomsoever placed on the playing of our own national ballads because apparently they might raise the gore in some of our people to stand up and assert themselves as Irishmen on behalf of Irishmen who are being oppressed in the Six Counties. Is that the reason? If so I think it is a puerile effort. If that was not the purpose perhaps at some other time, when less important things are being discussed, somebody may explain to us why the clamp down on our national ballads— which incidentally we took so great pains over recent years to try to revive in all sorts of ways and made a hell of a good job of it. If you do sing do sing an Irish song. We have been hearing this for years and it has worked, but now no longer may such be sung or otherwise on the RTE network, whether by sound or visual or both.
I am sorry to interrupt Deputy Blaney at this stage, but I understood that Deputies had agreed that speeches would not last more than 40 minutes in view of the many Deputies who wished to speak.
I am not unaware of that and I apologise to the House for the length of time I have taken.
I was not sure whether Deputy Blaney was under his Whip and that is why I did not say anything before now.
In view of this position and taking into consideration that there are Deputies who wish to speak can we take it now that there will be agreement to continue after 5 o'clock?
Yes.
It was agreed to adjourn at 5 p.m.
I will finish in a couple of minutes.
Deputy Blaney is entitled to put forward his point of view but at the same time he is now in injury time, if you like to put it that way. Would it not be in order to extend the time for adjournment?
The House agreed yesterday that the Dáil would adjourn today at 5 p.m.
Can that not be changed?
Might I, in deference to your suggestion, and being not unaware of the time, say that in fact I am nearly finished in various senses. I only want to recount what my belief is in regard to this situation in the Six Counties today and to say to the House that, in all honesty, we should, for the purpose of clarifying the minds of the public throughout the country, make our stand much clearer than a declaration that the end of Partition must be brought about by peaceful means. This has been said to be the agreed policy of all parties in this House. Let me say, as a Member of this party, that while I seek, would wish and indeed believe that the ideal solution to Partition and to the ultimate unity of our country is by peaceful means, I do not subscribe to the idea that it must and only can be brought about by peaceful means. In saying that, do not convert that into my preaching violence because there is a hell of a difference between the two things.
Talk about hypocrisy.
I am a good while in this House. I have got, whether by my own devices or otherwise, a lot further than I predict the Deputy will ever get. I have lost what other people would regard as honours in this House because of the fact that I believe in what I am saying to the House. I predict as well that I will be in this House, given the health and the survival, after the Deputy has gone from it.
Not if the Deputy displays the hatred and the venom he is displaying today.
Order, Deputy Blaney concluding.
Is he concluding? I hope so.
I am merely saying to the Deputy what I believe and I am saying to him again that he or others who try to make it appear that what I have said here today is born from hatred should keep in mind that I come from a mixed community. I live with Protestant neighbours. I was reared with Protestant neighbours. I played with them and probably fought with them as a young lad growing up, as young lads will. I respect them. I find no difference in them from my Catholic neighbours. I do business with them without question. I never have questioned and never will quesjur tion which church they go to. People seem to be very concerned to identify themselves with what they know about the Protestant community because of their nearness and proximity to the Border giving them a better insight, and I think this is probably true as against those who are more remote. I was reared beside a Protestant church, a church which, in fact, was taken over, taken over as many other churches were, from the Catholics many, many years ago.
What has that got to do with the debate?
Deputy Desmond and others have come in here, blown in with the wind; no doubt they will be blown out with the gale. Such people as Deputy Desmond do not even begin to understand and they shout "hypocrite" at people like myself who say what they know and believe. They attribute political motives to them. I have no such device. I live with these people and I shall continue to live with them. I hope to continue to live with them. My belief and sound conviction is that, if Britain takes her paws out of Northern Ireland, takes her army out and promises to do so, and ultimately phases out the payment of her millions a year to that little puppet Government up there, the hard good sense of the hardest line Unionist will be devoted immediately to sitting down with the representatives of the Dublin Government to deal themselves into a United Ireland at the best possible valuation. This I have no doubt about. It can and will be done because it is unthinkable that there should be a continuance of violence. To be fair to the Unionists, hard line or other line, they are not now and never have been since the establishment of the Border in the position in which they can reasonably and rationally discuss any future possibility of unity because, once they agree to discuss it, they are in fact selling out, as they see it, and indicating to Britain that they are prepared to let the "not an inch" policy go by the board. This is where the crux lies. It is with Britain, has been with Britain and will continue to be with Britain. There is no point in deploring violence in the Six Counties, condemning it on the one hand and lauding civil disobedience, civil rights marches or peaceful resistance on the other because all of these, if pursued with the determination displayed by the minority up to this, will in the end bring about violence from the oppressors and, in return, violence will have to be used in order to defend the people caught up in this horrible situation.
(Cavan): What a Taoiseach! What a Government ! What a party!
And what hypocrisy !
The Deputy is full of hypocrisy.
(Interruptions.)
Order. Deputy Garret FitzGerald.
Deputy Blaney is finished. Good. A Leas-Cheann Comhairle, two types of policy have been pursued by people in this part of Ireland with regard to the question of the Six Counties in the last 50 years. One was the anti-Partition propaganda approach—trying to persuade Britain to hand the North over, whatever the wishes of the majority there might be, and the other was the policy of violence pursued by the IRA. I am not at all clear as to which of those two policies the last speaker is in sympathy with or advocates inasmuch as he left us in doubt on that point in his confused and muddled speech.
The one thing about which there can be no doubt is that neither of these policies has achieved anything. They are counter-productive and they have left us further away from the ending of Partition than we were when Partition began. When this country was first divided 50 years ago nobody then thought that this division would remain permanent, neither the British, nor the Northern Unionists, nor the Free State Government, nor the republicans, as the Treaty Debate will show. That it has become permanent is because of the policies we have pursued, because of the attitude of men like the last speaker, men who perpetuated Partition.
In 1968 the northern minority, realising the futility of the line they had been encouraged to pursue by certain politicians down here, decided to adopt a completely different approach and to abandon the Green Tory line of anti-partitionism. They raised the banner of civil rights, something about which the last speaker had the nerve to speak, he himself having been completely opposed to that policy at the time; they raised the banner of civil rights. They raised the issue of their right to participate fully in a just society within Northern Ireland, believing and saying that only if these rights were first attained and conditions of life in Northern Ireland rendered normal, as in any normal civilised country, could the heat be taken out of the situation and the question of the re-union of Ireland be considered constructively and with any hope of the problem being resolved.
That was the policy which was pursued in the first instance by the civil rights movement and adopted by those members of the Northern Parliament who banded themselves together in the Social Democratic and Labour Party. In pursuing that policy they achieved results because the civil rights movement did, in fact, secure a whole range of reforms. I am well aware that not all of these reforms have been fully carried out. If time permits I shall endeavour to list the particular items that remain to be done. Nobody has yet bothered to do that. We keep hearing—we heard from the Taoiseach— about the "abysmal failure" of the reform programme. That is an exaggeration and, to an extent, untrue. Deputy Blaney has not told us and neither has anybody else what has not been done. I shall try to do so later.
The reform programme did achieve a considerable amount and that was achieved by virtue of the non-violent tactics of the civil rights movement. The second stage in the programme that they set themselves was set out very clearly by Mr. John Hume in his submission to the Compton Commission in February, 1970. In the second stage of this campaign the northern Opposition, the northern minority, sought first of all recognition of the right of everybody in Northern Ireland to advocate change by constitutional methods, then the re-introduction of proportional representation, a Bill of Rights, and periodic referenda on the question of re-union which would effectively remove, to quote Mr. John Hume's phrase, the constitutional question from party politics and allow for the development of normal policy. That was the second stage put forward by the northern minority and their leaders.
The final stage, which emerged at the end of last year and which was put forward more clearly and more fully since then by members of that party, on the basis of the constitutional right to seek a change in the constitutional position, was, on that basis, to seek the right also to participate fully in Government, proportionately to their numbers, in order to end the alienation of the northern minority from the regime. That is the three-stage programme of the civil rights movement and of the Social Democratic and Labour Party.
The first stage was effectively won. Reforms were not carried through fully but they would have been carried through fully by now if everybody had not been distracted by the campaign of violence which was subsequently launched. I believe the other stages too would have been achieved could even now be achieved if those instigating violence in Northern Ireland could bring themselves to end that violence and make it possible for political progress to be made. The civil rights campaign and the work of the elected leaders of the northern minority have been sabotaged by violent men, backed by political figures down here, political figures concerned more about their own political interests than about the North. That is the answer to those who say that nothing can be won except by violence. Everything can be lost by violence and everything that could have been won up to this moment has been lost by violence. British public opinion has been alienated, British public opinion so vital to a change in that Government's policy. World opinion has, to a degree, been alienated. Moderate Protestant opinion in Northern Ireland which backed the reform programme has been totally alienated. The stand of the Social Democratic and Labour Party has been weakened. The future, which could have been bright, is now bleak and uncertain.
On this question I do not recognise history as related by Deputy Blaney who gave us a remarkable account, remarkable for its suppressions more than anything else. Anybody listening to the Deputy would have thought that the Civil Rights movement was an anti-Partition movement. It was in fact an anti-Partition movement, but that was not clear from what he said. From listening to him one would have thought that at Derry and Burntollet the Civil Rights demonstrators resisted by force of arms the violence imposed on them. Of course they did not. What happened? By virtue of the fact that they did not resist, that they did not introduce the gun, they won a moral victory which could have brought in its train by now a solution to the northern problem if it had not been for the fact that men down here who do not want that solution, intervened to assist elements in Northern Ireland who were concerned with re-introducing violence into the situation.
Let us note also the omissions. There is no reference in Deputy Blaney's account to the period between August, 1969, and February, 1970. He talks as if the violence imposed on the Civil Rights demonstrators and those who fought that campaign was resisted immediately with arms but as we all know, what happened was that the British Army were sent in to protect the minority, peace was restored and good relations existed between the British Army and the minority in Northern Ireland and such trouble as occurred between the British Army and the people occurred in October, 1969, in the Shankill Road area and not in the Falls and that in fact the whole campaign of violence was launched in February, 1970—at a time when there was not any question of violence being imposed on the minority—by people who wanted to reopen the whole question.
Those who defend violence in Northern Ireland sometimes try to equate what is being done there with what was done in this country 50 years ago. Anybody with any sense of the honour of their country and with any sense of what we owe to the men of 1916 and to the men of the War of Independence must be disturbed at this comparison. In 1916 the Rebellion ended lest more Irish lives be lost. Pádraic Pearse was not a man who would permit any indiscriminate attacks on a civilian population. He would not even permit fighting to continue if, accidentally, the civilian population could be damaged as a result and the Rebellion ended on that account. In the War of Independence which had the full authority of the Dáil representing the vast majority of the Irish people, there was no indiscriminate bomb throwing, no sectarianism, no attempt to throw bombs into Protestant pubs or homes and no attempt to burn Protestant schools or Protestant homes. That was not a feature of the men who organised our War of Independence, men like Michael Collins and Cathal Brugha who would not have tolerated anything of the kind. Yet, these people in Northern Ireland claim to be in this tradition and mouth platitudes about Wolfe Tone while they are the very people who have shattered everything that Wolfe Tone stood for. Let us not be fooled about this.
Talking of Deputy Blaney's recollections, I might say that his recollections of his own affairs seem to be a little indistinct also. He told us that the first time he realised policy had been changed was when John Kelly was arrested. He must be a very insensitive man because he had been sacked from his position as Minister three weeks before John Kelly was arrested but it did not impinge on him that his being sacked had any policy implications at all. I am afraid that I cannot believe that.
Moreover reverting to the question of violence, violence is uncontrollable. There is no barrier to violence and those who belong to this Provisional movement in this part of the country have been speaking openly at meetings in various parts of the country. They have been telling people not to go to the North because there are enough men there. They have been telling the people that they are needed down here because they are now at the point where they are almost strong enough to take on the Army and the Garda Síochána. It is not only the creation of democracy in Northern Ireland that is being halted by these people but democracy in this part of the country is being threatened by them. They are the most bigoted, violent and sectarian group who have ever claimed to be patriots. No words I could use to condemn them would be as strong as those used by the other branch of the IRA, with whose aims and methods I do not agree but who have at least eschewed any form of sectarianism and have condemned the fascist sectarian tactics of these people.
In this part of the country free range has been given by the Government to these people. We have heard what the Garda have had to say on this. We know that the Army and the police, which we on this side of the House handed over in good shape and in full strength, have been run down. We know that laws are not enforced. I could list ten laws that are on the Statute Book which deal with such matters as an attempt to create a body purporting to be a parliament, for example, which carries a sentence of ten years' penal servitude.
Hear, hear.
What has been done about those who have been purporting to create parliaments in three counties of this State or in Connacht? Nothing. There are laws which state that it is a crime for somebody at a public meeting to advocate support for an illegal organisation, but this has been done all over the country and no one has been prosecuted. The Government tell us they cannot get evidence but all they need is one stenographer to take notes at any meeting and they would then have the evidence. However, they do not want the evidence because they are not prepared to act. We are well aware of drilling that is going on throughout the country. TDs from many constituencies can report such activities, but where has this been interfered with? I know of only one instance and in that case those concerned were moved from one part of the county to another where they are allowed continue without interference in groups of up to 150. Do the Government intend to allow matters run on and on and then to jump to internment? If that is so, they will not carry the Irish people with them easily. We want the law enforced. We do not want matters to run on until there is an excuse for internment.
Let us consider the effects of violence in Northern Ireland. What proportion of those killed so far have been British? I reckon one quarter so that three out of every four people killed are Irish whether they be Catholic or Protestant—they are fairly evenly divided.
Let me turn now to another aspect of this whole problem because although our Government have been at fault and although the blame for what has happened must rest fairly and squarely on the IRA, especially on the Provisional wing of the IRA, nevertheless, it would be wrong not to reflect and comment on mistakes made by the British Government, and they have made serious mistakes. It would not help to speak of them in terms of hatred or xenophobia and the raising of old hatreds would not make any constructive contribution to this debate, but we should point out calmly and soberly the mistakes they have made and call on them to reconsider their position on certain aspects.
First, they must accept the blame for the situation because for 50 years they neglected it. I think they realise that now, and I think there is a sense of guilt which affects most people, including politicians, in Britain and that there is a genuine willingness to do something about the situation because they realise that they should have dealt with these social and other injustices during the past 50 years. It must be said, too, that there is ignorance in Britain. I found it depressing on a recent occasion to sit in the House of Commons and listen to a British Minister who, obviously, thought that the Provisionals were the Officials and vice versa, and talked about the Communist inspirations of the Provisionals. I have said much about the Provisionals but I would not say that they have Communist inspirations. The extent of British neglect and ignorance has certainly contributed to this situation and then there have been their mistakes. They have played into the hands of the Provisionals under pressure from the Unionist right wing. They instigated the incursion into the Falls road which began the alienation of a large part of these areas of Belfast from authority at that stage and pushed them gradually into the arms of the IRA.
That was a serious mistake. Also, they made a serious mistake in not putting through fully the reforms. I do not think they realised this and we have failed to put it across. I have never heard it stated clearly either in this House or in Stormont and it has not been stated in Westminster what reforms have not been carried through. Let me list the areas where further action was promised but has not been taken. Leaving on one side the fact that the abolition of the B Specials has not been accompanied by any action against B Specials associations or rifle clubs or that no attempt has been made to withdraw arms from former B Specials, there are the following points in the reform programme which have not been implemented.
First, no independent tribunal has been set up to consider complaints against the police under section 13 (2) of the Police Act. This has not been established. This was promised and provided for in that Act. It is one of the reforms promised. It has not happened. Secondly, although the institution of a public prosecutor was promised and agreed in principle in the Downing Street declaration, this has not, in fact, still been brought into effect and by postponing it from committee to committee and from month to month, after two years this important reform has not been undertaken and the collapse of confidence in justice in Northern Ireland arises directly from the failure to implement this reform promised in the Downing Street declaration. It is now promised for the future but it is too late at this stage. Confidence in justice in Northern Ireland has been understandably undermined.
Thirdly, confidence has been undermined in the Commissioner for Complaints and the Parliamentary Commission of Administration—both of whom I think it is agreed by the northern Opposition, are carrying out their duties pretty well in the individual cases they deal with almost without exception—confidence in them has been undermined by the fact that they are prevented from considering the pattern of cases. They must consider discrimination in a particular case and it is not possible, in fact, to show when people secretly decide to discriminate in an individual case that discrimination has taken place. Discrimination can only effectively be shown by the pattern of appointments and the pattern of housing allocations. The reports of these gentlemen show their frustration at this limitation in their terms of reference which has made it impossible for them to carry out their functions properly. That reform has, therefore, been frustrated by the inadequacy of the terms of reference.
The reform involving fair opportunities for members of the minority in public employment has still not been fully implemented. Up to the time of the printing of the SDLP pamphlet on this there was no Catholic holding senior rank in the establishment of any Ministry, in the private office of any Minister or in the senior ranks of professional grades in the Ministry of Finance, so that although changes were promised here, they had not taken place. Moreover, on the question of the code of fair employment, half of the local bodies have not yet adopted this code of fair employment two years local bodies have not yet adopted this code of fair employment two years after the Downing Street declaration.
Again, the anti-discrimination clause in Government contracts which was promised to contain provision against discrimination on religious or political grounds, has been modified to drop the word "political", so that somebody who is bidding for Government contracts can discriminate against people because they are Nationalists or SDLP but not, of course, because they are Catholics. Obviously, one without the other is useless here and that Downing Street declaration has not been fulfilled. Very little has been done to prevent discrimination in private employment. Housing allocations are still not in all cases fair. There have been legitimate complaints against housing allocations in Fermanagh, despite the promise of the operation of a points system. Here the reform has not been carried out. Although not only was it promised that half the Community Relations Board would be Catholics and although the Northern Ireland Government state that they are, this is not the case. Less than half are Catholics.
Finally, the Incitement to Hatred Act is ineffective and this it is easy to show. As the pamphlet points out, the Attorney General has at length in the House of Commons in Stormont tried to explain why it is totally ineffective and unusable. To that extent that reform is ineffective.
These are the reforms, then, that have not been effectively carried out. It is right to list them here because of the fact that no attempt has been made to list them in any other Parliament up to now.
I want now to turn to some other failures on the part of the British. Most important of all is the failure to control their troops adequately. We can all understand breakdowns in discipline under provocation and they have faced intense provocation, for example, when they have been stoned, but the fact is that discipline is bad and that there has been constant and continual provocation of the northern minority by troops going along streets, breaking windows and shouting obscenities at the minority population. This goes on all the time and pious platitudes in the British Parliament saying that, "Of course, our troops behave properly" are nonsense. We can understand why the troops may misbehave. But we cannot accept the attempt to cover this up and the way in which British politicians pretend to each other that it is not happening is flying in the face of the truth as everybody knows it in Northern Ireland and we cannot accept that the officering of troops should be so bad that this should continue all the time and nothing be done about it.
Similarly, failure to control brutality at the time of internment is something we must concern ourselves with. On the question of torture, I think it is a very ineffective political approach when a Minister says in regard to allegations of torture of people continuing at this time—the allegations relate to people in custody at this time —that he will refer it to the Compton Committee. Has any Minister, any member of the Compton Committee. gone to the Palace Barracks? In any normal civilised society, if that allegation were made, I would expect the relevant Minister to turn up at once and demand to see the place for himself instead of referring it to a committee of inquiry while people may still continue to be tortured. The British reaction to that has been quite inadequate.
On the question of internment, we know the failure there, the mistake made in introducing internment and the way it has been introduced. We have not yet been given any answer to the question, why has only one side been interned? The explanation given privately is that the security authorities had no names of people on the other side. That argues not only incompetence and neglect but treachery on the part of the security authorities. If I were in a government faced with that situation I would be extremely worried for my own safety.
We had the stupidity of the blowing up of Border roads recently, another example of the British Government responding to pressures in a way that would aggravate rather than help the situation; the stupidity of the attempt to arrest Mr. Mac Giolla of the Official Sinn Féin the other day and may I say that I am grateful to the Department of Foreign Affairs for the prompt action they took? I was phoned from Belfast at 1 a.m. and I phoned the Secretary of the Department and he contacted the British Ambassador at once. In a case like that, when an Irish citizen is involved, when there is no evidence or suggestion that he is engaged in illegal activities, it is right we should at least inquire as to what is happening and why action is being taken and those inquiries were very properly made and very promptly made.
Most important of all the British mistakes is the stupidity of the attitude that violence must be ended before a political solution is discussed. They dropped that, in fact, when the northern talks were proposed, but they have created a situation of such a kind through the introduction of internment that, in fact, the probability of talks at the moment is nil because of the accumulation of British mistakes.
It is right that we should analyse the mistakes here reasonably objectively but at times with some heat when we see the situation in Northern Ireland deteriorating because of the foolishness of the British authorities in the actions they have taken. It is right that we should be critical but we should be critical in a constructive way and that I am trying to be.
I want to turn briefly now to the Taoiseach's speech. I found it, and I see the papers this morning found it, a negative speech, old hat anti-Partition material, unconstructive, taken out of the files of the Department of Foreign Affairs for the late forties or early fifties. It is such a regression from the speeches we have had from the Taoiseach—no talk in this speech of holding out the hand of friendship to the majority in Northern Ireland, the ordinary decent people of Northern Ireland, of the Protestant religion, no word of that, no word of our making changes down here to make them welcome in this part of the country, nothing but the old anti-Partition talk being trotted out in as alienating a form as possible. There are two good phrases. One was that Stormont will not long survive dependence on bigoted and intolerant men. The other was a reference to responsibility going hand in hand with claimed authority. Both of these are worth saying. There was very little else in the Taoiseach's speech that is worth saying. Those looking to this Government to point a way to a general solution, to any solution, indeed, of the situation in Northern Ireland, were and are completely disappointed.
The Taoiseach has been too utterly constricted by his own diffidence and the kind of voices we have heard raised here in the very recent past to feel free to offer any constructive suggestions. He is, of course, in an impossible position in any event. How can a Government which twice sought to abolish proportional representation down here advocate or secure proportional representation for Northern Ireland? To be fair to the Taoiseach, he did not try. He told us himself that when he went there he sabotaged that proposal of the SDLP, that he told Mr. Heath, in his own words, that PR would be no help in Northern Ireland. That is his contribution to the situation in Northern Ireland.
How could a Government which had threatened internment frivolously down here carry conviction when condemning it in Northern Ireland? How can a Government which has refused to introduce an ombudsman down here complain about the inadequacy of the powers of an ombudsman in Northern Ireland? How can a Government committed to jobbery in this part of the country and jobs for the Fianna Fáil boys carry conviction when talking about fair treatment in jobs in Northern Ireland? I admit discrimination in employment on a religious basis is worse than political discrimination in employment on a religious basis is worse than political discrimination because people can change their politics more easily than their religion. There is a marginal difference. But a Government committed to jobbery as this Government are, are in no position to talk in Northern Ireland of jobbery on the basis of religion. How can a Government with a member of the Government who has posed as having got houses for people under our housing code press for rapid implementation of a fair housing system in Northern Ireland with any conviction?
How can a Government which has failed to maintain order here carry moral authority in talking to the British Government? How can a Government which is opposed even to discussion of some relaxation of the law on contraception talk to the British and the northern majority about justice for the minority there? How can they carry confidence in saying, as the Taoiseach had the nerve to say yesterday, "the future of Ireland is theirs, the northern Protestants, too, we should never forget this". He might tell Tommy Mullins something about that because it was not very evident from the way in which the Leader of the Seanad handled the affair of the Contraception Bill. How can a Government, which at the moment is handing over vocational schools to trustees appointed by one church so that they will become, in the words of the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Catholic schools, thus depriving Protestants of the multi-denominational education which Fine Gael gave them 40 years ago, talk to the Northern Government about religious discrimination? How can a Government ultimately depending on the support of men like Deputy Blaney talk about peaceful reunion with consent?
They cannot and they will not. I am sure everybody noticed that when the Taoiseach was dealing with Mr. Maudling's two conditions, when he came to the second condition, which is that people in the Northern Government should accept the principle of reunion by consent, as is fully accepted by the SDLP, did the Taoiseach say: "There is no problem there, that is acceptable to the northern minority?" No, he dodged it and said "It is not required by the Downing Street declaration that people should have to endorse the Border". Mr. Maudling had not, first of all, suggested that they would have to endorse the Border, and in any event the Downing Street declaration did not refer to participation in joint government. He went on to talk about Heath's acceptance of our aspirations, but Maudling did not rule out people who held these aspirations. The fact that he was visibly uneasy at this point in his speech and went off at tangents and spoke in a misleading and ambiguous way at that point, shows that the difficulty we are in here is that he is not in a position to accept, because of the position taken up by Deputy Blaney and his pals, the position of the Northern Opposition and he has, therefore, either to avoid the issue, or to sabotage the Northern Opposition in the approach they have adopted in putting internal reforms first and leaving the question of reunion to be sorted out with the consent of a majority ultimately.
The Taoiseach's whole performance has been inept, embarrassingly so at times, throughout this whole affair. His aggressive statement after the introduction of internment going beyond anything required by the situation; his stupid telegram, arriving incompetently after the meeting was over; his first visit, his own account of which shows that he had spent something like nine out of the 11 hours fussing about his own position in future discussions and showing no interest whatsoever in finding a solution for Northern Ireland.
On the second occasion that changed, and I must admit, frankly, I was impressed by the fact that on the second occasion he was showing visible concern for a solution, possibly because he had realised what a bad impression he had made the first time. But on the second occasion his weakness and ineptitude led to a moral victory for, of all people, Brian Faulkner, not a person who one would think it is easy to give a moral victory to; because he allowed the communiqué to be drafted in a certain way he enabled Brian Faulkner to claim, and this claim was never rebutted by the Taoiseach, that the Taoiseach had agreed that violence must end before internment ended. The Parliamentary Secretary and I were in a television studio in Belfast when we heard Faulkner asserting that. I expected a denial from the Taoiseach but it has never been denied. I do not believe the Taoiseach agreed that, but he had made such a mess of the meeting that he could not even sort out afterwards what had been said at either meeting.
Above all the Taoiseach has clearly failed, as we can see from the results, to convince the British on any of the key points, on the ending of internment or the modification of it by releasing some and charging others. He failed to achieve anything on the question of improving the terms of reference of the Compton Committee of Inquiry. He failed to do anything to stop the torture in Northern Ireland which aparently is still continuing. He failed even to prevent the British committing the ultimate stupidity of blowing up Border roads.
What did he achieve? In all his speech did the Taoiseach tell us one thing that had come out of that meeting other than Faulkner crowing over him on television afterwards, and even there the Taoiseach had first crack and could have put his gloss on the proceedings but he did it so ineptly that Faulkner, coming second, managed to get the better of him at that stage. It is totally evident that this Government cannot carry on doing the job that has to be done, it is too divided, too discredited and too weak.
What can be done? Let us now move briefly to the question of some of the constructive proposals for the way out. First of all, we must try to understand all concerned. There is a notable lack of understanding. The media on both sides of the channel are not contributing to understanding. I do not agree with everything contained in the report on the British Press on Northern Ireland by Eamonn McCann but many of the points that he makes are valid. There has been a biased presentation in Great Britain by some papers but not, thank God, by all, as he seems to suggest, of the situation in the North. Our own papers and television have not been faultless in this respect. The purpose and value of the media in this situation is to explain people to each other, to help us to understand why it is that Unionists say and do things which we cannot understand. We should remember they are fellow-Irishmen like ourselves motivated as we are by the same fears, hopes and aspirations. They are decent people for the greater part. If they are taking up attitudes which to us seem unacceptable there must be a reason; it is our job to try to understand and until we understand what they feel and why they feel it we shall never be in a position to solve the problem by bringing them and us together.
Let us look at it from their point of view but, before looking at the Unionist point of view, I would say we have not even understood the northern Opposition point of view. What has become very clear from this debate is that the northern Opposition and their stand to solve the problems within Northern Ireland first and then take the question of Partition out of party politics has not been either understood or accepted down here. They have not communicated it sufficiently well, and we have not put it across on their behalf sufficiently, and on this there has been a failure here. If we do not understand the northern Opposition or their view-point, as visibly we do not, and as visibly the Taoiseach does not, how then can we understand the Unionists' position? How can we understand that these people were for generations brainwashed into thinking of the minority as people who were inferior and were brainwashed into ignoring or justifying discrimination, just as we have been brainwashed in a lesser sense into justifying discrimination in our public service against people who do not belong to the Gaelic tradition and are not familiar with the Irish language and just as we have been brainwashed into discriminating against people who do not accept the majority view on contraception, lesser brainwashing and less important issues, but they show all of us are amenable to this kind of brainwashing.
The northern majority were brainwashed into thinking they were in some way superior and the minority were inferior. They then had to face the realities of this; they had to face changes and reforms; they had to realise and accept internally, if not publicly, that they had been wrong; they had to face a complete reversal of everything they had been taught. The remarkable thing is that moderate Unionist opinion supported these reforms until they were bombed and shot at and until life was brought to a standstill. We wonder, after what they have been through, without ever trying to imagine what it is like to be an ordinary Protestant in Belfast at this time, why it is that there are no moderates left, why it is that the northern Government if it wished to make some major concessions could not do so not because of extremist opposition but because, in fact, amongst ordinary Unionists, bemused and frightened by what is going on, there would not be support for any change. We must try to understand their mentality and try to think what it is like to be in a city where at any moment one can be blown to pieces. We must try to think of the attitude of mind that this will set up among people. If we do not understand these attitudes, we will get locked up again in a sterile "reconquest" attitude, which we have adopted for 50 years, of "give us back our Six Counties." But they are not "our" Six Counties, they are the six counties of the whole of Ireland, they belong, first of all, to the people of that area and then to the whole people of Ireland. They do not belong to the 26 Counties and we do not have the right to reconquer them as we sometimes talk as though we have, and as we hear from Deputy Blaney, and until we realise that there will be no solution to the problem.
What then is the solution? The curious thing about the situation is that the lines of the solution are fairly clear to any sane person whether he is British, northern Unionist, northern majority, northern minority or somebody down here. They were, in fact, set out two years ago by Fine Gael in its policy statement, if I may say so. I shall read the relevant extracts, because I think everything hinges on this. On 12th September, 1969, we said:
The present troubles in Northern Ireland find their origins in fear: fear of each other by both sections of the community.
Within Northern Ireland itself there has been a growing recognition of this, especially amongst the Catholic minority and, as a result, the emphasis in political life amongst the minority has changed during the past decade from traditional anti-partitionism to winning civil rights for all sections of the community.
The aim is in the first instance to create a normal political situation free from sectarian distortions and from the gerrymandering power of the dominant group working skilfully to maintain power and privilege. The achievement of this aim would lay the foundations for the ending of the present national division.
It is the duty of political parties in the Republic, who must be concerned for the people of Northern Ireland, and especially for the exploited and maltreated minority, to recognise these facts and to have regard to the wishes of this Northern minority. This duty is reinforced by the self-evident fact that, force as a weapon of policy having been rejected by all responsible political groups in the Republic, the only way in which the present divided state of this island can, or should be modified is with the consent of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland.
We went on to propose that there should be joint participation in government by the minority and long before this had been proposed in Northern Ireland Fine Gael put it forward here. We suggested that:
...representation of the minority in the Northern Ireland Government as the sole means of reassuring the minority as to the full and continued implementation of the proposed reforms, and fair treatment for this minority.
We proposed the setting up of the Council of Ireland and we also proposed that we here should consider:
...the changes necessary in the Constitution and laws of the Republic in order to make them acceptable to the widest possible spectrum of opinion in Ireland.
Can anybody doubt that these suggestions are today, as they were two years ago, the lines along which we should be proceeding? A policy of reunion by consent can be carried out by a series of different measures. One possible solution is, in fact, a phased withdrawal, after agreement has been reached, but only after agreement has been reached, because we in Fine Gael stand firmly on the principle of reunion by consent. If, in fact, it is clear that it is possible for agreement to be reached and to get reunion without violence and counter-violence by the Protestant majority then a gradual phasing out of the British presence, and a gradual phasing out over quite a long period of the British social welfare payments, could be the answer, although even allowing for a significantly faster growth rate here than in Britain it would take 25 to 30 years before our standard of living would be at the British level and our resources would enable us to carry these subsidies ourselves.
The key point of the Fine Gael policy is that the consent of the majority is needed, a majority of people or a majority of Parliament— you can argue about the details—but unless you have that consent or, as one senior British politician suggested to me when he saw this document, the acquiescence at least of the majority, any attempt to bring them in against their will would be disastrous and could only lead to civil war. Personally, I accept the idea put forward by John Hume of regular referenda to take the whole question of Partition out of politics but other people may not agree with that, although I have found in discussions which I and other people in this party have had not only with the Opposition in Northern Ireland but with the Unionist side in the last few months, a certain acceptance of that possibility among some Unionists also. It may, perhaps, provide a solution as John Hume has suggested.
The British, however, must recognise that: they must get to the point of saying: "We would like Partition to end; we envisage it ending, but of course it must be done with consent." We have a right to ask them to do that. After all, the Government of Ireland Act in 1920 envisaged the setting up of a parliament for the whole of Ireland; it reads—"with a view to the eventual establishment of a Parliament for the whole of Ireland and to bringing about harmonious action within the Parliaments and Governments of southern Ireland and Northern Ireland." Those are the words used. And let us not forget that the Treaty itself created a single Irish State but gave Northern Ireland the right to opt out within one month. It is they who seceded, not the other way around. They seceded from us and we agreed that they should do so with the expectation and hope that, had saner policies been adopted down here, that would have proved but temporary. It is important that we should see that and that we should ask the British Government, if Birkenhead and Churchill were willing 50 years ago to concede that they would like to see Ireland united, that that was the aim that was envisaged in legislation at the time, have we not a right to ask this Government in England 50 years later to be at least as progressive as Churchill and Birkenhead and to agree to that as the aim and objective—not to set time limits that would exacerbate things and create reactions in Northern Ireland, but to state that as the aim as was done 50 years ago.
As to the particular details of the solution, there are a number of points I should like to make briefly. First, proportional representation could play a vitally important role. Not only would it increase the proportion of parliamentary representation for the minority from 25 per cent to 35 per cent but, through the alternative vote system, moderate would vote for moderate across the religious or community divide. This could be of great importance and when I saw the Taoiseach trying to sabotage that possibility in London he went down in my estimation a good deal lower than I thought was possible.
The right of participation in Government is the vital element that must be agreed. Here, one must be concerned with the fact that within three or four days of the British Home Secretary, Mr. Maudling, in the House of Commons appearing to make it clear that he envisaged this possibility, this right of participation, on conditions which are entirely acceptable to the SDLP, if not to Fianna Fáil, Brian Faulkner on three occasions repudiated the concept of the opposition being in Government or anybody with an aspiration to unity being in Government. When he did that I believe he signed his death warrant because the only solution in Northern Ireland that will bring any form of viable Government is one for a joint Government and that requires that the minority should be represented. Any man who says that that is impossible cannot remain as leader of a Northern Ireland Government indefinitely. We have a right to ask, as the Taoiseach did ask, the British to clarify the position. Which is correct—Maudling or Faulkner? We have also a right to ask Mr. Maudling to state plainly what is implicit in his statement but not completely plainly stated, that he will accept a Government in the North with minority representation.
There are other details we should consider. I believe it would be useful to have a deputy prime minister from the minority and perhaps the sharing of portfolios might be agreed with him. Clearly there must be a Bill of Rights guaranteed by some process whether as Mr. Wilson suggests, or by a blocking process in the lower house, or by a reformed senate, or by a judicial appeal system as we have here to guarantee our human rights. That would be a matter for discussion. There would have to be some system of appeal against breaches of civil rights, perhaps to a committee of judges of whom a majority might be appointed by the deputy prime minister.
Might I remind the Deputy that he has had 40 minutes?
It has not worried others but I shall finish within two minutes.
The last speaker had 1¼ hours.
Perhaps he does not take the Whip as much as some people think.
I think the choice of judges will have to be agreed between the majority and minority. There must be some kind of Council of Ireland for two distinct purposes, one economic, because there is a great need for economic co-operation especially in regard to regional planning which will be an important issue within EEC, and secondly, political. We should have the right to express views on each other's legislation. May I comment that the SDLP's concern with the Council of Ireland is motivated clearly as I see it from documentation of theirs that I have seen, by a desire to have the right to express a view on aspects of our legislation which they find thoroughly objectionable in many respects in giving arguments to Unionists in Northern Ireland. It is motivated as much by that as by wanting southerners to interfere in northern legislation.
The northern minority and the northern majority share a feeling that they belong to what they call the proud North and they both resent much that is said and done in the Republic. They would like a voice in our affairs as much as they feel that we should have a voice in theirs. It would be very useful to have that. It could be very educational for us to hear from the northern majority and minority together their joint views on many aspects of our legislation upon which they are agreed and on which their views would be helpful to us. Such a meeting place would also be useful for politicians so that they can meet and get to know each other. Therefore, we need two different kinds of council, an economic one and a political one.
Security is perhaps the most difficult problem of all. It could, perhaps, be controlled by a committee of the prime minister, deputy prime minister and the British representative. Perhaps it could eventually be undertaken by some kind of reorganised UDR, in every unit of which there would be both minority and majority—perhaps more of the majority in the Protestant areas and more of the minority in the Catholic areas—in which every unit would be mixed and which would come under the control of the joint committee on which the minority would be represented perhaps by the deputy premier.
These are some of the ways in which one could work towards a solution and only along these lines will a solution be found. It will not be found by violence which can only lengthen the road to a solution. You cannot, as the bishops have said, bomb one million Protestants into a United Ireland. There are people in this House who, clearly from what they say, envisage that, and are prepared for it and are prepared to wade through blood to that solution. But there are other people in this House, and I believe they are in a majority, not only on these benches but on the benches opposite, who will stand against any such a solution and who will ensure that the ending of Parition will come peacefully and that in the first instance we will direct our attention towards improving the lot of the minority and of all the people of Northern Ireland, and then will secure by agreement and consent a re-union of our country on terms that can be agreed by all and avoid any further violence.
The wish to attain unity, peace and justice for all our people, North and South, is predominant and paramount. It is the ardent hope of all of us that this should be brought about without resort to violence. Personally, I deplore violence, whether physical violence or injustice or wrong, the violence of the gun and the bomb.
Equally, I deplore the insidious violence and repression which emanate from a one-party system of government, a totalitarian government, a system which relegates one section of the community to the role of secondclass citizens bereft of fundamental rights, civil or political, a system which discriminates and differentiates on a class and religious basis, a system of government which in its origin is unnatural because it seeks to opt out of the historic Irish nation and to perpetuate the myth of two nations in this our island home, ignoring the obvious fact and the great truth that God fixed the boundary for the Irish nation when he fixed as its frontier the encircling sea. I deplore the violence of injustice and the wrong which emanates through a system of government which is flagrantly undemocratic in its institutions, denying the minority a fair say in the affairs of government, depending in the main on the process of the gerrymander of constituencies and the flagrant abuse of the principle of one man, one vote, system of government. Such a system has existed in north east Ulster for over 50 years, backed up by the whole, massive machinery of the State, the Army, the Civil Service and the police force and designed to perpetuate one class—the Unionists—in power. This has been maintained by successive British Governments, backed up by large subventions of money, which we are told in this House amount to £400 million or £500 million per year and, moreover, backed up by the guns of 14,000 British soldiers, an armed police force and 100,000 guns in the hands of the ex-B. Specials and their Orange friends.
A Leas-Cheann Comhairle, one corner of Ireland is today an armed citadel. The whole paraphernalia of the Government there has been and is now focused on the oppression of one section of that community. The government have, over these years, continually fostered hatred and fear. Their policy was the old British policy of "divide and conquer" and today the statelet of Ulster is a red, bloody blot on the map of the civilised world, revealed for what it is and has been— a system of ruthless tyranny, an odious system, the last bastion of British imperialism in all its abominable features of ruthlessness, terror and aggression against all those who would dare to oppose the rotten regime. It is an essentially violent regime. It was born out of violence, and violence begets violence. The violence we witness in Ireland today in that part of our country is the natural reaction of an outraged people, victimised, persecuted and brutalised, denied the fundamental rights of men for over half a century.
In recent times we have seen the people of north east Ulster being treated as guinea pigs in the application of the worst forms of torture and human degradation ever conceived by the evil-minded scientists or the Frankensteins of war, far more evil and pernicious than the war crimes carried out in Nazi Germany or by the Chinese or Russian warlords at their worst. All the evil ingenuity of man has been brought to bear on innocent and guilty alike. In the world today perhaps, except in the case of criminals in the United States jails, only in Ireland are men and women subjected to large doses of CS gas. The indignity and danger of large doses of CS gas poured in, particularly into the Nationalist ghettos, defies description. This is a daily and nightly occurrence with serious effects on the health of the unfortunate people concerned. Is there anywhere else in the world today where people are shot at indiscriminately with rubber bullets designed by some evil genius to be used on the mere Irish alone? I have seen these bullets. They are deadly weapons. Then can cause harm and great pain if they strike a sensitive part of the anatomy, especially if fired from a high velocity gun. The rubber bullet is designed for the mere Irish and the Irish alone.
Arrest without trial is the order of the day in north east Ulster. The crimes committed against the detainees there have shocked the consciences of all right-thinking men and women throughout the world. May I say that the Black-and-Tans—and they were indeed evil men in their day—were gentlemen in comparison with the callous thugs of RUC men and British military who have subjected Irish men and women to such terrible tortures in recent times. These evil-minded sadists and barbarians must realise that they cannot perpetrate such crimes on Irish men and women with impunity. These are horrible crimes which have been carried out against innocent people and they brook revenge and breed hatred. Is it any wonder that we have the reprisals of the bullet and the bomb?
Many people in this House have been calling for the abolition of Stormont. This appeal has been led by the Taoiseach himself. Stormont has been described as a discredited and unfit assembly to govern over that part of Ireland. If we are to act on that proposition we should do everything possible to bring down the regime there. At least we must not do anything or say anything to give comfort or succour to them. We must not condone them. More important still, we must not do anything or say anything here to buttress up that rotten, sordid regime. This, Sir, is where the violence emanates from and has emanated from over the past 50 years. This is the source of the violence, and the actions of the so-called extremists on the other side are but a consequence and not a source of that violence.
War and violence are, indeed, terrible things which none of us desires, but there are equally terrible things about which we must record our abhorrence. There is the violence of discrimination. To deny a family a home because of their religion and condemn them to a life of misery and privation is a terrible thing. This, to my mind, is violence. To deny a man a means of livelihood and condemn him to a life of pauperism is a terrible thing. To harass and cow a man by all the oppressive machinery of the State because he is not of the right colour or class is a terrible thing. To systematically burn out from their homes sections of people because of their religion is a terrible and a violent thing.
In my contention, we cannot remain neutral or silent or compromising in the face of widespread aggression of the most vicious kind, physical, psychological, social and economic, being meted out to the minority of people in north east Ulster. All those who claim to be Irish in outlook, and especially Catholic, for the past 50 years have been deprived of fundamental rights. They have been discriminated against deliberately in respect of employment, homes, equal opportunities, civil rights and the like.
Since its inception, Stormont has been a ruthless totalitarian regime designed to copperfasten one class of unionists in power in perpetuity. When we talk of violence let us not forget the violence and repression which have been its stock-in-trade. It was born out of the usurpation of rights and the denial of Irish nationhood. It has been maintained by the brute force of the British Army, an armed police force, et cetera. Over the past 50 years, as I have already said, it has been an armed citadel with all the paraphernalia of war directed at the minority, and the minority, alone, and all those who would dare to assert their rights or, indeed, aspire to a united Ireland. This, then, is the violence I want to talk about, the violence of a people deluged with CS gas, bombarded with rubber bullets and real bullets, the violence of the violation of their homes, the insults to their women and their children, the blowing up of our Border roads.
There is also the question of the internment of our Irish men and women who are subjected to terrible forms of torture—the worst form of torture ever conceived by the minds of evil men. This is violence of a terrible kind and it begets violence in return. How much more can people be expected to suffer in these circumstances, without retaliation, without help? We had hoped for a political solution to this problem. We had the promised reforms which we hoped would be implemented: the equal rights and equal opportunities which were supposed to be granted to all the people in north east Ulster, and the right of fair representation in Parliament there. Mr. Heath and Mr. Faulkner have clearly welshed on these fundamental issues. It seems to me that the reform programme which we envisaged and hoped for is now as dead as the dodo. Instead, we have the new policy, a policy of force, of terror and naked aggression—force, terror and aggression on a scale and of an intensity never before known in the long, sad, chequered history of this unfortunate country.
Force is the policy. Let us make no mistake about it. All the Frankensteins of war and repression which the last remnants of the robber empire could muster up are let loose at present in Northern Ireland in a last desperate endeavour to break the spirit of a risen people and condemn them to yet another 50 or perhaps 100 years under the odious Unionist system which they abhor.
Hear, hear.
I do not want to bomb one million Protestants into an Irish Republic. The founding father of our Republic, Tone, ordained that in this island home of ours there was a place for all to work and live together in harmony, peace and brotherly unity, Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter. So, please God, shall it be.
I do not want to coerce one million Protestants to join us by the bullet or the bomb, but we cannot stand idly by either and witness the minority, comprising 40 per cent of that population, being coerced under a wave of terror and intimidation into conforming to an overbearing tyranny for perhaps another half century. We can no longer remain silent or neutral. History will treat us harshly for failing to come to the aid of our oppressed fellow Irish men and women in this their hour of need. While the overall responsibility is Britain's we have a grave obligation in this House to expose the situation there for what it is and to reveal the truth—the truth about the torture meted out to the detainees and about the men and women who have been bludgeoned and brutalised, maimed and driven insane. There is evidence, factually documented and certified by responsible observers and medical men, of the atrocities carried out by British agents in north east Ulster. The stomach turns and the mind boggles on reading the barbarous and gruesome reports of men manacled, with sacks placed over their heads for days on end, being thrown from helicopters, being forced to run the gauntlet of the revolver, the fist and the boot, of being convulsed by electric shocks, of being beaten unconscious, of having revolvers fired into the mouth, of being subjected to deafening noises, of having a hypodermic needle pushed up the penis. These are ghoulish deeds which are happening in our time in Ireland. These are fiendish deeds and I ask: what are we doing to expose this and to bring the perpetrators to justice?
Mr. Faulkner and Mr. Heath said that these allegations of brutality are untrue. To say that in the face of such massive factual evidence is for these men to sully their high offices with a lie in their mouths and in their hearts. These Prime Ministers clearly seek to hide the terrible truth and the crimes of which they are guilty. Their integrity, if they had any, is shattered. Nothing which Heath or Faulkner may now say or do or promise can be accepted by us. They are the purveyors of falsehood and deceit, and this House must record them as brazen liars in trying to conceal from the world the terrible tortures they have perpetrated on Irish men and women in 1971. Perhaps this is nothing new in respect of British statesmen and British diplomacy. Their predecessors have also intrigued, lied and deceived on the Irish question. Treachery, brutality and forgery have been their stock-in-trade in dealing with the mere Irish.
I do not accept the concept of two nations, one for a certain class of Irish men and women in north east Ulster and the other for a section of people down here. I assert that Ireland's historic claim is for nationhood and separation. Neither do I accept the suggestion being bandied about of accepting some kind of unnatural division of my country. I believe that the time for compromise, for acquiescence and piffle is over. We must not stand idly by. We must come to the defence of our too-long oppressed people quickly and effectively by all the means at our disposal. For fear of a Unionist backlash are we going to leave the minority unprotected, defenceless, to be shot down, maimed and brutalised like dogs, or worse still enslaved for another 50 or 100 years?
I believe that the time is now or never. I do not advocate force and never have, but I do advocate defence, united defence against the designs of Stormont or Westminster. I do not know that it is immoral for one to defend oneself against an aggressor. If people are attacked they have the right to be defended or at least to be allowed to defend themselves.
With the same weapon as is used in the attack.
If we will not help them in their hour of need let us not hinder them. If we do not help them, all I can say is: God help and protect them.
I said I do not condone violence, but I understand the history of my country and I understand that violence has been a recurring event in that long, sad history. I have submitted that violence is endemic in the long history of our country especially when we were oppressed by a foreign power. We sometimes tend to forget that that foreign power is still battening on Irish soil. That oppression has not as yet ended. It continues today unabated in its intensity and in its ferocity in north east Ulster.
The previous speaker, Deputy FitzGerald, quoted from Pearse and Tone. Behind us in the corridors of this House have been erected statues of great men who strove to make us a free, prosperous nation. I am mindful of the words of Pearse speaking over the grave of O'Donovan Rossa some months before the Insurrection. Towards the close of his remarks, talking about the life of Rossa he said:
In a closer spiritual communion with him now than ever before or perhaps ever again, in a spiritual communion with those of his day, living and dead, who suffered with him in English prisons, in communion of spirit too with our own dear comrades who suffer in English prisons today, and speaking on their behalf as well as our own, we pledge to Ireland our love and we pledge to English rule in Ireland our hate. This is a place of peace, sacred to the dead, where men should speak with all charity and with all restraint; but I hold it a Christian thing, as O'Donovan Rossa held it, to hate evil, to hate untruth, to hate oppression, and, hating them, to strive to overthrow them. Our foes are strong and wise and wary, but strong and wise and wary as they are, they cannot undo the miracles of God who ripens in the hearts of young men the seeds sown by the young men of a former generation. And the seeds sown by the men of '65 and '67 are coming to their miraculous ripening today. Rulers and defenders of realms had need to be wary if they would guard against such processes. Life springs from death, and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations. The Defenders of this Realm have worked well in secret and in the open. They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools! —they have left us our Fenian dead and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.
The man who uttered those historic sentiments marched out a few months later with the founder, the martyred leader of my party, the Irish Labour Party, and some of his last words were: "We went out to break the connection with England, the never failing source of all our social and economic evils."
I take this opportunity of reiterating the spirit and intention of my founder's life and death and aspirations as contained in the constitution of my party, a policy which states clearly and categorically:
to establish in all Ireland a democratic Republic based upon the social teachings of its founder— James Connolly.
The Labour Party affirms that the national territory consists of the whole island of Ireland, its islands and territorial seas; and it accepts as part of its immediate programme the work of securing social justice and equal opportunities for all citizens in accordance with the declaration of Democratic Principles embodied in the Proclamation of Easter, 1916.
That constitution goes further and states:
The Labour Party insists that the material and cultural possibilities of the Nation must be organised and fostered, in order to maintain and enhance the dignity of Ireland as a nation among the nations of the world. The Irish people must also co-operate, on the basis of equal rights and opportunities, with the peoples of other countries for the purpose of building up an international community on the same principles of peace, justice and order as must inspire the national community.
Further on it states:
In accordance with the foregoing principles, the Labour Party will seek:—
to establish in the entire national territory a Republican form of government founded on the principles of social justice, sustained by democratic institutions and guaranteeing civil and religious liberty and equal opportunities to achieve happiness to all citizens;
This is the purpose for which I joined this party. This has been my credo. This is the policy to which I conform and none other. It is the intention of the Labour Party to oppose this motion this evening—an absurd motion, an insult to the intelligence of this House. The Taoiseach dared not bring in a positive motion calling for support for his policies because there were voices heard here today in total disagreement with him, especially that of Deputy Neil Blaney. This nebulous motion means nothing to us because we record our opposition by reason of the utter incompetence of the Taoiseach and the Fianna Fáil Government to deal effectively with the terrible state of affairs we have to contend with. It is somewhat ridiculous for the Taoiseach, Deputy Jack Lynch, to call for the release of internees now in detention because he was the first to mention the word "detention" in recent times. He put the thought into the minds of Faulkner and others. He precipitated internment in this country and this party, because of the stand we took, can take full credit that it did not happen here.
Hear, hear.
The Chequers meeting achieved nothing. The Taoiseach has taken no practical steps to expose the tortures I have adverted to in my address. Neither is he competent to deal with this overall situation by reason of the known disunity within his party. Consequently the credibility of the Government is in serious question. It is for these reasons that we are opposing the motion to adjourn this evening. These are some of the sentiments to which I hold fast in respect of the issue involved.
This is the authentic voice of the Labour Party.
Definitely.
We have heard just now a considerable and, to some extent, impressive amount of rhetoric. My only regret is that Deputy Treacy did not see fit to be more specific as to what precisely he wished to see done, what he believed should be done in this tragic situation with which we are faced.
That is your responsibility. You tell us.
The Deputy knows very well that the time has passed for oratory and play-acting. This is a serious time for this country, when clearcut, honest statements by representatives elected to this House are needed. We did not hear one now.
In this terrible situation with which the Irish nation is faced it is very easy for all of us, whatever political views we may have, to lose sight of certain fundamental points, obvious though they are to all of us on cool reflection. I believe that it is very important that we should recall these fundamental points in our assessment of this situation and our assessment of the action that should be taken.
The first fundamental point to be remembered in considering this problem is that the partition of this country was imposed by Britain without the consent of any section of the Irish people. It was imposed by Britain and it is maintained by Britain. We must reiterate again the historical fact that the partition of Ireland was an expedient which was born of moral cowardice. It was an expedient devised to avert the threat of violence from Orange extremists who assiduously cultivated among their own followers a superstitious and primitive fear of their fellow-countrymen. We must also recall that when we refer to the majority in Northern Ireland we are talking about a minority of the Irish people, a minority who are enforcing their will on the majority of the Irish people and on the British Government.
The State of Northern Ireland was deliberately and artificially created, specifically designed to produce a permanent majority for this minority of the Irish people. Since it was created deliberately and artificially to produce this result, by definition there cannot be democracy in Northern Ireland. This is the reason that we have proposed as part of an interim solution that there should be an equal share in decision-making between the two communities in the North because there cannot be democracy there for the reasons I have mentioned——
Did I understand the Minister to say that he proposed?
I said we proposed.
You did no such thing.
I did not interrupt previously. The Deputy is entitled to interrupt if he wishes, of course——
For the record, this Government did not propose anything——
Deputy Harte will get an opportunity to make his speech.
I wish to place on the record that Deputy Harte is completely incorrect in what he said. The Taoiseach has spelled this out on more than one occasion. There cannot be democracy in Northern Ireland because of the way the State of Northern Ireland was artificially created and any interim solution must recognise that fact. This is a fundamental point of which, apparently, some leader writers and political commentators here have lost sight. I should like to remind them of it.
Another point we must bear in mind is that the terms used in relation to Northern Ireland of "Government", "Parliament", "Prime Minister", are quite inappropriate for a regional assembly which is administering an area with such powers as are delegated to that assembly by a sovereign parliament. This whole set-up is designed as a smokescreen to obscure the fundamental fact I was making that the State was artificially created to prevent democracy operating. Mr. Brian Faulkner is the leader of the Unionist Parliamentary Party. He is not in any generally accepted sense throughout the world a Prime Minister and we should recall this fact also when considering the situation.
So far as we are concerned, in trying to achieve the reunification of the country we are faced with two fundamental problems. The first is to get the British out of our country and the second is to achieve reconciliation between the Unionist population and the rest of the Irish people. If the only problem with which we were faced were to get the British out of our country I would not hesitate for one moment to use violence, and as much violence as was necessary, to get the British out. However, the second problem arises just as much, and anyone who pretends that the solution to our problems is simply to get the British out and nothing else is being dishonest.
Hear, hear.
Our aim has always been the reunification of this country. We have never made any secret of this in whatever actions we took, in whatever took place in the past by way of meetings between the late Seán Lemass and Terence O'Neill and in the other matters that followed from that. I think Deputy Cruise-O'Brien is gravely mistaken in the line he has been taking in this matter. Not alone would it be dishonest of us to refrain from mentioning that our aim is reunification but it would be totally ineffective. The Unionists know this is our aim. They know we want to reunite this country in friendliness between all our people.
Although when the late Seán Lemass met Terence O'Neill the whole programme made sense from the point of view of greater co-operation between the Unionists and the rest of Irishmen, nevertheless Seán Lemass did not make any effort to conceal his aim. I would remind the House that the Reverend Ian Paisley in commenting on that meeting said that the day Seán Lemass crossed the doors of Stormont was the day on which Northern Ireland started on the slippery slope towards its destruction. He was right. This situation which has arisen has not arisen because of recent causes. There have been many factors contributing to it, not least the sense of insecurity felt by a number of Unionists in the development of co-operation between North and South.
As far as I am concerned I see the approach to a solution of this problem in two stages. First, an interim solution on the lines we have suggested and which can only take place following the destruction of Unionist domination in Northern Ireland. Then, there must be a phased British withdrawal. Our immediate efforts must be aimed at achieving the first stage. I believe firmly that, having achieved that stage, the second stage of British withdrawal will follow relatively easily. We must bear in mind all the time the objectives we are trying to achieve. We must try to ensure that the methods we adopt are the most effective in achieving those aims and, tempting though it is, we must not allow our natural emotional reaction to certain things that happen to obscure our aims and to destroy our effectiveness. We need self-discipline, not self-indulgence.
The situation existing in the North today is dominated by the question of violence. I would tell those who think in terms of guerilla warfare to think a little further and to tell us if they know of any situation anywhere in the world where guerilla warfare was successful without the support of the people. It is precisely because guerilla warfare cannot be successful without the support of the people that we have Partition and that we have freedom in the 26 Counties.
The men who went out and fought in 1916, as referred to by Deputy Treacy, fought one of the most successful guerilla wars ever fought anywhere, but they failed to remove the British from Northern Ireland precisely because they had not the support of the local population. This is a very important point for anybody who thinks in terms of applying the lessons of Irish history to the situation today. Apply the whole lesson, the lesson that we failed in the past, and find out why we failed. If we really mean to achieve reunification and not just to talk about it then we have an obligation to ensure that the methods we adopt will not make the same mistakes as were made in the past and that they will be successful.
Supposing that a campaign of guerilla warfare and violence in the North were to succeed in driving the British out, what then? Are we to have a war against the Unionists? Is that what the aim is? All of the parties in this House have set their faces against such an eventuality and all of the leaders of my party, including its founder, and his successor, two men who had marched out in 1916 and took part in the subsequent war of independence, set their faces against it. There is a better solution.
I would remind people that the Unionist Party need the IRA and in the past when they did not have anything to go on they created an IRA scare. It is the one thing which will hold them together and will obscure the sordid details of their power structure. Remember they need the IRA and remember who benefits by what is happening at the moment. My view is that both the British Government and the IRA appear to have the same priorities, that is military victory followed by a political settlement on their terms. They are both wrong for exactly the same reasons. Neither can win. That kind of solution is not possible. Whether it is tried by the British or the Irish there is no such solution possible in Northern Ireland. Let us face the reality of it and not allow our emotions to encourage this kind of thing. They are both wrong for precisely the same reasons and they will both fail. There is no possibility of real and lasting unity in this country being achieved by having one section of the community violently imposing its will on the other.
That is what the Unionists have been trying to do for 50 years and they have failed. If we try to do it to them we will also fail. I have said that the leaders of this party successively have in their time set their faces against any such approach to unity, that they knew there was a better way to unity.
The Taoiseach has followed precisely in those footsteps in the line he has taken. We want a unity which will not be tarnished by rancour and bitterness—with the bitter memories which follow on for generations after a civil war. Because Abraham Lincoln recognised the depth and durability of such bitterness he strove with all his might to avoid the American Civil War and in the period prior to the American Civil War he endured the taunts of Confederates and Federals alike. He was subjected to charges of vacillation, of weakness and of cowardice. He was charged with lack of resolution; yet he remained resolute in his quest for peace until war was forced on him. The history of the United States since then vindicates the forebodings and indeed the forbearance and patience of Lincoln. I do not think the historic parallel with Lincoln will have escaped the common sense of the vast majority of the Irish people, North and South. The Taoiseach need not fear the verdict of history.
I have said that it is my belief that the solution to this problem is in two stages and that at this point we have to concentrate our efforts on the first stage, which I see to be an interim solution on the lines enunciated by the Taoiseach. This can only be achieved after Unionist domination has been broken. The only way in which this can be done is by political means— and it can be done. On at least two occasions in the last few years the Unionists were on the verge of self-destruction and they were saved by the IRA. Not alone can political methods achieve this objective but they can do so in such a way that the inevitable bitterness of the Unionists will be directed against the British and not against their fellow-Irishmen. Only in this way can we hope to create a united Ireland in which all of the Irish people can have hope and confidence.
I would say to the IRA: "You are helping the Unionists and the rightwing British Tories. Get out of the way and let the real battle be fought." What is happening at the moment is holding us back. Some Unionists have recognised the hopelessness of their position and they are beginning to consider the possibility of a united Ireland in a rational way. They must not be made to feel that their backs are to the wall and that they have literally got to fight for their lives. We must rather kick away the props on which they have relied so that they must stand up and take their rightful place in this nation.
I would say to the Unionists that the present system, to which they have given misguided allegiance, is an insult to them. It is based on the proposition that they would not be able to hold their own in an Irish community. It is based on the proposition that they can preserve their identity and their traditions only in a discriminatory system which affords them favoured treatment over their neighbours. There is evidence that Unionists are coming to realise that Orangeism by its very nature implies an insulting under-estimation of the Protestant community itself. It tells them they cannot survive on equal terms. It tells them that in jobs, housing and social matters they cannot prosper on equal terms. This, surely, diminishes a people whose reputation for sturdy and practical competence is acknowledged by all. The Unionist community can bring qualities which will one day enrich the life of the Republic. To suggest to them, as the Orange Order does, that they can survive only under a sectarian and discriminatory State diminishes them. There must be many Unionists who feel ashamed at recent revelations. Any system that seeks to prolong its existence by methods that outrage the conscience of the enlightened world is not one in which men of character can take any pride.
To the British Government I would say that it is past time that British statesmen learned the lesson of history. At a time when common sense points towards the need for radical, political initiatives we find Britain having recourse to methods which have failed her everywhere, including this part of Ireland. The show of force, the blowing up of roads, the illusion that more soldiers, more barricades will bring peace play right into the hands of those who are set upon violent ways.
The British Government, as I said at the beginning, created Partition and it is the British Government that maintains it. By its own laws it has the overall control of the Six Counties. It cannot escape responsibility for what is done by Unionists. It allows them to do it and it supports them in doing it. The British Government need not imagine that it can continue on this line with impunity. In fact, it is already feeling some of the repercussions, which are as nothing to what may follow if this course continues. The obdurate refusal of the British Government to listen to the elected representatives of the minority in the North is guaranteed to prolong the violence. It reinforces those whose misreading of the situation leads them to a simplistic verdict that Britain listens only to the sound of gunfire.
I know that the history of Britain, particularly in her relations with Ireland, is studded with incredible examples of blunders and stupidity. I know that recent events would suggest that Mr. Heath and his colleagues are committing precisely the same follies now. Despite that evidence, I believe that the actions of the British Government have been subjected to a number of constraints, not least of which has been, in the early stages at any rate, plain ignorance of the real situation in Ireland. I also believe that the British Government has learned some hard lessons from the past and it is, I think, likely to apply the results of those lessons quite soon. When it does I do not expect that Mr. Faulkner will be very happy. But one thing is certain: a continuation by the British Government of its present course in Northern Ireland can lead only to disaster, disaster which will not be confined to Ireland. I would wish to be able to say to the British people: let them not be deceived by the brashness of Unionist apologists and the threadbare boasts of their getting to grips with the terrorists or restoring law and order. The violence that has characterised Northern Ireland throughout its existence is the fruit of a society where law is a travesty and order is grotesque. By its very nature this must be so and it will continue to be so until the real solution to the whole problem is achieved, namely, the reunification by peaceful means of all the Irish people.
This is a serious and in many ways a tragic time for our people. It is also a time of great opportunity. It is a time when we are closer than we have ever been to achieving the aim of all of us, the reunification, in peace, of this country. I believe all of us have a very serious duty at this time. I believe history will pass its verdict on what we do at this time. I believe that verdict will not take account of immediate emotional reactions to things that are happening but will, rather, take account of whether we were capable as a people of being disciplined, of using our intelligence and of using the power we have. It is not militarily possible effectively to achieve the reunification of this country and all of those who by word, action or implication prevent that course will be judged very harshly by history. But they may be judged very harshly much earlier than that. They have an obligation to this nation, an obligation to use their intelligence. It is not enough for people in this serious time to feel strongly. That is not enough. In particular, that is not enough from elected representatives. The people are entitled to get from them more than emotionalism and more than violence. They are entitled to get intelligence and statesmanship. I am glad to say they are getting that from the Government.
This is the most depressing debate we have had so far on this terrible crisis in the North of Ireland. I question the sincerity of the Government Party in recalling the Dáil to discuss such a vital issue seeing that, since the Taoiseach sat down yesterday shortly before 4 o'clock, very few Fianna Fáil Deputies have been present during the debate. Often there were as few as one Government Deputy and certainly never more than five.
There are only two on the Fine Gael benches at the moment.
The obligation is on the Government to provide a quorum. The Fianna Fáil Party are saddled with responsibility for taking decisions which will affect us all.
Will the Deputy tell us something about the North of Ireland now and what his views are?
The lack of interest by Government Deputies in this debate should go on record. I had the privilege of being in Westminister a fortnight or three weeks ago when this issue was being debated there. Politicians here have been saying how ignorant British politicians are about the Irish question, but I want to put on record also that in the House of Commons people listened attentively to what was being said. Here I find myself addressing a House that is almost empty. This is a disgraceful lack of interest in the debate. In relation to a comment that appears in the Press today concerning a Fine Gael Deputy who asked for a quorum yesterday, I would remind the Press that when the Minister for Social Welfare was addressing the House there was not even one Fianna Fáil Deputy here to listen to him and this particular Minister comes from a Border county and is one who has the responsibility for moulding public opinion on the northern situation.
He did not do that.
The Chair's attention was drawn to the empty Fianna Fáil benches and today we have public comment to the effect that it was wrong for a Fine Gael Deputy to have requested a House. In other words, we should have been telling the general public that in this pious assembly made up of people from the four corners of Ireland, Deputies sat through the debate and listened to each other's contributions and tried to assess which man was talking sanity. In today's Press comment the integrity of a Deputy who pinpointed the lack of interest in the Minister's contribution was questioned.
While I knock the public commentator for what he had to say about that Deputy, I compliment him on the heading of his article which says that the debate produced few real ideas on unity. Why has the debate not produced any real ideas on unity? I do not have to tell the House which side I would be on if the battle lines were drawn. We all know the answer to these questions. Why have we not tried to find a real approach to national unity? The answer is that at the moment south of the Border there is a national contest in progress to determine who will be the greatest republican while north of the Border the question is who can be the most loyal Unionist.
In my opinion the majority of people both north and south of the Border simply want to be plain Irish people who wish to associate with their neighbours whether they be Catholics, Protestants or Dissenters. They want to produce an Ireland of which they can all be proud. However, what we find is a Taoiseach ranting with Mr. Faulkner across the Border, criticising Mr. Faulkner because it is popular to do that occasionally. We find Mr. Faulkner in an entrenched position so that every time he appears on television all he can say is that the gunman must be defeated, that the law breaker must be subdued and that we must restore law and order—but only of course whenever it appears that these dreadful acts are being carried out by the IRA and never when there is a suspicion that they could be caused by anybody other than IRA people. Down along the line we have people south of the Border who are in less important positions than the Taoiseach shouting their heads off but with nobody really trying to find a solution. Even the Minister who has spoken just now and has told us in a mature way that the IRA north of the Border are the greatest weapon that the Unionist Party have will not forget that the IRA were very beneficial to his party in the past. However, I have no wish to go into the past but merely to recall that the type of policy we have had in this Assembly from all parties, but particularly from Fianna Fáil, has been one of extreme patriotism—whatever that means. One week a politician will stand up and criticise everything north of the Border that it is popular to criticise while of course north of the Border, where the position is like a heckler's sideboard, it is the other way around. We have the Fianna Fáil Party shouting that they are the only party that can end Partition and in so doing they criticise everything that is anti-patriotic.
I have no wish to interrupt——
Then keep quiet.
Would the Deputy tell us what he is doing about the situation?
North of the Border there is the Unionist Party who are saying that they are the only party who can maintain Partition.
What is the Deputy doing?
Please listen.
I hear only personal criticisms.
The greatest accusation I can level at any politician is that since the foundation of this State we have never tried to understand what Partition is. We have never tried to find a solution and we have never tried to understand the northern Unionist. We have never tried to appreciate that he, too, is an Irishman, that he differs from us fundamentally only for political reasons. We have not acted. As I have said before, any Protestant born north of the Border of two Irish parents, of four Irish grandparents and eight Irish great-grandparents has not had the right, and we have never given him the chance, to call himself an Irishman. But any person who may be born of foreign parents but who parades in Croke Park on the day of an all-Ireland final, who sings Faith of our Fathers loud enough and who clicks his heels when he sees our national flag being raised or when he hears our national anthem being played is, of course, an Irishman. I do not understand this sort of logic. I do not say that only Fianna Fáil politicians are guilty of this attitude. I have said before that too many politicians have never tried to understand what Partition is and have never realised their obligations to the people they represent. They have not realised that within their power they had the moulding of public opinion and that there was an obligation on them to end Partition but to end it in a way that Partition could be ended. I have a note here of something I said some time ago and that was "that people who aim at removing the Border by force can succeed only in making Partition more permanent because the Border is only a dividing line between two political systems; Partition is a dividing line which separates people from each other and when people are driven to kill each other, when they treat each other with contempt, when they ignore each other and do not mix socially, this is Partition and it will not be solved by taking sides. Since the foundation of this State politicians have been taking sides".
Recently one of my best supporters said to me that he agreed with my attitude to the North "but," he said, "get down from the ditch and begin criticising the Unionists, because there are more votes in that attitude." If this is the sad position that the Irish nation finds itself in, I do not wish to be a Member of this House. I have no wish to represent people like that. I am convinced that my attitude is more beneficial than the confused type of thinking and the different approaches that have been put forward. Deputy Blaney told us this morning that he has never supported violence or advocated it. If that is so the Deputy must be the most wrongly reported individual ever known, because, in Fahan, County Donegal, as reported in the Irish Times on 21st February, 1949, Deputy Blaney stated that “if constitutional means were not enough to end Partition, then we would have to fight”. This type of statement has bedevilled the Irish people since the foundation of this State. Unless we start to think clearly on the divisions of our people and realise that the ending of the Border is not the solution to all our problems and unless we try to understand the northern Unionists, in 100 years time people sitting in this House will be asking, in debates similar to this one, why have we never found the solution.
At a recent meeting with a number of Church leaders in Belfast one very esteemed Methodist minister said to me: "I cried the day Partition was announced because as a young Irishman living in County Tipperary I was being forced into being a deep Republican when my own Church people north of the Border were forcing other people to remain Unionist. All I wanted to do was to remain an Irishman." He went on to say that ever since that time he accused the southern Irish of not trying to understand the northern Protestant, of not trying to bridge the difference between our societies. He expressed his view by telling a story. He said that if an Irish boy were to court an Irish girl in the manner in which the southern Irish Republic tried to understand the northern Irish Unionist they would never marry. That puts in a nutshell the entire history of this State in the last 50 years. We have never tried to understand.
We have just heard it said by the Minister for Finance that you cannot have normal politics north of the Border without breaking the Unionist Party. That is true. But, how do you break it? Is it possible to break it and if it were possible to break it would that change the attitude of one Protestant? What do you replace it by? A Protestant Unionist Party or a Loyalist Party? This would not change the system.
Arguments have been put forward by the Taoiseach that direct rule should be the answer. When the Minister for Social Welfare repeated this yesterday I asked him in what way does direct rule change the attitude of a Bannsider or a Shankiller or a Fountain Streeter in Derry. He did not answer because it will not change the attitudes. Attitudes will never be changed. Unless people south of the Border sincerely tell people north of the Border that when we say certain things we mean them, kind words can be met by kind words but it takes kind deeds to be matched by kind deeds before success can be achieved.
The Unionist Party north of the Border, who are taking sides, can bring in all the repressive legislation they like, can continue internment, can increase the military force in the Six Counties, can blow up all the cross-Border roads they like, can intern more Irish people, but they will never find a solution.
South of the Border we can advocate different systems north of the Border; we can advocate the abolition of Stormont, can repeat the statement that there will never be peace in this country until the country is united, but unless we get to the point where we can sit down at a table with them and iron out our differences, we are not, as the leading article of the Irish Times said today, finding any real ideas on unity.
If the Taoiseach's decision to recall the Dáil was to serve any useful purpose—so far I have not seen it—if its purpose was that Deputies could reason with each other in public debate, then the present attendance in the House of Deputies of all parties is an indication of our desire to find real solutions and we will go back riding our own horses and shouting at each other and we will all go back into our own political corners. If these battle hymns continue, we will be going in a reverse direction.
It is time that someone shouted halt. It is time that we as a nation south of the Border tried to understand the role we have to play and tried to create conditions north of the Border for Irish people so that they can settle their differences before rejoining us. South of the Border, so far as I can gather, the various speakers who have taken what could be described as a right wing attitude in this debate have regarded Partition as the dividing issue between the northern majority and ourselves. Recently in one national newspaper there were published the comments of an Englishman who attended the Treaty negotiations in London.
Arising from that I asked that the Treaty debates of this Parliament be scrutinised. I did not get it done completely but I have reasons to believe that the Treaty debate, which took place in Dublin almost 50 years ago. did not make Partition an issue. The issue debated was whether we swore allegiance to a Crown or whether we did not. The trouble was not Partition. This should be clearly stated. The trouble in this country in 1921 was not Partition or the division of the country. It was not the Border. The trouble was the setting up of Stormont. Partition was a natural thing to introduce when you could not have reconciliation between a northern majority and the southern Irish. It was a natural thing to introduce as a stepping stone to unity at a later date. Since that time we have muddled our thinking. We have never tried to understand and never tried to devise ways of bridging the Border. Any person who thinks in terms of removing the Border as a solution to all our problems is not seeing the picture clearly.
If it were possible for Ted Heath to phone the Taoiseach tomorrow morning and to say, "I am withdrawing all the military from the North of Ireland, I am removing my customs posts from the Border" and if we were to take Senator Edward Kennedy's proposal as being the solution, does anyone think for a moment that this would end Partition? Does any person think that the northern majority would give their consent to being ruled by a Dublin Parliament without our first winning their confidence?
Deputy Blaney said this morning that the northern majority have nothing to fear in an all-Ireland Republic. I know this, every Deputy in this House knows it, but do the northern Unionists believe Deputy Blaney when he makes that type of speech? Is it the fault of the northern Unionists for not believing Deputy Blaney? Can we truthfully condemn the northern Unionists for not believing us or do we ask ourselves if we have given them reason for not believing us?
Everyone knows which side I am on I do not have to repeat it, but in fairness I think the type of policy that the people south of the Border have had towards national reunification has never been a clear one. I point this finger at the Taoiseach and say that one of the jobs he is failing in is uniting the people south of the Border on this particular issue. I suspect that perhaps in the wildest of his dreams if there was an end to Partition and a reunification, he wants the glory for himself. Does it matter who gets the glory? The important thing is that Irish people should reach the stage where they can live together in peace and in harmony. I realise, as a northern Deputy who belongs to a party which has Deputies from the southern parts of the country, and they realise that as a northern Deputy I have more in common with people living across the Border in Derry or Tyrone.
What do we mean when we talk about uniting our country? Do we mean uniting people our way? When I say "our way" I mean uniting them through the ideas that are in the minds of the ultra-modern super-Republicans on this side of the Border, which emanate occasionally from Rathcoole, the home of Mr. Boland, or Rossnakill, the home of Deputy Blaney. I do not think this is the type of unity which I want. I want the type of unity where every person, North and South, would feel proud to be Irish.
If tomorrow morning the objection to national reunification was the changing of our tricolour I would be prepared to change it because the tricolour has not always been the national emblem of this nation. If tomorrow morning the changing of our national anthem meant national reunification I would be prepared to change it because again it has not always been the national anthem of our State. I respect both of these symbols but the trouble is that at the moment too many people symbolise patriotism wrongly.
Let us get back to assessing what is between us. The northern Unionist wants to remain British; he does not want to call himself less Irish for doing so. There is no reason why we cannot continue to allow him to say this; it will not make any difference to me. If a Protestant from Derry says he lives in Londonderry I shall take no exception to his calling it "Londonderry", provided he takes no exception to my calling it "Derry". That is a simple thing, but if we go a step further and someone says that he is Irish but British we find it hard to reason with this. My answer is that I am Irish but European and sooner or later every person living in Scotland, Wales and England will be European. If the people up there want to remain British let them remain British; if we can reunite our people the Border means nothing to me.
How do we do it? During the Adjournment Debate on the last day of the last session of the Dáil, I stated —it is on record—that my choice of a united Ireland would be a 32-county Ireland under one Parliament. This in my judgment would be the ideal thing, but it is not practicable, it is not there, it is not on. What is the difference then? What do we do? We aim at uniting Ireland under two parliaments. If we can say to the northern Unionists as we have done and as indeed Deputy Blaney said this morning, that we want a peaceful solution, what in fact does a peaceful solution mean if one analyses it completely?
In my judgement it means that we say to the northern Unionists that we want a solution to which they will give their consent. We also mean we are looking for a solution that is in suspension until they do give their consent. In other words, we are giving them the right to opt out until we can find a mutually acceptable agreement. This is a recognition of Partition and whether Deputy Blaney wishes to admit this or not, when Mr. Boland, Deputy Blaney or any other Deputy says, "We are looking for a peaceful solution" he is in fact recognising Partition, he is giving people who do not give their consent to a reunification of the country an opportunity to opt out. When one gives a person the opportunity to opt out one cannot put a time limit for opting out because again this is force.
If we are to say to the northern Unionists or the northern majority— I have said this before—"We do not want to coerce you", what do we mean? We mean we do not want to force them but if we mean we do not want to force them we should inform them that until such time as they see reason for rejoining us we accept Partition in a temporary way. When we tell them that we are using peaceful means as a sovereign State with duly elected members in a Government there is an obligation on us to ensure that other people do not use violence towards those means because then confusion sets in and the northern Unionists go back into their corner. The northern Unionists then address such questions as this: "If you do not support the IRA, why do you harbour them? Why do you conceal them? Why do some of your people south of the Border subscribe to the IRA?" As Deputy O'Leary said today, even outside Catholic churches people subscribe to buy arms in communist countries to shoot Irish people at home. The stupidity of it all sickens me. The terrible thing is that often with the consent of Catholic priests—misguided of course—or people who have been brought up in any unreal atmosphere, some people say that the situation in the north of Ireland now is comparable to the situation here during the Black and Tan war.
I want to take to task one of the Labour speakers who compared conditions north of the border with those which existed in southern Ireland during the Black and Tan war. There are many parallels but the British have little or nothing to do with the division between Irish people north of the Border at the moment. It is true the charge can be levelled that their soldiers are now doing the work which the former B Specials did; it is true to say that the British Government pump about £120 million per year into the northern economy and that this has the effect of propping up a puppet team, but when people say the British are the cause of it, who are the British: the Scots, the Welsh and the English? What have the Scots to do with this or the Welsh or the English?
This has been a sad mistake by politicians who never tried to understand the Irish question. When politicians here say that the British Government have swept this question under the carpet for the last 50 years the same charge can be made against Irish politicians who only brought it out whenever it was popular in order to get votes, like my friend who says: "Paddy, I believe in what you are saying but stop saying it because you will lose votes." This is the type of thinking that has bedevilled this nation. The terrible thing about it all is that innocent people lose their lives when politicians play upon national reunification or maintenance of Partition, as the case may be. Therefore, it is wrong for Deputy Jack Lynch as Taoiseach, for Deputy Liam Cosgrave as leader of the Opposition and for Deputy Brendan Corish as leader of the Labour Party and equally wrong for every Member of the House to take sides in this issue. It is easy to take sides; when we take sides all we do is rehash all the faults we have seen or heard of in the past 50 years but we do not find solutions. The trouble in the North at present is that nobody is trying to find solutions and if nobody tries, this terrible curse on the Irish people will continue and more innocent lives will be lost.
A sad thing happened in the town of Strabane, which is in my parish. There was a deaf-mute who did not appreciate what was happening. He was an intelligent young boy. After a protest meeting in the town, with emotion and excitement running high, he finds a rubber bullet and, treating it as a plaything, he goes: "Bang, bang, bang!" around the place. A young British soldier sees him, thinks he has a weapon and that boy is shot dead. Whom do we blame? The immediate guilty person is the young soldier who dropped to his knee and fired. Overheard was the remark of the British soldier who said with a four-letter word: "Who did that?" When he discovered what had happened he said: "You disappear before someone shoots you." Then we ask who is guilty. It does not matter who is guilty: that young boy is dead, an innocent boy.
Likewise, we can tell of the unarmed youths in Derry who, out of the frustration of their own position, go into the streets and throw stones and petrol bombs to protest against the system but not to throw stones at the Army. They are killed. We know of people in Belfast who were caught up in this terrible thing. The funerals take place and we on this side of the Border, depending on what one wants to say, draw our own conclusions and blame the immediate situation. If the Supreme Judge was to analyse the entire picture of the history of the country I wonder how much responsibility I would share for this terrible thing, how much responsibility every Member of the present Dáil would share and how much every Deputy since the foundation of the State would share when they refused to condemn things that are wrong and refused to bring to the public knowledge things that are right and when they abdicate their basic responsibility of moulding public opinion. We all share blame.
It is a terrible thing that mistakes of foolish, elected Unionist Members of Stormont are the cause of such violence in the North of Ireland at present and terrible that innocent lives must be lost and that the world should talk of the dreadful destruction and loss of life that is continuing. Were not these Unionists very stupid not to know that sooner or later this situation would flare up? While this was happening how many Deputies in this House concerned themselves with it? How many, including Deputy Blaney, Deputy Haughey and the former Minister for Local Government, the former Deputy Boland, concerned themselves with this problem until it became popular?
Hear, hear.
A well-made point.
From the foundation of the State the debating point south of the Border has been Partition and people north of the Border in the minority refused to give their consent to a system which they rejected and, because of our public statements, we drove those people into doing things which further delayed reunification. Anybody who now says that the defenders of the Irish people are the Provisionals in Belfast is making a great misstatement because the Civil Rights movement in the North, in a fair and reasoned way, represented the case to the northern Unionists and won the support and admiration of many . the support and admiration of many former Unionist voters who stood back as Christian people and said: "The Catholics are getting a raw deal and we must do something about it." We had a polarisation within the Unionist Party and emerging from that I could see a Protestant Unionist Party and what could be called a liberal Unionist Party, people who wanted change, who saw the wrong and were prepared to correct it.
You have the minority in the North saying: "We want basic civil rights in accordance with human dignity." Because this was put forward in a reasoned way people listened to the argument and the Unionist Party were forced into a certain type of reformation. This continued until such time as the Provisionals came on the streets of Belfast and took on the British Army in open confrontation. All they have succeeded in doing is changing the battleground which is now between the Provisionals——
The Chair must remind the Deputy that his 40 minutes are now up.
Perhaps I can be allowed a few minutes since Deputy Blaney, I believe, spoke for one hour and 20 minutes this morning. I shall finish shortly. The Provisionals have now taken on the British Army. Ground has been changed. Instead of seeking basic civil rights and instead of news media reporting that Catholics north of the Border are claiming the basic civil rights, they are reporting deaths, destruction and violence. Depending on the source of the report you will be told that an Irish person has been shot, that a sniper was shot or that a gunman was shot, according to how the information was slanted.
While this is going on—and the sooner we realise it the better—the big trouble is that the Unionist Party has been allowed to abdicate its responsibility. People who lead the Opposition in Northern Ireland are now being forced into corners to take polarised stands but not because they want to do so. In fact one of them told me that he was ashamed of himself because he had to take this stand.
When you get up on a horse you have to ride it and what the IRA are doing in the North at the moment is making Partition an issue again. As I have said, Partition will always remain an issue in this country but it is not the immediate issue and if you want to end Partition you do not try to end it by shifting the Border because—and I want to repeat this again—the only way that Partition can be ended is by reconciliation of our Irish people north and south of the Border and by trying to understand each other. When we talk about reconciliation we mean that people will have to sit and talk with each other. I make an earnest appeal to the Northern Prime Minister—and an appeal to the Press to carry this—to seek a way to end internment because the policy on internment is breeding more IRA violence and is not giving the Opposition a chance to come to the conference table.
If the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland feels that it would be showing weakness to change his policy on internment, let him do so now because in the long-term he will be seen as a man who realised that progress could only be achieved north of the Border by a system of government there that had the goodwill of the majority and the consent of the minority. If a system can be found north of the Border that would have the goodwill of the majority and the consent of the minority, then we on this side of the Border must do everything in our power to see that that system works, because by doing that we will be ending Partition. The Border will fall. It will become an embarrassment to Nationalist and Unionist alike. It will become irrelevant and will disappear.
May I congratulate Deputy Harte on his excellent contribution to this debate? I certainly agree with every word he said in the House this afternoon.
As regards the Taoiseach's contribution, may I record that in my opinion it was—and I regret to say so—one of merely attempting to rebuild the tattered disunity of his own party by indulging quite wrongly in mere rhetorical, anti-Unionist propaganda. It was a negative and an unconstructive speech. It was an old-style threatening. blustering speech which would have suited an anti-Partition rally in the 1940s or 1950s. It reflected an effort by the Taoiseach to recover lost face within his own party on this question, and with Mr. Brian Faulkner at the conference table recently. It was an effort to recover face vis-à-vis the disagreement which exists now on Government policy and vis-à-vis the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Hillery, who is, in my opinion, now endeavouring to outflank the Taoiseach on a more hardline front. This became clear from the Taoiseach's contribution. As a statement of Government policy, therefore, the Taoiseach's contribution was rather negative. Its tone does not accord with the sentiments of reconciliation and of co-operation and of reaching out and of dealing with the problem in depth such as we have had in many of the speeches which he made over the past three years. I share the sense of disappointment of Deputy Harte and Deputy FitzGerald on seeing the Taoiseach caught up in the political fantasies of the Fianna Fáil Party and in the partitionist trends of thought which permeate almost every action of that party itself.
I feel that part of the solution to the problem of the reconciliation of the Irish people, north and south, will lie in the future—and in the relatively near future—in a change of government in the Republic. I have lost faith and confidence in the capacity of Fianna Fáil to treat the problem of Northern Ireland in a manner which would be conducive to bringing about reconciliation. The Taoiseach spoke for 45 minutes yesterday before he came to using the term "bridge-building" with relation to the North. We had a typical reiteration of the old-style general beating of the Fianna Fáil drum on Partition. It was a dishonest contribution. The Taoiseach mentioned that violence was a by-product of the division of our country. This is a very simplistic interpretation of the problem. There was reference by the Taoiseach to the Protestant community in a dismissive sense as "a very small minority of these islands as a whole". This is another over-simplification. There was a farcical reference to the United Nations observer group on the Border. I wish the Taoiseach would impress on Deputy Hillery not to continue pressing this aspect.
The follow-up to the Taoiseach's contribution was even more unfortunate. We had the Minister for Labour, Deputy J. Brennan, for the first time since 1969 coming in here with one of the most puerile contributions that any Donegal Deputy has ever made on the question of the unification of the Irish people. Whether he was talking on the official Government policy or not I do not know, but we had his despairing resort to direct rule. I would point out to Deputy J. Brennan that the concept of direct rule and the desire for direct rule has not been expressed by the minority in Northern Ireland. Direct rule has not been sought by the SDLP or by the NILP or by any other political party in the North. It has been sought by the lunatic fringe of the Provisionals and some of the officials themselves are divided on that issue. It definitely has not been sought by the majority in Northern Ireland. Therefore, the Donegal Republicans once again want direct rule. There has been a lot of misconception and stupidity in this House in relation to direct rule. Deputy Cooney made a fine speech, but I disagree with him on the question of direct rule. Surely the Government Party appreciates that however gerry-mandered Stormont may be, however farcical their elections may be, however alienated the elected Stormont MPs may be, however bad the non-Unionist representation may be in the parliamentary setting of Northern Ireland, however repressive and stupid many aspects of the Unionist administration may be in the North, and however much we would like to see a future democracy developing in the North, how much worse would the future be in the North and how much worse would the prospects for the national unity fare in this country if we were to allow ourselves to be stampeded in the Republic or in the North or to allow Britain to stampede itself into a situation in which the only elected representatives for the North would be nine Unionist MPs, Gerry Fitt, Bernadette Devlin and Frank McManus? This is not what we want. Deputy J. Brennan did a profound disservice in advocating that course of action. Whether he did it with the concurrence of the Taoiseach or not remains to be seen in the Taoiseach's reply. The Taoiseach has a knack of allowing time to run out when replying and then saying he might have referred to certain points if he had time.
I indicated this morning that I considered Deputy Blaney's views to be frankly nauseatingly hypocritical. I say this because I watched him. As a good Member of this House he blessed himself and listened to the words from the podium "...that every word and work of ours" and then he proceeded to give us a vitriolic exhibition of hate, of bias, of bitterness, of repression of Unionists by force if he thought he could get away with it. He said he would do this if he felt it was possible. Deputy Blaney by his speeches and by his actions in the past, right through from 1968 when, to his eternal credit, Deputy O'Leary began to find him out in this House, and Deputy Jack Lynch slid all over the place on a Cork banana to try to get out from under it, has supported assassination and murder. He stands for it; he agrees with it; he considers it an historic evolution of Irish Republican policy. For his personal support of the importing of arms, and of the distribution of arms and the use of arms in Northern Ireland he shares a grave political and moral responsibility for the bombing and murder and assassination of innocent men, women and children, soldiers, RUC and Irish people in Northern Ireland. Therefore, I found his contribution hypocritical.
I also noted the reaction of Deputy Sherwin, whoever his script writer was. I suppose it was Aontacht Éireann. I suppose it was the Aontacht Éireann wing of Fianna Fáil. Again the legacy of hate and bitterness was quite evident.
What about the reaction of the Minister for Transport and Power?
He was full of interest and sympathy for Deputy Blaney this morning as were the other dozen Fianna Fáil Deputies. Would any Unionist in Northern Ireland, would any Protestant in his sane senses, and with his dour, cryptic Northern Ireland sense of wit, be tempted in his most drunken imagination to sit down with Deputy Blaney across a conference table to talk about the future reunification of this country? From the exhibition of visible hate and vitriolic bitterness displayed this morning by Deputy Blaney it would be very unwise for him to give in to that temptation.
Therefore, there is a certain wing of the Government Party which believes in a policy of unity by force, by violence, by coercion. That is why I have come around to the feeling that a change of Government is very necessary if we are to have no more back-sliding on the question of the use of violence. The usual cynical and hypocritical analogy is drawn between 1916 and 1971 in the North. We have pointed out again and again—and many Labour Party spokesmen have emphasised it—that there is no application of a similar strategy to the political and social circumstances of the North today in the simplistic kind of belief of many southern republicans that all we need are six divisions, six nights and six days and we will get our Six Counties. That is a simplistic policy as though there was a precisely similar set of circumstances visible in Derry today or in Belfast or in Northern Ireland, excluding one million people.
Nothing could be further from the truth as can be seen from any cursory examination of Irish history or of the efforts to obtain national independence. There is no such victory to be won. The advocacy of violence by Deputy Blaney will automatically lead to a civil war in Northern Ireland in which Deputy Blaney probably will not lose his life but in which the working people of that Province will be set against each other, set at each others throats. That is the reality of the situation. It is not showing any sense of parliamentary responsibility for Deputy Blaney to wish that into existence from the comfort of his perverted concept of Donegal republicanism.
In the Labour Party our revulsion against violence has been massive, constructive, consistent and determined. We are not concerned with the electoral consequences of that repudiation. Our repudiation of the IRA is a deliberate and sustained effort by a small group of Deputies to advert a second Irish civil war in this century. Inevitably, we will be accused of comforting the enemies of Ireland and of failure to fight but the path of peace, the avoidance of bloodshed, the avoidance of confrontation, is now our role and our policy and will remain our policy. No amount of rhetorical nonsense from the Government benches or from some Deputies in the Opposition benches will divert us from that role.
When I listen to Deputy Blaney I remember that the chill that went down my spine started when Deputy O'Leary —long before I came into this House— drew my attention to a speech which he raised with the Taoiseach in 1968 in which Deputy Blaney said:
The Stormont Prime Minister assumes the right to talk as he so often glibly does "for the people of Ulster". I come from the most northerly part of Ulster and I absolutely deny his right to speak on the Border question for me or the hundreds of thousands of nationally-minded people in the Six Counties, or the people of the three free counties of Ulster.
There is the man who wants a solution to the national question, the man who denies the right of a Northern Irishman even to sit down and speak for and on behalf of his people. If I feel particularly vehement about this attitude, that is necessary because some of it was flushed out late last night and early this morning in this House. What we have heard from Deputy Blaney is a very personal symptom of a virus of the reactionary brand of sectarian nationalism which has cursed this country and which is far removed from any concept of normal sane republicanism, the politics of which is, in the last analysis, based exclusively on armed confrontation, on fear, on ignorance and, above all, on the exploitation of those engaged in politics, the exploitation of the ignorance, the fear and the historical and political sectarian division in this country. We in the Labour Party have no intention of giving in to it.
I have often contrasted the striking similarity of the demagogic primitivism of political expression by Deputy Blaney and the Reverend Ian Paisley. We see in Deputy Blaney the fond recollection and the happiness he assumes when he talks of the service of Irish people in the IRA down through the decades. He is at his happiest when he is inside a Republican graveyard. We see in Ian Paisley the comparison, the remembrance and constant advocacy of recollection of service in the British Crown Forces. Therefore, we have the two trumpeting careers and their own personal scant disregard for democracy when it comes down to it. Deputy Blaney indulged in some equivocation this morning on the question of internment. He is against Unionist internment but he is not too adverse to a concept of Fianna Fáil internment. So he assured us. He said there is internment and internment in this country, in the Republic. We see, therefore, their own personal hypocrisy as they march through the lobbies in Stormont and Dáil Éireann in support of their moderate leaders while they await the opportunity to stab them in the back and grab the reins of power.
Whether we like it or not as Irish people, they are the by-products of the extremes of political attitudes, North and South. As I say, they are happiest when they are marching behind the coffins of the men they encouraged to go out and get shot on both sides. They are the symptoms of Irish society at its political worst, at its most politically conservative, at its most culturally conservative and negative and as an open expression of what I might call the religious paranoia of some politicians. Therefore, we should appreciate that those in Northern Ireland who resort to violence as a solution to the problems there, by virtue of their own actions, are not capable of doing anything to lessen the realities of Partition and the social and economic consequences of Partition.
They are in no way lessening the all-pervasive power of the Unionist Party and of the Orange Order in Northern Ireland. On the contrary, I submit to this House—and I submitted the same viewpoint before when I condemned either the murder of the British soldiers or the murder of innocent young men as in Strabane—that every killing, every Republican who is tarred and feathered by his feathered fellow Republicans—let us remember that, too, happens; it is a version of what I call the crude justice of the Blaney concept—every person who is made a widow in Northern Ireland arising out of the use of direct physical violence, every orphan that emerges from that situation on the streets of Belfast and Derry, represents comfort to the extremists in the Unionist Party, in the Orange Order, to persons like Ian Paisley, and to ultra-extremists like Craig.
Therefore, we in this House must point out that violence and its by-products will not bring about a solution, and if we have to repeat that ad nauseam it is our function and duty to do it, because there have been some queer overtones in this debate from some Deputies in the past two days. Far from there being any prospect of national reunification as a result of violence, there are now 14,000 troops in the North; in about a month or two there will be 10,000 UDR; there are 5,000 RUC, many of them are armed, and the whole apparatus of civilian and military intelligence, detention and internment. There have been, in addition, about 430 people killed, about 1,200 civilians detained or interned and about £300 million has gone up in smoke in a bomb campaign.
Nobody can quantify the anguish caused to thousands of men, women and children in Northern Ireland. Nobody has yet dared to quantify the damage to the economy of this island and of the future living standards of all the people in this country. All that is necessary is to take a look at Irish industrial exports, re-imports and so on. There is a gloomy harvest of escalating political-religious sectarianism in Northern Ireland in the past three years, and it should at long last be self-evident that every condoning and encouragement of violence is only pushing further into the horizon social unity in Northern Ireland and eventual political unity of all Irish people on this island.
It has been suggested that the Labour Party has not been taking an entirely socialist line. We in the Labour Party have worked unceasingly in Dáil Éireann, in Dublin, in Northern Ireland, in London and at international level, for a peaceful solution to this political and sectarian problem of Northern Ireland, and whatever semantics are employed by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dr. Hillery, or his counterpart, Sir Alec Douglas Home, it is both a political and sectarian problem and will remain so for many decades to come.
We in the Labour Party have also advocated the fullest inquiry into the charges of brutality and of torture of detainees made against the RUC and the Royal Corps of Military Police and the Special Branch of the RUC. We have put our demands on record in no uncertain terms, but they are not the only reaction of the Labour Party to the Northern Ireland situation. Since 1969 we have demanded the introduction of proportional representation in Northern Ireland, and when it comes, small thanks, indeed, to the Taoiseach, Deputy Jack Lynch, Deputy Neil Blaney and Mr. Kevin Boland.
We have called repeatedly for the ending of internment without trial. We have made that point in London and in Belfast; we have made it to the Irish Government and at international level. We have said, together with the SDLP: "Charge those whom you allege to have committed offences. Release those against whom you cannot produce evidence." We have repeated those demands and those who claimed we are not a socialist party in failing to repeat them ad nauseam should go away and examine the policy statement of the Labour Party.
Our policy, therefore, is clearcut and will in no way be diluted. I can assure every Deputy here that we in the Labour Party have no intention of becoming a Twenty-Six County version of Fianna Fáil. We have no intention of becoming a Twenty-six County Catholic labour party. We have no intention of becoming a Twenty-six County Nationalist labour party or of becoming a nationalist republican labour party. We have no intention of falling into the trap of being a reason for another civil war. Our republicanism means something more. The republican socialism of the Labour Party means something more than a Catholic claim by a Catholic Fianna Fáil Taoiseach from Catholic Cork to speak exclusively for a Catholic minority around a conference table in Chequers. Our role extends far beyond that kind of sectarian representation at political level in these islands.
We would remind the House that in 1967 the report of the Committee on the Constitution was published. Four years later we draw the attention of the Government to one particular statement in that report which said in relation to certain articles of the Constitution:
There is no doubt that these provisions give offence to non-Catholics and are also a useful weapon in the hands of those who are anxious to emphasise the differences between North and South.
Have the Government done anything in the intervening period in relation to these Articles of the Constitution? Every time the matter has been raised the Taoiseach has dodged it, and certainly he has not acted on a non-sectarian basis in that regard.
The republican socialism of the Labour Party means something more constructive than the courage to fire a high velocity bullet at a British soldier in a crowded street. This now is the sole policy of the IRA provisionals, to set the Catholics and Protestants at one another's throats. This is a mockery of the ideals and the actions of Connolly, of Tone and of McCracken. This could easily lead to a Protestant trade union congress, and we could then be left in the Republic, whether we liked it or not, with a Catholic trade union congress divided on Border, sectarian lines. Republican socialism in the Labour Party does not extend to that kind of development.
Our Republican socialism means something more than fomenting by word or deed a bloody sectarian civil war between the Catholic working class and the Protestant working class in Belfast. This is now the policy of the Provisionals, of the Officials, of Deputy Blaney, of Deputy Sherwin and of Mr. Kevin Boland. Any normal interpretation of the teachings and writings of James Connolly would exclude territorial unity at the point of a gun, the coercion by means of the bullet, the bomb and the booby trap, of the Protestant working class of Northern Ireland into a spurious form of national unity. That certainly is not what Connolly gave his life for and I would suggest that what is going on in Northern Ireland would pale into shadowy insignificance compared with the concentration camps, the detention centres, the repression which we in the South would have to indulge in if we were to implement the policy of Neil Blaney.
Our republican socialism means something more than coercing the people of Northern Ireland into our form of republic to share with us a sectarian Constitution as we have in the republic, to share with us, as Deputy Garret FitzGerald rightly pointed out, a sectarian form of education, to share with us our sectarian concepts of private morality, to share with us, as of 1971, our limited redundancy scheme and to share with us our relatively inferior social security system, our relatively inferior housing and our relatively inferior industrial development. It makes me sick to listen to Deputy Blaney when I am conscious that in Lifford and Strabane he can see the great divide even in terms of social security systems. Deputy Blaney should talk to a man with a wife and child, who has a retirement pension of £9.30 in Lifford, and then go across to Strabane where a man with a wife and child will get £12.50. He should talk to a recipient of unemployment or disability benefit in Lifford getting £9 odd when £11.55 is paid across the road in Strabane. A widow in Strabane gets £8.40 for 26 weeks. Here she gets £6 and £7 if she has two children. It would be £11 in Strabane. People with three children get 98p children's allowance a week from an Irish Government; they get £1.90 in Strabane. These are issues to which Deputy Blaney will not refer. We in the Labour Party do not want to involve fellow-Irishmen from Northern Ireland and bring them into gerrymandered constituencies in the republic——
Hear, hear.
——constituencies which have been mutilated across county boundaries in order to cement Fianna Fáil in power. Fortunately, Unionists and non-Unionists in Northern Ireland are very much too wise to fall for that kind of absorption.
The Taoiseach constantly referred to the 40 per cent minority and the 60 per cent majority. It is about time the House examined that particular statistic. The population in every county in Northern Ireland has gone up according to the recent census. Has the population of Donegal gone up or the population of Leitrim? Who are we talking to? The Taoiseach refers to the 40 per cent minority as though they existed in a neat bunch when any superficial examination of the voting patterns of Northern Ireland, of the social groupings of Northern Ireland, indeed of the Opposition groupings of Northern Ireland, would play merry hell with that concept of 40 per cent. Indeed, many social surveys carried out among the 40 per cent minority recently showed that at least one-third of them are not even interested in coming into the republic. Deputy Lynch should start examining some of the more incredible claims he has made.
I must now call on the spokesman for the Labour Party to conclude.
There is a minute.
In a minute. The most revolutionary action which any Deputy could make in the current crisis is to acknowledge that in a situation in which Catholic and Protestant will not even share a song together, not to mind sharing marriage or religion, the first step on our part is to demand and press forward for drastically new institutional, governmental structures in Northern Ireland within which the Opposition can play, in proportion to their numbers, a full and constructive role. It will, indeed, take many decades before Catholic and Protestant will learn to work together within a reformed structure, within a more democratic society which must be brought about. It will take many decades and this House would be very foolish to expect that in our lifetime this will be resolved but we can at least stop it from getting worse and we can stop the lunatic fringe in this House or in Northern Ireland from making the situation even worse than it is today.
At this point in this very important national debate on the question of the North I should like to draw attention to the serried ranks of the party of reunification over there. I should like to place on record that as this debate enters its concluding stage there are just two members of Fianna Fáil in their places, two members of the Government party, the party that bears the central responsibility for this. I think this clearly implies that either they do not take Parliament seriously or they do not take Northern Ireland seriously, or both. I mean no disrespect to the two Deputies who are there, some disrespect to those who are not. As I listened yesterday in deepening gloom to the Taoiseach's strange statement I had to remind myself several times that here was a man who had in the past said some wise and generous things on this subject.
Hear, hear.
He has said them and do not let us forget it now, even if he seems to forget. At Tralee in September of 1969 he made a speech which was in many ways a model of what ought to have been said at that time and provided a lead for the country and he has occasionally since then taken up the same theme. Good things have been said by him. We have been encouraged at times to hope about him. If that Tralee speech and one or two others like it had been followed up and sustained in a coherent pattern, not swaying with every wind that blew and every gust of national passion, if it had been so followed up and sustained I believe that a majority in all parties would have been happy to close ranks behind the Taoiseach. I think he spoke for the great majority in that Tralee speech and if that note had been sustained he could have carried the majority in all parties with him. We could have said: "We have other things against the Taoiseach but in the peaceful and constructive policy that he has outlined towards the North he has the support of all of us. He speaks not for a party but for all of us in this part of the country."
He did not take the chance and we, very sadly and with great foreboding, cannot say that. We find ourselves obliged to oppose him, not with any pleasure but with sorrow for what that implies for all of us. We must oppose him because he speaks for a party cracked and chipped by internal dissensions and he must change his emphasis, muffle and half abandon his peaceful approach or, worse still, shroud it in ambiguity in order to hold that party of his together, in so far as it is held together. For this reason I think his statements—taken as a whole, not any individual speech in particular—have increasingly lacked precision. They have lacked precision, clarity and focus. They have failed to provide the country with a focus. They have encouraged in the young the idea that the pursuit of peace is something inherently vague and woolly. That is how he makes it sound as he dodges so many thorny issues when he speaks on the subject.
I do not wish to linger now on the Taoiseach's speech yesterday. I wish I did not have to speak about it at all. It was one of the worst speeches of the Taoiseach's career—a career in which, as I have said, he has made some very good speeches. The speech yesterday was unworthy of the level of this occasion, unworthy of the crisis facing all the people of this country; it was unworthy of this House. It was a petty, nagging, propagandist speech. Somehow it was a musty speech like something that had been dragged up from some airless cellar in Iveagh House dating from the Mansion House campaign of 20 years ago.
In one part of his speech the Taoiseach felt obliged to make a link with his past speeches when he referred to building bridges, allegedly with the majority in the North. However, the Taoiseach was not really concerned in his speech with building bridges with the majority in the North. There was nothing in it that they could welcome, even to the degree Chichester Clark welcomed his Tralee speech and went to meet him at that brief moment of dialogue. There was nothing in yesterday's speech that could attract them. The bridges the Taoiseach was attempting to build were within his own shattered party, mending the communications there for whatever curious traffic can go on across those bridges now.
Even there it was painfully obvious— and this is painful because we are talking about the Prime Minister of this country and what happens to him implies things that will happen to other people—that there was something ominous in his party's limp, feeble response, in the volume of the applause that met their Taoiseach, their leader. We have heard them before. We know how they can bay, how they can shout. We have heard them in full cry and a splendid sound it must be for those who agree with them. It can be very heartening but there was nothing heartening about the applause behind the Taoiseach yesterday. Yet, one could have said if the Taoiseach had had the courage to make what would have been for some of his party an unpopular speech and had been so greeted, that could be of good augury, that at least it was a statesmanlike lead. This was a speech intended to mend fences and it was obvious it mended none.
At the end of the last Adjournment Debate we were worried about what was coming. Then, as now, I was speaking for my party. At column 3836, Vol. 255, dated 6th August, 1971, I stated:
The real charge against the Taoiseach is that he puts a plausible, reassuring front on a party who have become a danger to all people in both parts of this island. As the clock ticks on, and the calendar runs out, we move to the fateful day of 12th August.
I stated later:
We cannot help feeling a sickening apprehension as that times comes on. It can mean tragedy there, irrespective of what is said or done in this House.
I appreciate that fact and we have no wish to put any blame on the Taoiseach for things neither he nor any other man might be able to avoid. Our sickening apprehension can only be heightened by the fact that we know there are men in the Taoiseach's own party and in this Parliament—men not disavowed by him, who vote confidence in him— who are deliberately seeking to add fuel to the flames of Derry and who hope the flames may spread across the Border and engulf us all to their political profit.
On the same day when winding up we expressed that apprehension. We were not alone in feeling apprehension because many Deputies had expressed this feeling also. It required no particular capacity for prediction, none at all.
However, the Taoiseach was happy. At column 3877 of the same volume, the Taoiseach stated:
In the meantime, they can be perfectly assured, as I said this time last year, that the country is in the very best of hands.
This is what the Taoiseach, the Prime Minister of this country, said on the eve of the worst crisis we have had.
What did the Taoiseach mean by saying "the country is in the best of hands"? What country? Did the Taoiseach mean the whole of Ireland, as, presumably, he should mean by the claims he makes? If it is the whole of Ireland, including the Six Counties, the hands the country was in were those of Ted Heath, Brian Faulkner and Jack Lynch, to name the people who were heads of the Governments in question. Does the Taoiseach mean those were the best of hands? Was he only thinking of the Twenty-six Counties when he said "this country", just as the Minister for Justice was thinking only of the Twenty-six Counties when he spoke yesterday—and corrected himself later, a little unhappily—of British troops penetrating into "this country" from the Six Counties? Was the Taoiseach thinking that in some way he and his party already were running the whole country? Did he take his nonsense about "the second guarantor" as seriously as that?
I am sorry the Taoiseach is not here even for this stage of the debate although one would have thought he might have been. I hope our request for an explanation regarding his reference about this country being in the best of hands will be heeded when he winds up today. The reference to the country being in the best of hands reflects a dangerous confusion that has arisen here.
In his speech yesterday—in one of the parts with which we could agree— the Taoiseach said "responsibility goes hand in hand with claimed authority". I think that is a true statement. Of course, the Taoiseach meant it as part of the lecture to the British he was engaged in giving us—perhaps in compensation for some lectures he may have failed to give effectively at Chequers. However, it applies just as much to us here, to this Dáil which claims jurisdiction—although not asserting for the moment the right to exercise jurisdiction—in relation to Northern Ireland. That is what I should like to consider in my remarks.
Perhaps it is easier, more congenial, and goes more with the grain to talk about other people's responsibility, the responsibilities of the Unionist Party and the British Government and to lambaste the British and the Unionists for their share in all of this rather than discuss our responsibilities. Yet, on this matter the Taoiseach has said something wise in the past which he did not follow up yesterday. He said, "Perhaps the national majority need to examine their consciences in relation to the national minority." How about doing some of that?
Therefore, I should like to speak about Dáil Éireann in particular and the Government that rests on Dáil Éireann in relation to this problem. In Dáil Éireann we cannot ourselves solve this problem and let us not pretend we can. A certain modesty in our approach to this is the beginning of wisdom. Whatever our pretensions we remain a Twenty-six County Assembly.
Deputy Liam Cosgrave, the leader of Fine Gael, has said the British do not understand the problem. I have no doubt Deputy Cosgrave is right. Indeed the many curious quotations from British politicians introduced by the Taoiseach tend to confirm Deputy Cosgrave's point, although not intended by the Taoiseach for that purpose. All right, the British do not understand the problem and many of them admit that.
How well do we, who sit here representing Twenty-six County constituencies, all of us in this Twenty-six County Assembly, understand the problem? There is a handful of Deputies with first-hand knowledge of the problem and a handful of that handful who add wisdom to their first-hand knowledge. I would name Deputy Paddy Harte in the first rank of those. There are others whose first-hand contact with the problem does not involve so much knowledge of it as a commitment to a certain passionate mythology, as is the case with Deputy Blaney.
Let us be conscious of our ignorance in this matter, that we do not command great direct sources of information here. Let us remember that at those tripartite talks at Chequers there was just one person around that table with first-hand knowledge of Northern Ireland. There are those of us here who would regard it as biased first-hand knowledge. A majority in the area itself would not so regard it. That man was Brian Faulkner. It was not the Taoiseach; it was not Ted Heath. They were outsiders. The indications are that at Chequers Mr. Brian Faulkner, who is an astute politician, with first-hand knowledge, danced rings around the other two gentlemen and that the communique calling for the ending of violence and internment in that order was essentially a Faulkner draft signed by the Taoiseach and that was the beginning and end of the famous triumph of being admitted to the tripartite talks.
I would remind us again because we lost sight of it again and again, half deliberately and half unconsciously, that Dáil Éireann does not control the British Army or the police in the North; nor, obviously, does Dáil Éireann control either of the main branches of the IRA, the UVF or any of the many fancifully-named strange splinter groups, composed often of teenagers who are now bombing and shooting and organising to shoot or bomb in the area. We do not control these groups though there are here— and we should acknowledge that fact— a few Deputies who have close contact with some of these groups, who are probably helping some of them and have some limited influence with them. These same people have also some influence with the Government. They can influence the Government and they have influenced it here yesterday and today in the direction of not being too specific in the condemnation of violence —not naming the IRA, for example. We saw a result of that in the Taoiseach's speech yesterday and even more blatantly in the lamentable speech delivered by the Minister for Foreign Affairs to the United Nations on 7th October.
Let me say whom I mean, let us name names. The Deputies who have those close contacts, this kind of influence, certainly include Deputy Blaney, who spoke here in that chilling, ominous, sinister speech this morning. I say that of Deputy Blaney because I have a certain belief in him. I think he is more for real than some of the others. If he believes in what he has said here about violence, about the hard way, I think he ought to be helping them. I believe he is helping them although he is still a very welcome member of that party. It was observed here that when Deputy Desmond challenged some statement of Deputy Blaney a number of Government Deputies were very hot and quick to come in in support of him.
Including Deputy Lenihan.
I do not know whether Deputy Haughey is still to be associated with this group or not. Deputy Haughey has an abstracted look about him these days as if he were solving some difficult mathematical problem, perhaps a problem connected with re-entry. However, it does not matter what the names of the particular people may be at any particular time. Their influence, their existence, is what is important. We should neither minimise nor exaggerate the significance of that. Neither the Dáil nor any group here can switch the violence in the North on or off. We cannot do that whatever we wish, whichever way we are inclined.
It is quite true that the violence in the North arises within the North and out of the long, dark history of the North; but it would not be true to say that we have no responsibility in the matter, no general power to influence its development one way or the other. We have influence, we are influencing and on the whole we have been influencing it more unconsciously than consciously in a dangerous direction. The irredentist annexationist claim that we have made here, the claim that is made in Articles 2 and 3 of our Constitution, is at the very root of the present violence in Northern Ireland. It is that claim that enables the gunmen in good conscience to feel they are shooting and bombing on behalf of those whom we represent, the majority in this island not the majority in Northern Ireland.
It is that claim which makes the Taoiseach's voice sound hollow even when he is being most explicitly peaceful in intention. It is that claim that makes Northern Protestants refuse to believe the Taoiseach when he professes friendship towards them, no doubt sincerely, while his supporter, Deputy Blaney, proclaims as he did here this morning: "We have a right to bring about the end of Partition by any way that we can," making it unmistakably clear, as he did, that violence is included and ranks high among the permitted ways. The northern Catholic bishops ask the question: who in their sane senses think they can bomb 1,000,000 Protestants into a united Ireland? The answer seems to be: Deputy Blaney and his friends, if we regard them as being in their sane senses.
I have said that the claim that Northern Ireland is ours by right and that the Dáil has a right of jurisdiction over it, asserted in Article 3, though then suspended is at the root of the trouble; but there is a vital distinction to be made here, a distinction which is blurred over in the Taoiseach's speeches and is the troubled source of their confusion and ambiguity. That distinction which should be made and is not is the distinction between a claim and an aspiration.
As regards the aspiration, the aspiration towards the unity of Ireland and all its people, I think we are all in agreement and those whom we represent are in agreement. The Taoiseach said at Tralee, and I quote from the Taoiseach's speech of 23rd September, 1969:
It is quite unreasonable for any Unionist to expect my Government or any future government to abandon the belief and hope that Ireland should be reunited. It is unnecessary to repeat that we seek reunification by peaceful means.
We agree with the Taoiseach about that hope and that belief as well as about peaceful means. We in the Labour Party have as our objective the attainment of a 32-County socialist Republic of Ireland. That is our objective, to which we hold; but we are not claiming that that 32 County socialist Republic is already here as of right, is already here but is wrongly being withheld from us by the perversity of the Protestant workers of Northern Ireland.
We are not claiming that, and that is the distinction between an aspiration and a claim. We know that this is something which can only be achieved gradually—God alone knows how gradually—through a growing understanding between Catholics and Protestants. We know also that one of the great barriers to such an understanding is precisely the claim, the pretention of the Dublin Government that the Six Counties, including areas with massive Protestant and Unionist majorities in the eastern part of the area rightfully belong to the Catholic majority of Ireland because that is the substance of the claim. Whatever the local inhabitants think, or feel, about that proposition, the mere existence of that claim, well known as it is up there among the local majority, it is the one great barrier to understanding. A secondary set of barriers is now based on the first one, namely, the violent and agressive acts by different sets of IRA men bent on enforcing that claim, acts openly condoned by some in this Assembly and covertly connived at by others. I have, to my sorrow, to say that one of those who covertly connives is the Taoiseach who has tolerated within his party the oration we heard this morning from Deputy Blaney.
We have been told that the root of the trouble is the 50 years of discrimination and misrule in Northern Ireland. We quite agree. Many Deputies in this debate have stressed that. We agree with all that; it is well known here. But it is only part of a very long root indeed; it is not the whole root. I want to emphasise now deliberately, because it has not been emphasised by many Deputies, our own responsibility in that because matters within our responsibility are matters we have the power to control.
Our claim to take over the Six Counties, a claim still formally sustained repeatedly, was a claim to impose our will on the Protestant population there. It was essentially that. We do not like to call it that, but that is what it was and that is what it still is. Is it altogether surprising then, in view of that, that the majority there feel justified in imposing their will on the Catholic minority? We say, of course, that we would not behave as they do. We would be nice to the Protestant majority if we had them in. We would treat them decently. We would bring them cups of tea from time to time. If, of course, they ignored and cut themselves off from all their past political traditions we would be very nice to them indeed. But what would we do if they resisted incorporation, or if many of them resisted and some of them disliked it? What if they were felt not to be absolutely on our side as the Catholic minority in the North are felt to be absolutely on another side? I am not sure. I hope we would be very good and very liberal. Somehow I do not get the impression that Deputy Blaney would be either of those things. Somehow I do not get the impression that he would put up with much of what he called "provocation". I certainly would not be reassured by his speech. Other speakers have also said that.
That claim of ours—not our legitimate, open aspiration, which any Ulster Protestant can understand and respect—is today the main barrier to structural reform inside Northern Ireland. The Taoiseach accompanies each demand for reform with the proviso that it is a step towards unity. Does the Taoiseach really imagine that that proviso about leading to unity makes it easier to achieve structural reform in the conditions of Northern Ireland today? Of course, it does not make it easier. It makes it a thousand times harder. It hardens Protestant against Catholic and speeds up the appalling cycle of bloodshed which has now claimed more than 120 lives.
It is true that the Taoiseach has said that the aim of his Government has been to promote the reunification of Ireland by fostering a spirit of brotherhood among all sections of the Irish people. But, when the heat comes on, brotherhood flies out the window. In fact, it turns out it is not their brotherhood we want, it is their territory. The main theme of the Taoiseach's speech on 13th August, 1969, was the reunification of the national territory:
Recognising, however, that the reunification of the national territory can provide the only permanent solution for the problem, it is our intention to request the British Government to enter into early negotiations with the Irish Government to review the present constitutional position of the Six Counties of Northern Ireland.
It was then the Taoiseach injected that claim as a territorial claim. No talk about brotherhood. No sweetness and light. No words about the wishes of the one million Protestants there, those with whom he said on another occasion he wanted a unity of mind and heart. If the situation cools down we will hear again about the unity of mind and heart but, when it is hot and we need the Taoiseach to talk about that kind of unity, what we get from him is a territorial claim. At the Fianna Fáil Ard-Fheis last year he said:
I want to say that never have I acknowledged and never will acknowledge that any section of our community who happened to be a majority in a part of our country has the right to opt out of our nation.
Notice what we have been doing. We define our rights, which include our right to their territory, and then we define their rights. Our rights are, of course, defined positively, theirs negatively. They have no right to do anything which we, the majority, chose to deny them. Our whole style of approach to them is what their style of approach has been to the Catholic minority up there. In that there is no difference between us except that the Protestant majority have power over the minority and we have as yet no power over the latter. There is only one logical conclusion to that way of proceeding and that is civil war, on the brink of which this whole island now stands. For a long time that logical conclusion hardly seemed likely. It seemed as if we lived, as Yeats once said, where motley was worn and we did not have to mean what we said.
Finish the quotation.
I will not trouble the House.
Finish the quotation.
A terrible jinx has fallen on the Deputy's party anyway.
(Interruptions.)
Order.
I apologise for my interruption, but I do not like to hear the words of Yeats prostituted.
During the "Lemass Years" this claim to control this northern territory was muted. It was still in our Constitution, but nobody seemed to be taking it very seriously. Among other things, it was something to which one paid lipservice, but it did not seem to matter seriously. After the 12th/13th August, 1969, the situation became different and after the IRA revival in 1970 and 1971 the assertion of this claim became a very grave matter indeed. The Taoiseach inherited—I admit he inherited it —an excessive and arrogant claim and, simultaneously with that claim, a more rational policy of adjustment to the actuality of different traditions and allegiances in this island. So far as I could understand his own inclinations, I believe that they were towards a more rational adjustment but that he was pulled the other way by forces within his own party some of which became vocal just now. The result is his present posture in which while still committed formally to a peace policy, his Government and the Press which support them, are saying more and more openly that violence will continue until we get our way as against theirs. That has been said clearly by the Irish Press, for example, in an editorial which appeared in that paper after the Chequers talks. It said that “the most significant political occurrence yesterday was the £18,000 bank raid in Derry” and that “there will be a lot of gelignite bought out of that”. The editorial said that as they had previously warned if the British would not accept what the Taoiseach had to say they might have to listen to something worse. That appalling editorial continued on those lines.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, while not speaking on the same lines, spoke with the same implication before the United Nations when he referred to violence being a natural expression of frustration in the circumstances. He implied an expression of frustration with the slow pace of reform. The Taoiseach gave a different explanation when he said here that violence is a by-product of the division of the country and that it would be true to say that the division of the country was a by-product of violence and the violent inclinations of the two communities as against one another. What is implicit in this is clear: that as long as Partition goes on, the violence will go on and the Taoiseach is not prepared to condemn it very clearly or in more than general terms. Our Government and their irredentist claims are becoming more and more locked into the campaign of violence. It is not only a question of failure to control the IRA's North-bound activities but a failure to educate the public mind on this.
Everybody is aware that money is being collected in this part of the country for the bombings and the shootings in the North but what is being done about it? The Northern Catholic bishops have condemned this kind of activity in the strongest possible terms but, with respect, I would ask when the Southern Catholic bishops will say something about the money that is being collected for the purpose of bombing one million Protestants into a united Ireland? When will the Taoiseach say something clear about that and what is the position of Fianna Fáil in relation to the pro-Provisional campaign being run by the Irish Press? Where all this is leading is towards civil war and if the British troops were withdrawn immediately or if there was a phased withdrawal without there being a political adjustment, civil war would follow beginning, probably, with the liquidation of the Catholic minority in Belfast.
We, in the Dáil, do not control any alternative solution. However, we have power to influence the matter in the right direction, that is to say, towards adjustment in Northern Ireland, towards structural reform there, not by emphasising our claim to unity though without concealing our aspirations towards that. It is no easy problem that the Taoiseach has inherited. It stirs powerful emotion in every part of the land and causes passionate argument in every political group. The problem is such that no Taoiseach could solve it overnight but the Taoiseach could have done certain things. He could have set about reassuring the Northern Unionists in an unequivocal and unambiguous way that unity would neither be imposed on them by force nor negotiated above their heads. He could have sought earnestly to convince them that we sought structural reform in the North as a requirement of peace and justice in itself, as a good in itself and not as a political Trojan horse which it appears to be to the majority there.
The Taoiseach could have condemned explicitly not vaguely, the violence being carried on but the particular violence being carried on in the name of what he and his Government stand for, which is IRA violence. He could have condemned not only the activities of IRA people as shown on television but also the collection of moneys that is going on all over the country. He could have educated public opinion and prepared the way for Constitutional changes. He would have faced great difficulties in these efforts but he would also have found great support. I believe the support he has in the country is support for him as a man of peace. Ordinary people are horrified by all this violence. Perhaps they are more horrified by it than many of our politicians and journalists. Ordinary people are concerned also about this violence as a distraction from real issues, economic and social, that are pressing hard on them now. They see this violence as taking up all the energies of the Government at this time.
Instead of doing that the Taoiseach chose the other road, that of appeasement of the Blaneys in his own party. I shall not say that there are Blaneys in every party. I do not think there are because Blaneys are really a Fianna Fáil phenomenon. However, perhaps every party have, if not Blaneys, at least sub-Blaneys, semi-Blaneys or pseudo-Blaneys who are active at various levels. Either you appease them or you do not. If there are any such persons at any level within our own party, it should be clear that our leader, Deputy Corish, has shown how such tendencies should be dealt with, that is, by ignoring them.
The Taoiseach's attitude has been different. His speech yesterday represented appeasement of them and, consequently, a further step down the road to civil war. He told us when he spoke to us at the end of the last session that the country was in safe hands. We do not believe that either Ted Heath, Brian Faulkner or our Taoiseach have safe hands for this. We cannot change either Ted Heath or Brian Faulkner, although we talk often as if we could, but we can change our own Taoiseach. We need to do so and I believe we soon shall be able to do so. To mark our sense that this is necessary we have considered what action should be taken.
The fact that there is no substantive motion before us today is part of an attempt to paper over the cracks in Fianna Fáil, not to heal the divisions by firm and clear leadership which is what we need but to make believe that the divisions are not there and to continue this long process of make believe in which we have been so much and so frequently engaged for 50 years and which it is a most urgent task for us now to sweep out of the way. In order to repudiate that act of make believe and the rest of the Government's makebelieve policy, the Labour Party will vote against the motion for the adjournment.
For a variety of reasons, the Fine Gael Party find themselves in a situation in which they are unable any longer to express agreement with the Government in many aspects of their policy and behaviour in relation to Northern Ireland. I propose to enumerate these reasons so that it will be clear why we are not at one at this very critical time in Irish affairs and in Anglo-Irish relations. It is very damaging to the national interests that the head of the Irish Government, even when he speaks the truth, even when he argues correctly and even when he pursues the right policy, is simply not accepted as doing the right thing or responding to the wishes of the overwhelming majority of Irish people who seek only a reasonable solution. When our Taoiseach speaks, his credibility is in doubt, his relevance is questioned and the validity of his arguments is rejected because the Taoiseach is seen as pandering to his own extremists to retain their support to keep him in office and on that account we are obliged to record our criticism of the Government by voting against the proposal that we adjourn this evening at 5 o'clock without having put to the test whether or not the Taoiseach is prepared to dispense with the support of people with whom he pretends to be in disagreement.
Secondly, these divisions within the Government itself, as represented by the disapproval of the Minister for Transport and Power and the Minister for Lands of the policies which the Taoiseach is pursuing, prove just how unstable the Government are at this crucial time and when to the division in the Government is added the substantial number of Deputies in the Fianna Fáil Party who also disagree but only one of whom spoke in this debate so far, we can see that the Government are on very shaky ground.
Once again, the great tragedy of this situation is that, abroad, the alternative to Deputy Lynch as Taoiseach and his Government is regarded as being Deputy Blaney or Deputy Haughey or one of the other uncompromising dissidents and in order that this country may be brought to the realisation and the world made aware of the fact that the alternative to Deputy Lynch as Taoiseach is not one of these dissidents who does not represent any worthwhile body of opinion in this country, we are voting against the Adjournment as a declaration of our belief that what is needed at this time is a cool, controlled, determined and deliberate Taoiseach such as Deputy Cosgrave would be in such a situation.
We are also voting against the Government for a third reason. It is because of the Taoiseach's downright and deliberate failure to honour his own promise of more than two years standing to consult from time to time with the Leader of the main Opposition, Deputy Cosgrave, and the Leader of the Labour Party, concerning the situation in the North of Ireland. Only once in the intervening two tragic, bloody, deteriorating and disturbing years has the Taoiseach consulted with the Leaders of the Opposition parties. It seems to be utterly unreasonable that the Taoiseach would even expect that in such a situation he has the right to command the support of this House for a policy which he has never discussed with the Opposition parties and which even in his opening address in this vitally important debate he has made no effort to explain.
Fourthly, we find ourselves in disagreement with the Government because of their total failure to protect adequately the security of this State of Twenty-six Counties. The Army is under-manned, under-equipped. The Garda are undermanned, under-equipped and their morale has never been worse. Even before the violence developed in the North of Ireland there were many areas of this country in which people could no longer feel a sense of security, in which people felt that their homes were, because of inadequate police protection, liable to intrusion and in which crime had been on the increase. This situation has been made very significantly worse over the last year or more by the transfer of further gardaí to Border areas. We recognise the absolute necessity for the increased presence of gardaí and the Army in Border areas but, as we accept that, we accept also what the Government so far have been unwilling to accept the obligation to ensure that the peace and security of other parts of the country are not diminished by the transfer of our own gardaí and Army to northern parts of the country.
We have seen a worrying increase in bank raids, in the theft of gelignite and other materials for making implements of war and destruction. We have seen deliberate and open efforts to organise, to finance and to arm rival armies and parliaments and in the face of all of this the Government have been singularly, totally and irresponsibly in-effective in asserting the first obligation of any sovereign State, to ensure its own security and the peace and safety of its own citizens.
Within the past few days we have had statements in Holland, in Belgium, on the BBC and, indeed, in Dublin about the activities of the Czechoslovakian Trade Mission in Dublin. We brought this to the notice of the Government 18 months ago, perhaps in a somewhat different context at that time, but we certainly pointed to the fact that there was clear evidence that the Czechoslovakian Trade Mission in Dublin were engaged in persistent and deliberate political activities, at that time principally related to the persecution of people who had any sympathies with the regime which existed before the Russians entered into Prague and suppressed the Czechoslovakian people in their efforts to break away from the Warsaw Pact. These people, it now appears, and for some time past there has been every reason to believe, were engaged in activities to sell arms to illegal organisations in this country.
It is, I think, not without significance that at the time of the inquiries which preceded the arrest and charging of people in relation to the illegal importation of arms, the police authorities here sought an opportunity to question a Mr. Hudec, who at that time was a member of the Czechoslovakian Trade Mission but suddenly, mysteriously, this gentleman disappeared and returned to Prague so that he was not available to give assistance to the Garda in their inquiries. Yet, still there operate here four members of the Czechoslovakian Trade Mission, Mr. Kobecky, Mr. Lanca and their respective wives and anybody who knows anything about the activities of such people will know that wives in such situations are not regarded by their own governments as security risks before they are sent about their business elsewhere. We are now in the terrible situation in which we are embarrassed, to say the least of it—I do not put it any stronger than that at the moment —by the presence here of a trade mission which is engaged in political activities and the presence of which here certainly facilitates illegal organisations in the acquisition of arms.
As Mr. Joseph Josten, a former Czech diplomat, said on the BBC the other day, there is no need to go to Prague to get information about and assistance in acquiring Czechoslovakian arms; there is no need to go to the Omnipol office on Wenceslaus Square; all you need to do is take a bus ride to Foxfield Road, Raheny and there carry on the necessary discussions.
It is 18 months since the Minister for Foreign Affairs told us that he was inquiring into the matter. I think his inquiries have been singularly ineffective and it is time that we did something to ask the Czechoslovakian Trade Mission to please withdraw, we do not want them any longer. What they give to this country is not necessary to our economic survival or indeed comfort and what we sell to them is in no way significant in assisting us in balancing our trade because as between Czechoslovakia and Ireland the trade balance is five to one in Czechoslovakia's favour.
The fifth reason why we are going to oppose this Adjournment is because the Taoiseach and the Government are not providing at this time what the country needs above all, and that is leadership. We need to get some indication from the Government as to what policies they believe should be implemented, first of all in the North of Ireland, and secondly in relation to our own conduct towards the North of Ireland and towards making the institutions and practices of the Republic of Ireland acceptable to the people of the North of Ireland. The Government are in fact offering no alternative policies, instead their policies are alternating from day to day. They are reacting to events all the time and no effort is being made by the Taoiseach and the Government to control events and that ought to be the Government's prime concern. If it was the Government's concern one would have expected at this time in such a crucial debate that the Government would have given some clear indication of what policies they intended to pursue, and where there was any change in those policies the Government should have attempted to justify them.
Sixthly, we are voting against the Government because it is accepted by the sensible people in the North of Ireland, whether they come from the Unionist or Nationalist side, that a worthwhile contribution could be made to the northern situation by the introduction of proportional representation in their general elections and by the extension of proportional representation from the ballot box to the formation of government. What did we see occurring when the Taoiseach left the first Chequers Meeting? He was asked by the international Press whether he had advocated the introduction of proportional representation in northern political activities and developments and he belittled the contribution which proportional representation could make. Of course, we realise he was in an embarrassing position because his own party has twice sought to annihilate the principle of giving representation in Parliament and in Government to people in proportion to their strength in the community; but to think that a man would put his own personal and party embarrassment before the interests of the people of the North of Ireland is to demonstrate that such a man is unworthy of getting, at this time, the support of the Dáil and so we find ourselves obliged to vote against him.
Sevently, we must oppose the Government on this Adjournment because today we have learned that a matter which goes to the very root of the credibility of this Government in all its actions, and in particular in relation to the North of Ireland, is not going to be either discussed or determined if the Government have their way because the Government have indicated they will not afford time in this session to a debate and vote upon the motion which stands in the name of Deputy Cosgrave affecting the conduct of Deputy Gibbons, now Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, who misled this Dáil in relation to a matter which vitally affects the North of Ireland and ourselves and the credibility of this Government in relation to the North of Ireland.
In such a situation we cannot agree to the Adjournment of the Dáil until these and other matters are adequately discussed and if necessary decisions taken upon them. We are estopped by the Rules of Order from putting down a resolution on the Adjournment which would test some of these matters; and even if the Government are unwilling to speak about them they could at least, by their vote in the lobbies, decide in what way the political wind was really blowing. We must therefore vote against the Government on these grounds.
Before commenting further on the developments which have occurred in the North of Ireland and in Anglo-Irish relations since the Dáil adjourned I want once again to underscore the absolute conviction of all Fine Gael Members that violence rather than being a solution or a contribution to the problems of Northern Ireland will make more difficult their solution and increase, if it is possible to do so, the depth of hatred which exists between the people of Northern Ireland at the present time.
Let no one for one moment believe that, as we condemn the IRA or as we condemn British policies, we are in any way seeking to justify any form of force. We have in this Dáil rejected the use of force. All parties have subscribed to that rejection. That was an historic event. It was the first time in our 50 years as a Parliament that we took such a decision and it was taken on the initiative of the leader of the Fine Gael Party. As we condemn the British Government and the repressive measures which they have taken, let no one construe such condemnation as an expression of sympathy for any people who are committing crimes in the name of patriotism.
The truth is that many of the recently developed policies of the British Government have attracted more sympathy for the IRA and the UVF than anything that has been said or done in this Dáil or by anybody south of the Border. Certainly the violent and repressive measures taken by the British Government and by their agents in the North of Ireland have made more difficult the task of the elected representatives of the minority in the north to contribute to a solution. It seems to me, having listened to and read the debate of the last two days, that unless the British Government are deaf they must be convinced that relations between this country and Britain have been seriously bedevilled by the actions of the British Government in the last few months. I do not quite agree with Deputy Cruise-O'Brien when he says that we have no influence over Mr. Heath, we have.
I did not say that.
That is what I understood the Deputy to say; if I have misunderstood the Deputy, I apologise. There are those who believe that what is said here and done here will have no influence over Mr. Heath or his future actions or Mr. Faulkner and his future actions, but I do not believe that to be so. There is far more understanding of the problem now and far more sympathy for the minority in the North of Ireland than there would have been five, ten or 20 years ago. There is growing within the British Conservative Party a very significant body of opinion, which is in conflict with its own leadership regarding the manner in which they have been lending support for the maintenance of the Unionist Party and all its evil forms in recent months. It is quite clear also that the British Labour Party have to a substantial extent now rejected many of the actions of Mr. Heath and his Government.
It is important, as we criticise Britain for the mistakes which it has made, wittingly or unwittingly, that we do not allow any of this disapproval to be interpreted as sympathy for the IRA. We condemn British policies because they have assisted the men of violence. Both National and Unionist men of violence have been seriously and substantially assisted by the policies of the British and Stormont Governments in recent months. There is no use in Mr. Maudling, the British Home Secretary, describing internment as a hideous instrument which he did not want, when in permitting internment without trial to be introduced he knew that it would be prosecuted personally by Mr. Faulkner who is the prosecutor, the high executioner, of the policy of internment and its sole adudicator.
Who is Mr. Faulkner? He is the gentleman who resigned from the reformist Cabinet of Captain O'Neill because he did not agree with the pace and nature of the O'Neill reforms. Looking back now, what Captain Terence O'Neill was proposing was mild in the extreme; it would not to any extent placate the Northern minority now. Yet, Mr. Faulkner was so much in disagreement with the little that was then being done that he quit the Cabinet of Captain O'Neill. Yet, deliberately, knowingly into the hands of Mr. Faulkner, Mr. Heath and Mr. Maudling gave the full powers and opportunity of exercising internment selectively and deliberately against the Catholic minority. How is it being applied? It is being applied without regard to whether or not the detainees are men of violence. Many Catholic communities have had people seized, detained, ill-treated and tortured for no reason other than that they were leaders of the Catholic ghettoes in which they lived.
We have expressed our dissatisfaction with the composition and mode of procedure of the Compton Inquiry but we do not have to await the outcome of that inquiry. We are not concerned with whether it is an objective inquiry because we know that there has been brutal and degrading torture by the so-called British security forces of people detained under the Special Powers Act in the North of Ireland. I do not need to see the results of the inquiry by Sir Edmund Compton and his colleagues. I saw on the backs and bodies of Irishmen the bruises, the scars of their ill-treatment. I saw their ruined and degraded bodies: I saw their damaged testicles. I observed their twisted minds. I listened not alone to the people who were subjected to the torture but to their wives and families saying how the personalities of men and their dispositions had been twisted and destroyed by the inhuman and degrading tortures to which they were subjected.
Let there be no misunderstanding: it appears that most of this was inflicted not by the Special Branch detectives in the North, not by members of the RUC but principally by members of the British Army. It was done in more than one centre in such a systematic and deliberate way as to indicate that it was a most determined policy and clearly a very evil one. Such behaviour condemns Britain before all mankind. She is now in violation of the European Convention from which no country can derogate, that Convention which prohibits torture and degrading or inhuman treatment. There is not within Northern Ireland today an impartial court or jury which could give any person who has a complaint a fair trail or an adequate opportunity to get compensation.
In such a situation it seems to us that the Government have a very clear obligation to bring a formal complaint to the European Commission of Human Rights so that the matter may be examined by a body whose impartiality cannot be called in question. We plead with the Government to proceed on these lines. As we do so, we are not unaware of some technical difficulties which exist but I put it to the Government that it is preferable, with the weight of evidence which the Government must have, to proceed to the European Commission of Human Rights, present the case adequately and fully than to allow again a situation to arise which the Government know arose before in which a private complaint was clumsily handled by a person who had little regard for the interests of the people of Ireland and was concerned only with enriching himself at the expense of the misery of the people in Northern Ireland.
I agree with the sentiments expressed in this debate about the stupidity of the further acts of majestic British imperialism in blowing craters in cross-Border roads. But it is more than stupid. The Northern authorities are well aware that not only are there the famous 108,000 arms legally held but there are far more illegally held arms in the North of Ireland which have been imported from Scotland and elsewhere through Northern Ireland ports under the so-called surveillance of the British Navy and of security officers on the Northern coast when, in fact, these people who had the temerity to board our ships, have connived at the importation of these arms to be held by dangerous and vicious gunmen who want to exercise again over the next 50 years the unfair supremacy they have exercised over the minority in the past.
We do not say these things lightly. We draw attention to them so that the full canvas can be seen and that the partial way in which the British are seeking to enforce law and order may be exposed for what it is, an instrument which is driving further apart the two communities in the North of Ireland and destroying the prospect of any rearrangement in which Britain will have any part to play. We in Fine Gael do not overlook the fact that a large number of people in Northern Ireland want to maintain their British link but what must not be overlooked here or in the North is the fact that some 40 per cent of the people now in the North would not trust the British.
Yesterday when I heard from the Minister for Labour and from one of my own party a suggestion that direct rule by Westminster was the immediate solution which should be applied or the immediate contribution to the situation, I felt such people could not possibly understand the fact that now, principally due to the policies that have been applied over the past three or four months, nearly 40 per cent of the people of Northern Ireland no longer accept the bona fides of the British Government because they have seen the British Government use their Army and their influences not to maintain a balance between the two communities, not to prevent violence between them but to assert the supremacy of a Government which that 40 per cent of the people totally reject.
No, Sir, Mr. Maudling and the British Government cannot say that they are innocent of the blood being spilt in Northern Ireland. It is the duty of statesmen to foresee the probable consequences of their actions and if they, through stupidity or malice, permit policies to be implemented which result in bloodshed or further destruction, then they have their finger on the trigger of destruction. That is the position of the British Government. Anything we can do to get them to look at the situation afresh and to see that there is more in it than repression, we have a clear obligation to do.
It is very difficult to calculate what may happen in the future in any country and particularly in the future in the North of Ireland nor can we say with certainty what will be the outcome of any policy that may be applied but there is one unavoidable conclusion that has not yet been sufficiently recognised by the British Government or, if so, they have not acted on it, and that is that any general election in Northern Ireland in the foreseeable future will produce a majority in favour of a right wing, repressive, totalitarian and vindictive Government.
This is a view held by moderate members of the Parliamentary Unionist Party; it is a view held by sensible people on all sides in the North of Ireland. It is a view held by the elected representatives of the minority in the North. That being so, surely the British Government should act now to prevent such a situation? Or do the British Government want to be, like the Pakistani Government, faced with the embarrassment of the result of a general election. What if an election gives approval to Mr. Paisley or Mr. Craig? Does Britain then want to have to come in saying: "We will not accept the decision of the ballot box because it was reached through fear and intimidation"? Or will they at that stage say: "We have to accept this will, perverse and evil though we think it is, and we must now support that will with further presence of British might and British troops"? This is a situation which the Government have to face in Britain and which we have to face here and which must also be faced in Northern Ireland. The truth is that Mr. Faulkner today represents no significant political force. He commands little respect among the Unionists. He is totally rejected by the minority of 40 per cent and the only reason why the British policy is maintaining him is because they see him as the last bulwark to direct rule.
Britain must now accept the logic of the northern situation. They must accept the real danger of a so-called general election in the North and also the logic of the abstention from the Stormont Parliament of the elected members of the 40 per cent northern minority. If they accept that, it seems to us that the British Government which have a responsibility in the matter which they claim and which we do not deny—although we would question its validity but nevertheless it is there—must prorogue the Stormont Parliament, must suspend the Northern Government and must end internment. Unless and until the British Government do this the situation will continue to deteriorate.
What then must replace the Parliament and the Government and internment? The Fine Gael Party realise that there are dangers and disadvantages in proposing solutions. They do not say that any solution or suggestion which they make is not capable of moderation after discussion, but there has been so little comment of a constructive kind in this debate that we make no apology for putting out a few suggestions. It has often happened in the history of Ireland that what were deemed to be suggestions lacking reality at the time of their first pronouncement became the inevitable and only solutions in the long run. Therefore, with the authority of the leader of the party, Deputy Cosgrave, and the party itself, we propose that, after the Northern Parliament has been prorogued, the Government there suspended and internment brought to an end, there should be a transitional period in the North of Ireland during which that area would become an international protectorate being the responsibility of the Governments of Ireland and of Britain. This is necessary because of the fact that 60 per cent of the people may want association with Britain and if they do, 40 per cent want association with the South. If 60 per cent would trust Britain in such a situation 40 per cent would trust the Republic of Ireland. Therefore, such an arrangement should be one which would give justice and in giving justice would also have the appearance of offering some long-term solution.
It is also very necessary that rather than have direct rule from Westminster by people whom, as Deputy Cosgrave said, are ignorant of the North of Ireland—and even when they are wellmeaning and intend to inform themselves about it they usually get the wrong slant—there should be a commission of people from the North of Ireland, because they must find the solution themselves. A commission should be appointed to take over the administrative and other functions which are at present exercised by the Stormont Government itself. Such a commission must be appointed after consultation with and by agreement with the present elected leaders of the two communities in the North of Ireland. During the period of the international protectorate, there would also be a need for a court or tribunal on fundamental rights and fair practices so as to ensure that the void which until now has existed between the law in the North of Ireland and its practices will be closed. Such a court should have three judges, one from the North of Ireland, one from the South of Ireland and one from Britain.
There is also a very good reason for arguing that during such a period, and in the future, there should be a consultative assembly of parliamentarians, not merely from the North and the South of Ireland but including also representatives from Britain. We have a common interest in these islands and we cannot overlook the fact that there are people in the North of Ireland who feel that, if they were deprived of all association with Britain, their rights and opportunities would not be adequately protected. There is also a need for such a commission to make recommendations for the future structure and the manner of government in the North of Ireland. Such a structure and manner of government must include a system in which the minority of all Ireland, that is to say, the Protestants who are now in the majority in the North, would be free to exercise their religious, individual and social practices and observances, even when such failed to correspond with the strongly-held convictions of the religious majority in Ireland. Finally, there is also clearly a need to find a solution out of the morass through proportional representation in elections to whatever parliament would replace the interim commission and protectorate, and also in giving in the Government, as a matter of right, permanent and guaranteed representation to the minority.
I want to deal with a matter which has also arisen in recent times and has been referred to in the Taoiseach's opening address, and that is the military action which has taken place on the Border between the Republic of Ireland and the North, and the intrusion across our frontier by British troops. Some weeks ago the Taoiseach suggested to the British Government that he would be prepared to accept the presence on our sovereign soil of United Nations forces. At that time on behalf of Fine Gael I rejected such a suggestion. The Taoiseach did not go quite that far in his remarks yesterday, but he did say that it might be necessary to apprise the United Nations of the threat to international peace which military action on the Border presented to us. That is fair enough. We have no complaint with that, but we will not give any support whatsoever to any suggestions that United Nations troops be brought into the Border area. One very good reason for that is, first of all, to bring them on to our territory would be an insult to our sovereignty and a suggestion that there was a reason for us to have United Nation's forces here. If there is a threat to our security it is a matter for our Army. If the British are crossing our Border and do not cease to do it, it is a matter for our Army to take them into custody. That is the way the matter should be dealt with. We should not be sheltering behind the United Nations in order to cover up for the Government's total failure to give the Army and the Garda the necessary materials and moral support to which they are entitled. The presence of the United Nations on any international boundary, or the presence of the United Nations on an enclave within a national territory, has led to giving to that boundary or border an identification, status and permanence which it did not deserve; and if we bring the United Nations on to the Border of the Republic with the Six Counties we will be giving it an international recognition, identification and a permanence to which it is not entitled. It would be a dangerous thing to do this. The Border runs mainly through areas in which there is a Nationalist majority against the presence of that Border. We have no right to make that Border more permanent or more significant by bringing in anybody to give it additional attention.
Finally, I want to conclude in support of the Taoiseach on one particular question which he posed to the British Government. It is a question which, strangely enough, he did not himself mention after either meeting at Chequers. He came out and waffied loquaciously on many problems but he did not discuss the contradiction which existed between what Mr. Heath and Mr. Maudling were saying on the one hand and what Mr. Faulkner was saying on the other.
As we ask the British Government for an answer, we also ask the Taoiseach, or the Minister for Foreign Affairs if he is replying on his behalf, for a very specific answer to this question. After the Chequers meeting we were told that Mr. Heath recognised that the unity of Ireland was a legitimate political objective. Mr. Maudling, the British Home Secretary, said that the aim of his Government and the aim of British policy was to secure for the minority in the North an active, permanent and guaranteed role in the Government of the Province of Northern Ireland. Mr. Heath came jauntily out from the same Chequers conference and on to television and radio and said that Ted Heath and he were on the same team. What were the rules of the game which they were playing?
The Deputy said Mr. Heath.
Sorry. Mr. Faulkner said that he and Mr. Heath were on the same team.
He was on the reserve.
The rules under which Mr. Faulkner was going to play would exclude permanently the minority in the North of Ireland who believe that the unity of Ireland is a desirable objective, and to use Mr. Heath's words a legitimate objective. There has been a massive silence from Mr. Heath and from any other representative of the British Government on this matter since. Can we get from them now a clear statement as to whether or not they will continue to give military and financial support to somebody who can never see himself or anybody who now supports him participating in Government with people who believe ultimately in the unity of Ireland, even if they assert, as the elected representatives of the minority continue to assert in the North, that they desire this to be brought about only through co-operation and not through violence?
We should like to know did Mr. Heath and Mr. Faulkner at that Chequers conference agree on that and if they did not then, quite clearly, the Taoiseach should say so, and there should now be a very clear and unambiguous statement from the Taoiseach as to what occurred and from the British Premier as to what exactly is the goal of British policy. If they are on the one team they should be playing towards the one goal. At present on their own professed public declarations both the British and the Stormont Premiers are playing into opposite goals. In such a situation there is a definite need to have the picture cleared.
This is all I wish to say. We have stated clearly why we will vote against the Government. If the Government have any replies to make to the seven reasons which we put forward, we will be very interested to hear them from the Minister for Foreign Affairs when he is replying.
(Interruptions.)
The Minister for Foreign Affairs.
Since there is a precedent for a person who is not a Member of this House to address the House, may I ask that Mr. Patrick Kennedy be allowed to speak?
The Deputy will resume his seat. The Minister for Foreign Affairs.
I want to join in the appeal that this man from the North of Ireland should be allowed to speak. Not alone should these people from the North be allowed to speak but they should be able to take their seats here. We advocated that in the past.
The Deputy will resume his seat.
If we want to show our support for them this is an opportunity to do so, and this is the place for it.
The Deputy will resume his seat. The Minister for Foreign Affairs.
On behalf of the Taoiseach I am answering some of the points raised in this debate. May I say as a comment on the debate that, so far as the Dáil is concerned, much of what has been said here has been said in the hope of affecting the political situation here even more than to affect the difficult situation in the North of Ireland? There is no doubt whatever about the extremely difficult situation through which our country is going at the moment and may have to continue to go through for some time to come. Deputy Ryan spoke of using this occasion to put forward an alternative Government and said that an alternative Government would not come from these benches. I should like to say to him that one of the real letdowns this country suffered from is the fact, created by the Opposition, that an alternative Government has not been made available to the people for a long time.
Which Opposition?
They have taken every decision to make it impossible to have an alternative Government and, to continue in those circumstances to try to undermine the Government in this difficult situation——
That is a ridiculous statement.
——is less than responsible. He spoke of instability of Government, of divisions and disagreements in the Government, and of the Government being on sticky ground. Having said that much, I should like to say that on this difficult subject amongst all sections of our people there is agreement on one aim, that is, the unification of our country by peaceful means. Everybody agrees on the unification of our country but there are some small sections who feel that means rejected by all parties in this House are the only means which will influence the situation. Having this certainty that all Irishmen believe in this, and that our whole history——
All Irishmen?
——is damned by divisions for which we blamed other countries, I should like to take the line here that we are entitled to approach this problem from many different points of view, without giving the impression abroad that we are fighting amongst ourselves, as Kilkenny cats are supposed to fight.
I think all Irishmen have the same aim. While this Dáil has been used for the purpose of trying to score political points, I think we have brought it clearly before our minds that this Dáil has, perhaps, a very small influence on the events in the North of Ireland. If we ask ourselves can this Dáil do anything to affect violence in the North of Ireland, what answers do we get? Any politician in this part of the country who pretends that violence can be switched off by some decision in Dublin is wrong, and is creating a wrong impression. He is falling for the propaganda put out, I believe, by the Unionist Government to save their tottering regime.
There is very little that this Dáil or any Member of it can do—in fact, I would say, there is nothing—to stop the men of violence who are now creating the violence which we all condemn and continue to condemn in the North of Ireland. The violence in the North of Ireland was not there two years ago. In the North of Ireland two years ago, after 50 years of the existence of a sectarian regime which, by the Downing Street declaration of the British Government was shown to the whole world to have been based on injustice and maltreatment of a minority, that regime was shaken not by violence but by the civil rights movement, by people looking for their rights. The violence has come into the Northern situation for the past two years because it is tolerated by the population there. It is tolerated perhaps because the population have been made to despair of their hope being realised that the wrongs of 50 years would be redressed, Perhaps they have despaired of their hope that political methods could achieve this. It is with this desperation of the minority in the North that we have to deal here. For myself I see that the competition now is between the politicians and the men of violence. It is no good just talking about peace; we are all for peace, but it has to be proved that peaceful methods will find solutions. There has to be a hope that political methods will bring a result or people become naturally desperate, will be more open to suggestions that politics have failed.
I believe that political methods can succeed and I believe that this House can deal with the desperation of the minority in the North by approaching its fundamental cause, injustice, and approaching it through the British Government which claims responsibility at this time for the North of Ireland and the administration there.
What is wrong in Northern Ireland is the Stormont Administration. Partition is the first cause of the trouble. It has resulted in 50 years of a permanent, sectarian Administration which is the cause of injustice. Any solution, or any pretence at looking for a solution, which has as its basis the continued existence of a permanent, sectarian, and unjust regime, perhaps in many ways controlled by bigots, cannot be a solution; it can only invite a continuance of the troubles which are in the North of Ireland now. In rejecting violence in this House we must with every voice we have here reject also injustice and reject the existence of a permanent, sectarian regime.
By definition as a member of the Fianna Fáil Party, as a member of the Fianna Fáil Government, I reject violence. Equally by definition, as a member of Fianna Fáil I have no existence except to make sure that political solutions are found and will work. I do not accept that political methods have failed. I think that what has been achieved by the Taoiseach in recent months in having meetings with the British Government, in being accepted as of right at meetings about Northern Ireland, in making a British Prime Minister change from his stance of "It is not your business" to saying "It is your business"; in making a British Prime Minister change from saying: "The regime in the North must survive" to saying that: "Reunification is a natural aspiration", the present leader of the Fianna Fáil Party and this Government have gone further than any leader that I met in my time could hope for in this generation. Having got that far, it is too much to ask the Dáil, a Dáil which cannot put up an alternative Government, in which on basic politics the two Opposition parties are totally against one another, that in this critical time we should push our advantage, that we should follow the man who has gained so much ground? Or must we forever fit into the witticism about the Irish that they must keep knocking one another. It is not too much to ask the politicians to back a man who has achieved so much. I have no doubt that, in spite of all the gossip and the rumours and the constant reports of what is going on, in the heart of every sincere and honest politician here and every Irishman throughout the country there is sound support for a person who has gone along a road which has been difficult, made decisions which have seemed impossible and has survived and achieved movement in the political field which none of us thought was possible a year ago.
Why not test that support?
We are testing it this evening. I have much more faith in the wit, in the brains and the judgment of the Irish people than I have in those of us who create noise, rumours and so on. I do not think we need an election to test the public opinion. This Dáil will give its support this evening. It is worth having this debate.
Is the Minister looking over his shoulder?
No. I say this Dáil cannot do much about the North in terms of stopping the violence. We have no influence on the violence. The propaganda of the northern regime has been that the trouble comes from the South, that the explosions are caused by the southern IRA. It is this propaganda which has forced the British Government to follow a totally, almost criminally, foolish line which they are following in the North of Ireland. They have been led along the line that all that has to be dealt with in the North of Ireland is violence. I repeat that two years ago there was no violence. There were civil rights marches and the violence came from the State, from the institutions of the State. The violence was begun by the State. When there was reaction the violence was reinforced by the State until the British sent in their own army supposedly to protect the minority. Violence in the North of Ireland had its beginning in State violence two years ago. We know that. From time to time Deputy Conor Cruise-O'Brien says we make deplorable speeches. I do not think of myself as a speech maker.
What is the Minister doing now?
I think of myself as somebody who looks at a situation and asks: "What is the reality of our situation?" I say we cannot affect violence in the North. We have had suggestions here about a council. There have been all sorts of suggestions that the ingenuity of the Irish brain can bring up, but the fundamental thing in this situation is that a decision has to be made by the British Government sometime to solve the Irish question. The will to solve the Irish question has to be there. While we can keep putting up suggestions here in the Dáil forever, until we can influence the British Government to make their decision then it will continue to be an exercise in local politics for us to talk about the North here.
When I say we can influence the British to make their decisions, I do not exclude the theory or the theme on which certain members of the Labour Party work, that you must influence the people in the North of Ireland. However, the British Government have said they will not have a united Ireland without the wishes of a Northern Irish majority. The idea seems to mean this, that if you coax them, if you are nice to them, if you recognise them, tell them they are great, and bolster up their regime, some day in an excess of gratitude they will turn around and embrace you. I am afraid I do not accept it. I cannot accept that the regime in the North of Ireland would willingly give up their privileged position, and all their talk of religion, IRA and everything else, is only propaganda. Somebody, and I forget who it was, but it was certainly more than 50 years ago, said that if you flush out a bad landlord in Belfast you find he goes religious. They always have an excuse for their behaviour. In the North of Ireland they have an excuse for every bit of maladministration. They have accused the minority of being opposed to the State. Therefore they were subversives. The Civil Rights marchers were subversives. The IRA were the cause of the violence. The IRA came in later than the violence. The violence was started by the Administration itself.
Remember it was a Fianna Fáil Taoiseach years ago who crossed the Border and the local leader of the Stormont administration came here— so we have tried economic and social co-operation. I referred to this two years ago when I found myself before the Security Council of the United Nations. I said:
In pursuit of our declared policy of seeking to bring about re-unification by peaceful means, my Government have sought national reconcilation through economic and other forms of co-operation so as to eliminate the barriers of mistrust and prejudice.
The Six County regime, however, has been reluctant or unable to bring about the basic reforms of a social and political nature in the structure of Northern Ireland which would give meaning to this approach, which would bring some improvement to the plight of the minority.
We cannot simply accept co-operation with a regime to bring about a situation where the minority are treated not as citizens to be handed a concession but as citizens of equal right and hope to leave it at that. We must also look and see what the guarantee is that Britain has given to the Northern local majority. The guarantee, in its present formulation by Britain, is that there will not be re-unification without the will of the local majority and this means that no matter how they behave, no matter how far they are driven to behave against the minority by their bigoted right wing, the British will always regard them as British, the British will keep them as part of the United Kingdom. That guarantee is too much for that group. That guarantee causes them to look forward to a future of thousands of years in which they can hope to be a dominant administration and that guarantee should be changed as the Taoiseach asked that it should be changed on the 11th July last here in Dublin. The Taoiseach asked that these people should be let know that some time they will have to live with us and with the minority in Northern Ireland without this kind of guarantee. It is not a great deal to ask and it should be one of the first considerations of the British Government to ask themselves how far their guarantee determines the behaviour of the permanent, sectarian administration in the North.
That having been said, what other way can you influence the people in the North? We all here say we reject force without even defining what we mean by force. Two years ago when this House sat all night in one of the antics put on by Fine Gael I remember saying, not here but on a television programme, that we reject military force. There are other forces that we can use. There are other forces that the citizens in the North of Ireland can use and have used. There are forces which public opinion in Britain can use and there are forces that international organisations can use. They are not strong forces, they are not direct forces but they are forces to which those who believe in a political approach must confine themselves and they are approaches to which those who believe in a political approach must commit themselves. We must never stop trying to bring about a situation where the majority in the North of Ireland will have to face the fact that in the future, whatever about living with us, they have to live with the minority and the administration in the North of Ireland must realise that as a sectarian, dominant regime it is finished, it is gone and the British Government who claim responsibility for their behaviour and have authority over their area must face the fact that this change must come about, that it must be brought about in a controlled way, that the armed monster which they fear so much will go loose must be disarmed and that the solution in the North is not to try to go back to a situation where the minority laid down or accepted or seemed to accept a secondary position. That is all over. It will never happen again.
This Dáil and every Member of this Dáil must face up to the fact that it is equally important in our minds to reject physical force, violence, the ugliness, the excuse it gives to the bigots and the right wing of the Unionists, the propaganda it gives to the Stormont regime to get the British to send in more and more troops. We must reject that violence and that force but in rejecting them we cannot go about our business as usual here. We have to use every other means in our power to bring about a new situation; in the last analysis it may not come from anything we do. In fact, I think the greatest force at this time and for a long time into the future affecting the situation will be the force of opinion in the minority population in the North of Ireland. Really it comes down to this as a Dáil and as political parties that we have to think about how we behave ourselves while history is making this enormous convulsion in our country. How do we behave ourselves? How do we treat one another? How do we treat the people in the North? Do we put up suggestions here of doing things which would bolster up the regime in the North for the sake of peace? We hate violence but remember that Ghandi, the great apostle of peace, said that if he was faced with a choice between violence and cowardice he would accept violence. It is not enough to be against violence. We must also find ways of helping new political institutions to survive and become strong. The British Government, while claiming the right, the authority and the responsibility for the North of Ireland, must also accept that, if they are not to continue dealing with men of violence, if their actions and reactions are not between them and men of violence, they must create in that area of our country a political system which will satisfy all the population there.
That is why the Taoiseach has again and again suggested methods by which the two communities in the North of Ireland could function together in a new form of administration as an interim measure and bring about a peaceful situation. I believe firmly, I believe deep inside me, that violence will not be tolerated in any community, or be indulged in by any section of a community, that is satisfied that it has the political means of redressing its grievances, that has recourse to political rights and normal democratic rights. Everything I say is built on that. It may be proved untrue. Violence can take on a life of its own or as somebody said a logic of its own. But if it is wrong violence itself cannot survive for being wrong. The one thing that can survive is adequate democratic institutions; inadequate institutions might survive for a time by their own force but cannot survive for long without legitimacy from the public. I said this before.
There were things raised here which I intended to answer before becoming distracted by certain things Deputy Ryan said. He suggested that we were seeking to have United Nations forces brought into our country and that his party would object. Two years ago at the United Nations, the Government having gone through the procedure of suggesting to the British that they invite UN peace-keeping forces, then ourselves sought peace-keeping forces in the North of Ireland. The rules of the UN were such that Article 2, paragraph 7, was invoked; but again when the people of this party spoke of UN forces they did point out that it should be at the wish of the British Government that such forces be brought into the North of Ireland. But recently when the Taoiseach spoke of a UN Observers Group he said we would welcome observers at the Border, on both sides of the Border, to show that the violence in the North of Ireland was not coming from here, that the violence in the North of Ireland was coming out of the ghettos in the North of Ireland and that the violence in the North of Ireland had its origin in the injustices of the North of Ireland. This was the proposal made by the Taoiseach in relation to observers. I do not know whether I ever told the House before but in 1969 when the Taoiseach asked me to go to visit the Home Secretary in London in regard to the Apprentice Boys parade I asked at that time that the British Government would put observers there to see how the Stormont regime would behave. I was told they were quite satisfied that the Stormont regime could handle the situation. That was two years ago.
Every time the Taoiseach has asked me to speak to the British Government we have told them how wrong they were, how wrong were their decisions, what should be done and what will happen. Every time we have been right. Some day it must happen that the British Government will lose this total blank judgment they have when dealing with Ireland. They must realise what they are being told from here is the truth and that what they are being told by that regime in the North is leading them into policies foreign to British democracy and justice. We have been right so often that it must sometimes have an effect.
Deputy Ryan spoke of going to the European Commission on Human Rights. The Government have been collecting evidence in regard to the allegations of inhuman and degrading treatment and torture since before the introduction of internment. More information is coming in and is being processed. The matter is now under serious consideration but a final decision has yet to be made by the Government.
Deputy Cruise-O'Brien said Articles II and III of the Constitution are at the root of violence in the North of Ireland. I do not know if Deputy Cruise-O'Brien really believes that. I do not know if he believes that the Irish people will ever give up their claim to Irish unity. I do not think that the Irish people will give up that claim, and I might add that the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, pre-dates the Constitution.
The same Deputy also spoke about speeches and I think I have dealt with that. Some people talk about speeches as if the important thing to do was to make a good speech with the proper literary allusion. This is an illusion.
The Taoiseach makes more literary allusions than I do.
He is quoting Kafka now.
What I am trying to establish is that here we are politicians.
The Minister does not have to establish that.
I am talking about the House, and the reaction on the other benches proves that the people opposite accept that they are academic amateurs. The solution of Ireland's problems will come from the politicians, not from the pretended politicians.
It will not come from Milltown Malbay at any rate.
Being an academic does not mean one is a statesman. The only statesmen you can have are politicians. In any event time to read in bed at night is no indication of a person's power to carry a country through a difficult period.
(Interruptions.)
Dr. Cruise-O'Brien distinguished between a claim to Irish unity and an aspiration. Shades of encouragement.
Shades of what? I did not hear the Minister.
I was thinking of the Deputy's penchant for long discussions on the definition of words. The northern minority do not make any such distinction. If the northern minority are faced with a Unionist claim to be a permanent and dominant group in the North and if they enforce that claim by repressive measures, if they claim to be able to run the North as a bigoted backwater and to keep on doing it even in areas where the Unionists are thin on the ground, the Deputy can hardly expect the minority to start dissecting the difference between a claim and an aspiration.
They have done so.
It is nonsense for Deputy Cruise-O'Brien to join in what I think is the Unionist propaganda, which finds the South as the source of all trouble in the North.
This is too serious a debate to be telling lies.
It is unworthy of the Minister.
I said the opposite.
I am motivated by as much compassion for my fellowmen as any person here. I believe everyone in this House honestly wants a solution to this problem. However, some people get too engrossed with the rightness of their own personal view—we are Irish —and this can lead one wrong at both extremes of the spectrum. The extreme I am talking about is the extreme of the political spectrum here that seems to listeners who may have a less sophisticated interpretation of the meaning of words to bolster up the Unionist claim that the only thing wrong in the North was the questioning of the last vestige of the British Empire.
The Minister was not listening. He should not speak about himself as being a listener.
It was my honest intention to answer questions raised here. There are questions raised by people——
Why did the Minister not sit in for the debate and listen to what was said?
I was in Luxembourg. I travel. It is important for our country now that people know that this Parliament can make decisions, can continue to support the political institutions, can have all the tensions and cross-examinations and disagreements, but at the end the decisions made will be political decisions and the actions taken will be political actions. For that reason I cannot see how there can be any serious doubt in anyone's mind that the Taoiseach, on behalf of the Government, has used every means at his command to obtain political progress in the North through peaceful means. It is not just a matter of wishing for peace and letting things happen to other people. Not even the most cynical of British politicians, not even the most abusive propagandist, not even the most desperate Orange bigot can challenge this, much as they would like to do it. It must be uncomfortable for the people I have mentioned to be unable with any conviction or persuasiveness to accuse this Government of anything other than a genuine attempt to find a better way of solving the Irish question, a better way than by savagery, brutality and, as is widely accepted, by torture.
The policy adopted by the Government is one that is unanimously agreed by the Government. Not alone is it agreed or concurred in, but it is a policy to which every member of the Government is committed——
What policy?
It is a policy discussed many times by the Government, understood by all of us in all its aspects and shared fully and completely by all of us. Ugly rumours to the contrary, based on false information, are absurdly wrong.
Would the Minister let us in on the secret?
Deputies know that, as Foreign Minister, my responsibilities take me outside the country, to Brussels, Luxembourg, New York and elsewhere. In this respect I am glad to say I do not believe that my work in recent months has been in vain. My speech at the General Assembly of the United Nations recently, which brought the state of affairs in Northern Ireland to the attention of the world assembly, was no futile exercise. I was carrying out the wish of the Government. In carrying out Government policy abroad, my absence from Dublin has been to the benefit of, in pursuance of, and fully in accordance with the wishes of the Taoiseach and the Government. Those who described my behaviour at Government meetings when I am in New York, Achill or wherever else I may be, are giving me a claim to bilocation to which only the saints aspire.
The word "policy" brought me on to that. It is worth saying that in regard to the policy adopted by the Government simply by being what it is, it makes ridicule of British Army activities along the Border, for which there is no military justification whatsoever. Much less is there any excuse for British armed incursions across the Border, about which we have found it necessary to issue a protest. I spoke of forces other than military ones. If we rely on these forces they will prevail without creating greater misery. These forces, as I said include the facts of the situation themselves. There is nothing clearer than the bankruptcy in every sense of British policy in Ireland unless it be the bankruptcy of Unionism. When a solution has failed there are two or three things which can be done about it. The first would be to deny the failure and that makes matters worse. The second would be to cure the failure by finding another, better and more defensible answer. A third would be to attempt to reverse the failure by destroying more people and more things. Here another force comes into the situation, that of the refusal of people to co-operate in their own repression.
In this respect the Taoiseach has made it clear on behalf of the Government that against the current attempt to obtain a military solution in Northern Ireland he would support a policy of passive resistance by the population there. This is a force that others can ignore only at their peril. Such a force is supported traditionally and internationally by the one thing which distinguishes man from other creatures, his sense of morality. No empire based on repression has lasted indefinitely. The British Empire itself is one of the last evidences of this obvious truth. Where no moral writ runs a Government cannot govern.
In a British newspaper today I saw a photograph which I suppose most Deputies have seen in one newspaper or another. I have deliberately chosen to refer to a newspaper which cannot easily be ignored in London. Does anyone believe that a regime which refuses or ignores the views, the strength of character and the talents of the men pictured on hunger strike outside No. 10 Downing Street, Currie, Hume, O'Hanlon, can long survive? There is a force in these men which already has exposed beyond question, beyond doubt, the rotten fabric in the North, a force which has already broken irretrievably Unionist power in the North and which will yet destroy a British policy directed at their coercion.
I said that Unionist power had been broken irretrievably and I mean exactly that. No one can any longer believe that a Unionist Government can patch up a northern society. It cannot govern even now. The northern minority, and I say this very deliberately, to give it as much weight as I can so that it will be understood elsewhere than in this House, will never again accept the control and the authority of the Stormont Government and Parliament. Not all the laws passed in Stormont, nor all the statements made by spokesmen for that Government, nor all their efforts to preserve their peculiar privileges will affect the refusal of 40 per cent of the northern population to take the slightest heed of them. They are talking into a vacuum of social life in the North which they have created themselves. Nothing can, nothing will, restore their dignity. They have failed in the first duty of Government.
As I said recently in the United Nations "the Northern regime has not achieved that consent to its democratic legitimacy which is the hallmark of a just and stable society". Now the British Government must make their decision in the light of that situation. They can allow themselves to be dragged further and further into a stupid war against people deprived of their rights for 50 years, people whom the British Government like to call British. If there is a civil war in these islands it is between the British Government and the northern minority in regard to whom the British Government have disgraced their name.
The three men sitting across the street from Mr. Heath in Downing Street at this time are silent, eloquent witnesses to the failure of the British Prime Minister to assume the responsibilities he claims. He may wish, as the Taoiseach said yesterday, to indulge in a last crazy attempt to intimidate the Irish people. Britain has never in a millennium succeeded in doing that. I would now like to tell the Dáil that on 14th October a detachment of British troops crossed the Border in the County of Monaghan and blew two holes in the roadway in the townland of Rough Hill. A Government which engages in an attempt to create a physical division in Ireland should at least know where the Border is.
It may not yet be too late to make one final appeal to what remains of intelligence and good sense in London. They should stop this silly game. They will arouse the people of this country against them. If this is their intention then they will not even get the support of the British people. If it is not their intention then they should say so and act accordingly. Our two countries may be on the verge of entering the European Community. We all know that this is the great ambition of Mr. Heath for his country. In due time the Irish people will decide by referendum whether or not to join and this is no time for Britain to create a war situation between Ireland and England. Europe will have none of that. It is time instead for Britain and Ireland to discuss meaningfully another arrangement. We are prepared to do this on the basis that Britain declares her interest in the unity of Ireland by agreement in independence and that in the meantime the Northern administration shall be equally controlled by the two communities there as of right.
There is nothing in these proposals which takes away from the legitimate rights of anyone. I am convinced on examination that the majority in the North, to a very large extent, will accept these proposals. They are to their benefit and contribute to their freedom for there is no freedom for the majority in the North either in the present situation. There is no freedom, no dignity and no self-respect. They are tied to Ireland as Ireland is tied to them. We are all natives of this land and between us we must seek its peace. Deputy FitzGerald suggested that the views of the SDLP are confined to reform in the North.
I did not say that.
If the Deputy did not say it I do not have to deal with it.
I said they are concerned in the first instance with the situation in Northern Ireland and then with achieving unity by consent, which this Government are sabotaging.
If the Deputy is satisfied that he did not say that, as I was not present, I will not deal with it in the way I had intended.
Would the Minister like to comment on what I did say?
It did not prevent the Minister from dealing with what other people did not say.
I started by saying that we all have a basic aim. We naturally respect this institution and for the reason that we have these political insituations we use them to the full. We are trying to score points. I have scored points, perhaps, off the Opposition and, perhaps, I have been too gentle. The Opposition have scored points off us. Recently, however, we have been at one in seeking peace with justice, not peace with quietness, and the reunification of our country. In that context, I should like to say that I congratulate the parliamentary delegation that went from here to the Council of Europe and promoted the motion now before the Political Affairs Committee and the Legal Committee of the Consultative Assembly. In particular, I would praise the work of Deputy Frank Aiken, Deputy Richie Ryan and Deputy Frank Cluskey. What they have done will, I am sure, be heartily commended by all of us in this Parliament.
Question put.
The Dáil divided: Tá, 66; Níl, 60.
Tá
- Alken, Frank.
- Allen, Lorcan.
- Andrews, David.
- Barrett, Sylvester.
- Blaney, Neil.
- Boylan, Terence.
- Brady, Philip A.
- Brennan, Joseph.
- Brennan, Paudge.
- Briscoe, Ben.
- Browne, Patrick.
- Browne, Seán.
- Burke, Patrick J.
- Carter, Frank.
- Childers, Erskine.
- Colley, George.
- Connolly, Gerard C.
- Cowen, Bernard.
- Cronin, Jerry.
- Crowley, Flor.
- Cunningham, Liam.
- Delap, Patrick.
- de Valera, Vivion.
- Dowling, Joe.
- Fahey, Jackie.
- Faulkner, Pádraig.
- Fitzpatrick, Tom (Dublin Central).
- Nolan, Thomas.
- O'Connor, Timothy.
- O'Kennedy, Michael.
- O'Leary, John.
- O'Malley, Des.
- Power, Patrick.
- Flanagan, Seán.
- Foley, Desmond.
- Forde, Paddy.
- French, Seán.
- Gallagher, James.
- Geoghegan, John.
- Gibbons, Hugh.
- Gibbons, James.
- Gogan, Richard P.
- Haughey, Charles.
- Healy, Augustine A.
- Herbert, Michael.
- Hillery, Patrick J.
- Hilliard, Michael.
- Kenneally, William.
- Kitt, Michael F.
- Lalor, Patrick J.
- Lemass, Noel T.
- Lenihan, Brian.
- Loughnane, William A.
- Lynch, Celia.
- Lynch, John.
- MacSharry, Ray.
- Meaney, Thomas.
- Molloy, Robert.
- Moore, Seán.
- Moran, Michael.
- Sherwin, Seán.
- Smith, Michael.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Timmons, Eugene.
- Tunney, Jim.
- Wyse, Pearse.
Níl
- Barry, Peter.
- Barry, Richard.
- Begley, Michael.
- Belton, Paddy.
- Browne, Noel.
- Bruton, John.
- Burke, Joan.
- Burke, Richard.
- Burton, Philip.
- Byrne, Hugh.
- Clinton, Mark A.
- Cluskey, Frank.
- Collins, Edward.
- Conlan, John F.
- Coogan, Fintan.
- Cooney, Patrick M.
- Cosgrave, Liam.
- Cott, Gerard.
- Coughlan, Stephen.
- Creed, Donal.
- Crotty, Kieran.
- Cruise-O'Brien, Conor.
- Desmond, Barry.
- Dockrell, Henry P.
- Dockrell, Maurice E.
- Donegan, Patrick S.
- Dunne, Thomas.
- Enright, Thomas W.
- Finn, Martin.
- FitzGerald, Garret.
- Fitzpatrick, Tom (Cavan).
- Flanagan, Oliver J.
- Fox, Billy.
- Governey, Desmond.
- Harte, Patrick D.
- Hogan, Patrick.
- Hogan O'Higgins, Brigid.
- Jones, Denis F.
- Kenny, Henry.
- L'Estrange, Gerald.
- Lynch, Gerard.
- McLaughlin, Joseph.
- McMahon, Lawrence.
- Malone, Patrick.
- Murphy, Michael P.
- O'Connell, John F.
- O'Donnell, Tom.
- O'Hara, Thomas.
- O'Higgins, Thomas F.
- O'Leary, Michael.
- O'Reilly, Paddy.
- O'Sullivan, John L.
- Pattison, Séamus.
- Ryan, Richie.
- Spring, Dan.
- Taylor, Francis.
- Thornley, David.
- Timmins, Godfrey.
- Treacy, Seán.
- Tully, James.
Tellers: Tá: Deputies Andrews and Meaney; Níl Deputies R. Burke and Cluskey.
Motion declared carried.
The Dáil adjourned at 5.15 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 27th October, 1971.