I beg to move:—
That, in the opinion of the Seanad, the country is entitled to an explicit statement from the Government as to the justifiability and the expediency of bombing activities in Great Britain by Irish citizens.
This is a motion that is not brought in in any spirit of morbid sensationalism or from any desire to make Party capital. Neither Senator Tierney nor I belong to any Party, nor are we hotheaded young men eager for publicity. This motion has been brought in because it appears to us to be needed, and I submit that any clear-minded person who is in touch with either Irish opinion or English opinion must feel that it is needed. I know, from personal observation and from information received from various quarters, that there is a widespread suspicion, both in this country and in England, that the Government and the Government Party, if they do not actually approve what has been going on, at any rate regard it with a considerable degree of complacency.
I am well aware that many Senators in this House feel that the British Government and the British people are being guilty of injustice in not doing what they ask them to do in the matter of Irish unity, and I fully realise that neither the Government nor the Government Party would wish to relieve the English Government or the English people of any of the inconveniences that might, in the ordinary course, flow from that injustice on their part. But in introducing this motion I am asking the House and the Government to consider, not the convenience or the interests of the English people, but the interests of the Irish people, and I would beseech Senators opposite to open their minds to the possibility that men with the point of view of Senator Tierney and myself can care as intensely about Irish interests as any of them can.
It is more than six months since these bomb outrages began, since a kind of declaration of war was issued by the headquarters of an illegal organisation here upon the Government and the people of England, and, when the Taoiseach informed us last February that legislation would be introduced to deal with that challenge to the authority of our Government, he said that he was refraining from commenting upon the outrages themselves because there were cases sub judice which would make it improper for him to say all that he might think. That reason for his silence has long since disappeared. The authorship of these outrages has been proved and proclaimed by those principally concerned and I suggest that the time has come, and more than come, when the Taoiseach should fulfil what I feel was an implied promise in the speech to which I am referring that he would give the country a lead as to what they ought to think about such actions.
The fact that so far he has failed to do so has had unfortunate consequences in two respects. One is that it has encouraged the commission of the outrages to the extent that those who are committing them have not become conscious of public disapproval in Ireland. No public bodies in Ireland have protested against these outrages. Few public men have said a word in reprehension of them. Instead of that, we find criticism of the jail sentences by which British Courts are dealing with them. I would rather that these outrages were put down by the force of Irish public opinion than by English jail sentences, and Irish public opinion is largely moulded by the advice given to the Irish people by the Government, and especially the Taoiseach. I see even in to-day's Irish Press, the Government organ, prominence given to a letter complaining, not of the wickedness of these outrages, but of the severity of a sentence of three years' imprisonment imposed upon an old woman of 77 years. Certainly, it is very sad to see an old woman of 77 sent to prison, perhaps to end her life there, but I do not know what precautions the perpetrators of these deeds have taken to see that the bombs which they explode do not kill people of 77 and over, and children of 7 and under; and so long as no such precautions are taken, it seems to me that this softheartedness, not to say soft-headedness, about imposing a sentence of three years on a lady of 77 is somewhat out of place.
The other respect in which the silence of the Government has done harm is that it has added to the injury that these outrages have inflicted upon Irish interests. It has added, in other words, to the unpopularity of Irishmen, because of the suspicion it has created that Irish people in general are rather glad that these things are going on. The responsibility that the Government have in this matter is, to my mind, considerably increased by their connection with what seems to me the calamitous form of anti-Partition campaign that has been going on for some time past. It has rather faded into the background now, I agree, but for a time the most inflammatory speeches were being made, and the nature of these speeches, and the arguments advanced in these speeches, naturally add to the suspicion that the Government are not altogether displeased with this violence. Many of the Government's followers joined with elements more to the Left in that highly Partitionist body—perhaps the most highly Partitionist body that ever existed in this country—called the Anti-Partition League; and that body has been holding meetings and making speeches quite recently which would encourage the belief that the deeds that are being done now are not altogether disagreeable to them.
Now, I am not prepared to take anything for granted, and it is not for me to dictate to the Government what its opinions should be. For a moment, therefore, I shall suppose that the Government are rather in favour of what is going on. If that is the case, however, and if there is any approval or any complacency with regard to it, I do suggest that it ought to be openly acknowledged and that anything else is totally unworthy of this nation's past or of what we should like to believe is this nation's present. If we really are in favour of acts of war—of any acts of war, much more these particular acts of war—if we are in favour of these acts being committed against the British people, we should surely renounce the British connection, and renounce it good and proper. We should cease to use the King as an organ and officer for external affairs. We should forbid our citizens to make use of the privileges of British citizenship. We should give up any idea of neutrality in a European War and we should make up our minds to fight on the side of England's enemies. We should put from us any such baseness as supplying the English with food in a European War or being of any assistance to England, direct or indirect, economically or militarily.
Senators will remember that an Irish statesman was once represented in a forged letter, as secretly favouring the Phoenix Park murders while he pretended, openly, to disapprove of them. Now, the Irish people have always considered—and I think rightly considered—that that was about the basest accusation that could be made against a public man, but if it were the case that our Government were in favour of what was going on and refrained from saying so while still continuing to take every advantage of the British connection, I suggest that they would be doing exactly what Parnell was so basely accused of doing. But, Sir, I want to believe, and I do believe, that such a supposition is entirely unwarranted and that the Government disapprove. If they do disapprove, I cannot imagine any respectable argument for refraining from saying so, and I hope that the Taoiseach will say so.
Shortly, apparently, we shall have landing on our shores a number of people who will have been deported from England as suspects. How are they going to be received? With triumphal arches and brass bands, as patriots and heroes? I wish them no ill, but I can think of nothing that would be worse for them or that would be worse for the morals of our country than that such glorification should take place, and I think it is time that the Government made it plain that, in their view, this terrorism is not something that is to be regarded as laudable and patriotic.
Now, it is not my opinion of these matters that is going to carry weight with the class that I want to reach; it is the Government's opinion; it is the Taoiseach's opinion. Nevertheless I feel that, without entering on the question of morality, which I shall leave aside for others to deal with, I should be lacking in my duty as a public representative if I did not say something about the futility of these deeds from the point of view of their effects upon Irish interests. They seem to me to be very considerable and very disastrous.
To begin with minor matters, we have lately arranged to spend large sums of money the encouragement of tourist traffic in this country. What prospect is there of bringing tourists, at any rate from England, to this country, if we make ourselves detested by this kind of deed? More serious than that is the position of Irishmen in England. First, let us take the position of Irish visitors to England. It has come to my personal knowledge that, in many cases, Irish visitors to England have suffered very unpleasant reactions: that men of good position in life, men of high respectability, have been actually humiliated by being refused hotel accommodation in places so far apart as London, Blackpool and Bournemouth; these happen to be the places that have come to my attention. What is more important is the position of Irishmen who are trying to make their living in England. I have known of cases of Irishmen losing their jobs there as a result of these activities. I have known of cases of Irishmen suffering unpopularity and a semi-boycott in England because of these activities. Consequently, I think there can be no doubt that the reactions on Irish people in England are extremely unfortunate.
We might put up with all that, however; we might put up with the effects on our tourism or on our citizens living in Great Britain, if what was being done were producing any progress towards Irish unity. But is it? I ask anybody to reflect for a few minutes and to say to himself, is it or could it? Now, there are opposite views, as I fully recognise, about the way to secure Irish unity. One is that our main task is to win over the people of the North. That is not the view of Senators on those benches. The other is that the main task is to induce the English to end Partition. That is the view of Senators on those benches. Let us consider whether, from either point of view, these outrages are likely to have a good effect.
Anybody who read the speeches made on the 12th of July in Northern Ireland can tell the answer as regards the North, even if he could not have done it by common sense. Anybody who read those speeches that were made on the 12th of July in Northern Ireland would have noted the exultation with which the Orange orators greeted these proofs, as they regarded them, of the criminality and degradation of Southern Ireland. I cannot conceive anything more likely to deepen the gulf between North and South than these activities that have been taking place.
Now, what about England? What is it that we are asking the English to do? We are asking the English to kick the Northerners out of the United Kingdom. We are asking them to stop doing things which the Taoiseach admitted here, on our debate on Partition in February last, were the inevitable consequence of the North's being in the United Kingdom. We are asking England to stop assisting the people of the North financially, although it is a distressed area and would be assisted financially as a distressed area, if it were in England. We are asking them to withdraw their troops from the Six Counties although, if they were in England, there would be troops there. We are asking them to take steps which, on the face of it, would expose the Northerners to financial suffering, economic loss and, possibly, civil war. For who can say that if the British troops were suddenly withdrawn there would not be civil war? We are asking the English, in fact, to hand over to us and to abandon to their fate 800,000 of their own kith and kin who, whatever their bigotry, whatever their arrogance, whatever their stupidity, do, in fact, love, or profess to love, the British flag, the British Crown and the British Commonwealth, and declare they are ready to die for these things.
Now, that is asking quite a lot, and if we expect to have any success at all in our propaganda amongst the English, I think we have got to understand the English point of view, and the person who thinks it is bad patriotism to put the English point of view before us is not a very sensible person. The English point of view has got to be understood if we are going to persuade the English. What is the English point of view? It is this: I do not speak of the great mass of the English people, who do not care and who do not know anything about Ireland; but, speaking of such of them as are reasonably well informed, what do they say? They say that it is true that for a great many years the Irish question was part of British politics, that it was a Party issue and poisoned by being so; but that it is also true that since the formation of the Coalition Government in England in 1916, it has been taken out of Party politics, and that the one desire of practically everybody in English politics with regard to Ireland is to get rid of the question on any terms that would be accepted by both sorts of Irishmen. They point out that a Home Rule Bill was brought in in 1920 which provided machinery for the coming together of both sorts of Irish people, and that in speeches even from the Tory benches during the discussions on that Bill the hope was expressed that they would come together. They point out that when King Geoge V opened the Belfast Parliament, he risked popularity in the North by making an appeal to Irishmen for just that sort of co-operation that would, in the natural course, have led to the unity that we all desire. And the English say that, if the trend since then has been away from unity, no other explanation need be looked for for that trend than events in Ireland itself.
Now, if we are to overcome all these arguments, and if we are even to persuade the English, if not to totally abandon the 800,000 of their kith and kin in Northern Ireland, at least to talk reason to them, to preach to them the importance from the Commonwealth point of view of amity between England and Ireland, and between North and South, we surely have got to follow some intelligent plan directed by authority. We cannot have every sort of person trying a different plan. You cannot win by means of chaotic methods. We have got to have some sort of order and some sort of directing intelligence.
I dare say many Senators noted at the 12th of July celebrations a speech by a Cambridge undergraduate, which must have upset a good many of his Northern listeners, telling them that the younger generation in England were coming to believe that the Unionists in Ulster were more of a hindrance than a help to the British Empire. He said that had been accomplished by the reasoning and persuasion of such apostles of Irish unity as Mr. Dulanty. Now, I agree with that young man. I have noticed myself the tendency, not only amongst Englishmen, but I may say among the more Commonwealthian minded of Northern Irishmen, to feel that Orangeism is a blunder: that, instead of being a help to the Commonwealth, it is a hindrance to the Commonwealth. But I have also noticed that during the last few months all the ground gained by reason and persuasion has been more than lost by the abominable folly of what has been going on. The English have not been pleased by the close up that has been provided for them—the close up view of Gaelic civilisation in action. They have been far more ready to believe than they have been for a long time that, after all, these violent Ulster men are right, and that there is some racial inferiority about us in the South which makes it unreasonable to suggest that the Northern Unionists should ever have anything to do with us.
The force of all this is greatly increased by the present world situation. Humanity is trembling upon the verge of perhaps the greatest catastrophe of history. There is no doubt at all that the extremism and the violence of the Orangemen in 1914 contributed appreciably towards bringing about the calamity of the Great War. I hope it may not be that the extremism and the folly of some of our people will contribute to the bringing about of another war, even worse than the last. I know that there are some minds to which it would appear that, provided such a war resulted in the destruction of the British Empire, it would be well worth while, and which would rather welcome it than otherwise. But I hope that such minds are not very numerous, and, surely, if they are numerous, every step should be taken to make them less numerous. One thing that is perfectly certain about a world war is that it would impoverish the world, and that the more harm it did to the British Commonwealth and to England, the more harm it would do to us here. Our standard of life would be immeasurably lower, and poverty would be our portion for the rest of the existence of every one of us in this House. If we let loose the demons of hatred, cruelty and strife in Europe, it may be that England would become a very different neighbour to us from what she is to-day. However much she may fall as a result of a world war, she will still have a population and resources enough to be a mighty dangerous neighbour to us here if she chose to be, so that if we are going to put our relations with England upon a basis of force and hatred, then God help Ireland. I appeal to this House, and to every individual in this House during the months that are coming, to do everything they can to destroy any fragment of approval or complacency that may exist in this country in regard to this terrorism.
The evil is not over. We have only to look at this evening's paper to read of a fresh outrage in a London station when some more innocents were injured, perhaps injured to death for all we yet know. For Heaven's sake, let us do everything we can to put a stop to it.
