When the Minister for Justice at the Council of Europe referred to the situation in the north-eastern part of our country, he described British policy there as stupid. He shocked the British delegation who were present at that Council meeting and I note in today's newspapers that he annoyed the Unionist gentlemen at Stormont very much at yesterday's sitting. However, I think that whether he shocked the British delegation and annoyed Stormont, he expressed the view held by the vast majority of Irish people, that is, that the policy pursued by Her Majesty's Government in the north-eastern corner of this country is not alone stupid but insane and calculated to lead to a perpetuation of the bitterness and misunderstanding that has bedevilled relations between our two countries for centuries.
It is well that we should realise, and it is no harm that the British Government should also realise, that as a consequence of the developments in the six north-eastern counties there has been a growing change in opinion among the people in this part of Ireland. It is no harm to recall that in 1921 the Republican Government took a decision that they would secure the reunification of Ireland by peaceful and by negotiated means. They thereby set their faces definitely and resolutely against the use of force to coerce any section of the people in the north-eastern counties into the Irish Republic.
The Cabinet which took that decision and which represented the majority of the people of Ireland and the fighting force of the Irish Republican Army and Cumann na mBan included in its members Eamon de Valera, Michael Collins, Austin Stack, Cathal Brugha and Liam Cosgrave. Nobody could accuse any of those of having any less desire for the freedom of their country than any of the young men who are today using force in the vain hope of achieving something which they say we have failed to achieve by peaceful and by negotiated means.
In 1926, when the Fianna Fáil organisation was founded, it followed that dictum of the Republican Government and resolutely set its face against the use of force as a means to reunite the people of this country. It has pursued that policy resolutely for 45 years. That policy has been the national policy of every political party in this part of Ireland, up to now anyhow. Fine Gael, Labour and Fianna Fáil have set their faces resolutely against the use of force as the means of settling this problem.
In 1937, when the Government at that time had negotiated the Treaty practically out of existence and had been in the position to submit a Constitution for ratification to the Irish people and the Irish people had enacted that Constitution, we became except for the name a republic. There was however one snag apart from partition. The snag was the possession of the Treaty ports and air facilities retained by the British since 1921. One year later in 1938, when the Government negotiated again with the British Conservative Government of Mr. Neville Chamberlain, an agreement was signed which settled all outstanding problems between the two countries and returned to Irish custody ports and harbours which were forfeit under the Treaty. The field was then clear for a concentration on the one remaining problem and that was the reunification of the national territory.
Again it must be remembered that force to achieve this object was ruled out by the Government and by all political parties. Why was it ruled out? It was ruled out from a common-sense point of view first, because it would not achieve the objective against the might that Britain could bring against us. Secondly it was ruled out because in the event of its success, even assuming one could defeat the British forces massed up there and liquidate the British military might in the North, it would have required an army of occupation for a couple of hundred years because it would have become territory occupied against the will of a vast section of the population in those counties. Therefore there was no possibility, no sense, no reason, for adopting that type of method for securing it.
The third and most sensible reason was that we could not see why, if every problem is subject to negotiation and arbitration and if there was goodwill on the part of the British Government, this problem could not be settled also in due time with friendly feelings and with the consent of the people who could not see eye to eye with us at that time. It was hoped that in due course of events, by conducting ourselves so well here, by showing an example of tolerance, fair play, magnanimity and by giving justice to all citizens, we would convince the people up there who feared reunion that they had nothing to fear: in due time when the point came to issue they would negotiate on the basis of a good bargain. That was the hope of everybody in this part of Ireland.
Unfortunately things have not worked out that way. During all that period and even during the 1939-1945 Second World War, it must be said there was tremendous good feeling here for the British, the English, Scottish and Welsh. I would go so far as to say that the majority of opinion in this part of Ireland favoured the Allied cause, favoured the British cause. I would go so far as to say that the admiration for the stoicism and heroism of the people of London, Coventry, Manchester, Glasgow and Liverpool who stood up to the aerial blitz knew no bounds. I do not think there was anybody in this country who entertained any feelings of hatred for what was described as our ancient enemy.
Gradually the feeling began to grow here, as we hoped it was growing in England, that we were just two offshore islands of Europe. We had to live together. We were side by side. We were our best trading customers, both of us. We had much in common. Above all we had a system of democracy which was common to both. We thought and hoped that, as we had dissipated the ancient dislike and distrust for the British and everything British here, the same thing was happening there. And so it was with the ordinary people but apparently not so with their Government.
The unfortunate thing that must be said now—it is no harm that the British Government would know it— is that from feelings of genuine admiration, respect and even liking among a large section of our people here there has been a gradual change because of events in the North, because of what we have seen on television and read in the Press, because of the Compton Report, because of what we know has been happening in Long Kesh, on the Maidstone and in Crumlin Road. Many people down here have had experience of what it was like when we had Black and Tans running riot in this part of the country and they are inclined to give credit to many of the stories emanating from those prison camps. Because of all that, people down here are beginning to see and to feel that the British are refusing to listen to anybody who has a reasonable proposition to make. They are not listening to the head of the Irish Government. They are doing nothing but just burying their heads in the sand and are not caring where this country is going or what is to be the conclusion of the situation in the North. As a consequence, the ordinary man and woman in the streets here are beginning to change their views about Britain.
It is an unfortunate and sad thing to have to say, but from a popularity point of view now among the nations of Europe, if this continues much longer, with the British Government refusing to do business, I have a strong feeling it will not be long before the name of Britain will be at the very bottom of the list in popularity among all the nations of Europe. This is something which is not to be wished for, desired or looked forward to with any great glee or enthusiasm.
There are young men who believe that by the actions they have taken they can secure the independence of the whole nation by apparently driving the British out of the Six Counties. There are people who believe that will be effective in convincing the one million people who do not agree with it that it is in their best interests to agree. We do not agree. Nobody down here agrees. No political party agrees with that philosophy. We feel that it is a mistaken idea. We cannot fail to understand however the motives which may inspire many of these young men who are doing these things.
It is too bad and too sad that, when the civil rights movement was beginning to gain ground and beginning to gain strength, the slackness and slowness of the Stormont Government gave encouragement to extremist organisations to gather strength. It is my belief that a strong civil rights movement which was making such progress in the North, in the streets of Belfast and Derry, a civil rights movement backed by a well-organised civil disobedience campaign, could have achieved far more than will ever be achieved by the campaign which is now in progress in some of the counties of the North.
I am prompted today particularly to remember and recall this because this is India Independence Day, this is Republic Day in India. On this day they celebrate their triumph from chains of British occupation. To anyone who has kept in touch with the gradual breakup of the British Empire and has read the story, there is nothing more inspiring than how the Indian people, starting off, one might say, with the massacre at Amritsar back in 1917, gained their independence. For 30 years they took it on the chin in the streets, lay down on their backs, took the kicks and the sticks and the batons of the British, and used no guns, refused to fight back but with civil disobedience were in the end able to conquer.
If the campaign in the North had gathered strength and if they had taken inspiration from the great triumph of Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru, things would have reached a climax in favour of a united Ireland long before now. There is also the extraordinary parallel in that there was another great patriotic Indian, Subba Bose, who like some of the young men here today was impatient with the older men or the slower men or the more conservative men who believed in the ballot box rather than the bullet. He took advantage of the coming war to raise an Indian Republican Army. He was a patriot, a great Indian scholar and gentleman, but he got impatient. He thought when the Japanese were all-conquering through South-East Asia that this was the chance, and he recruited young men to join the Indian Republican Army and to co-operate with the Japanese in seizing India and securing their independence. But the Indians under Gandhi and Nehru would have none of it. They persisted in their determination to use non-violence as a method of achieving their objective and they scored a tremendous victory.
I should like some of the young men today to remember that and to realise that there are other ways besides the way in which they are operating. There are other ways in which justice can be secured, victory ensured and independence achieved besides using the bullets and the bomb and the fires.
The radio today carried an interview with the chief whip of the SDLP. I was astonished at some of his comments and at his references to the Taoiseach. One would imagine listening to him that the head of the Irish Government had no right to take any steps or to make any suggestions to secure the national territory and the reunion of the national territory. I do not want to say any more about it except to express my astonishment that a man occupying such a critical position at the present moment should use such language. I hope that it does not indicate a return to the ghetto mentality of some of the politicians in the North from 1922 onwards. I hope he certainly does not speak for the remainder of his party or for the Nationalist Opposition in the North. If he does and if those are the sentiments of those who are mobilised up there now on a political basis, then God help us if that is the best leadership they can give to the long-suffering people in the North.
The book which was published here the other day, of which I presume all Deputies and Senators have got a copy, containing speeches on the subject made by the Taoiseach since 1969, is one worthy of study not alone by our people here but by everybody taking part in any campaign North or South with this object in view. There appears to be an appalling amount of ignorance, one example of which appeared in The Irish Times today. A gentleman signing himself “Pro-Quidnunc” seemed to think that no Irish politician had made any reference to Partition or to the Border before 1969. Whoever this “Pro-Quidnunc” is, and if this is an indication of the standard of knowledge and ability which is required by The Irish Times, I am afraid its circulation will not continue to make the progress which it claims it has been making in the past few years. Such appalling ignorance has never been shown in any newspaper to my knowledge and I hope he will correct it before we have occasion to make long speeches giving him the history of all the speeches that were made by all the parties here for all the years that followed 1921.
I think there is no doubt, given goodwill and given a fair climate, that progress can be made. The fact that the leader of the British Opposition, Mr. Harold Wilson, is as convinced as we are that a military solution is not the solution for this problem indicates that in Britain the second largest party, the party which could at any time form the next Government, is strongly in favour of a united Ireland. If Mr. Heath grasps the opportunity now afforded by the proposition made by Mr. Wilson for inter-party talks at least it is a beginning; at least people will have got around the table and will have thrown out suggestions, bared one another's minds on this thorny subject. All men of goodwill, I take it, will hope that something good will come of Mr. Wilson's initiative in this and that it will be followed by some concrete action by the British Prime Minister on behalf of the Government in Britain with whom every Irishman, irrespective of class, party or creed, would like our country to have good relations. As I say, we are neighbours' children and it is unnatural for us to be in a perpetual state of nagging, fighting and semi-hostility to one another.
We should do everything we can, every one of us, to ensure that all men of goodwill, irrespective of their political opinions or parties, will be given every encouragement in whatever move they make to try to ease the situation and to bring together those people whose influence can bring peace and eventual moves towards uniting this country again in a way in which all its citizens, irrespective of creed, class or present political affiliation, will feel that it is their country, that they have as much right to it as anybody else and that their traditions as well as the traditions of those others who claim Gaelic forebears will be equally respected.
Having said so much, I might add that I was astonished also at Mr. Devlin's statement on the EEC. I hope it does not represent, as I say, the opinions of his party and the opinions of the people he represents. That is all I will say, but any person who takes the line he chose on the EEC is certainly liable to cause quite an amount of misunderstanding, not alone here but amongst his own people in the North.
On that subject of the EEC, I notice that the Congress of Trade Unions are having a conference to decide what way they will advise their affiliated unions to vote in the referendum. It was very encouraging to see that at least one union with a large membership, the union founded by Jim Larkin, the Workers' Union of Ireland, have taken a decision in favour of entry into Europe. It is only what one would expect, because if the union followed the philosophy of Big Jim, who was an internationalist in the best sense of the word, they would realise that in making a return to Europe we are taking our rightful place as a sovereign State amongst the nations of this Continent and have no inferiority complex about doing it.
I sincerely hope that the other and larger union, who have been making a lot of noises, will think twice before they advise their members to throw away the opportunity which is now being given to enter Europe and to begin a new era in this country.
Before the vote I would wish that some members of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union who are well acquainted with the subject would remind the delegates, in view of statements made by some of their leading officers recently, of the period in this country's history, about 40 years ago, when our farmers had to sustain an economic attack by Britain for six long years and when our produce was subject to economic sanctions in every port throughout Great Britain, when we could not sell our cattle at any sort of a price except after paying penal taxes, when the Government in order to try to ease the situation bought cattle and gave away the beef as free beef, and when a subsidy was paid to farmers to kill the calves because the cattle population was getting so big we could not deal with it. Why was that? It was because we had one solid, steady market, not far from our doors, which imposed penal tariffs on our produce and we tried everywhere else and could not do business. Possibly if we had given away the cattle for nothing at that time other countries in Europe would have taken them, but nobody would give us a deal; nobody would give us a reasonable price; nobody wanted our market; nobody gave a damn, in other words.
Before they vote I hope that somebody will remind the delegates of what it means now that Britain has gone into the Common Market, now that we are going to be in isolation if we do not go in, that all this talk of association and this talk about special privileges is all "bunk". The concrete, terrible fact is that we would be a little pinhead out here in the Atlantic, isolated from everybody and with very little goodwill from anybody. If these delegates think that by making noise and by waving the big stick and by threatening that they can influence any other Government in the world, then they had better think again, because it is quite obvious that they cannot.
I feel that it is only right and proper, since this is the first opportunity I have had anyhow, to congratulate the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Dr. Hillery, on the success of the negotiations which he conducted on our behalf. It is admitted now that he was a great negotiator, that he got a good deal out of the business and that we were well served by his visits to Brussels. I only hope that the Irish Congress of Trade Unions before they vote will realise that one of the benefits which will be conferred by membership of the European Economic Community is a higher standard of living for the workers. We are reaching it here by slow stages; it will take a long time. In Europe—if the workers' delegates do not believe me then they can believe the oracles of Irish television and the BBC who tell them the same thing, and they may read it also in the newspapers—the standard of workers in the EEC countries is far ahead of anything that might have been expected in the normal progression towards higher living standards. I hope that tomorrow they will say "Yes" and advise their members to vote "Yes".
The Transport Workers' Union have been waving the big stick at unemployment. Their general secretary stated that the Government would have to do this, that and the other and if they did not, everybody would be on short time and this would stop incentive bonuses in industry, and a lot of similar tommyrot. When the executive officer of a great trade union talks that sort of poppycock and expects to convey any meaning, it is a poor lookout for the judgment of the union concerned, if they pursue the campaign regarding unemployment which they have promised to do.
A union such as this with 150,000 members, instead of mouthing about unemployment and redundancies, which are inevitable in the present climate, should get down to organising their members to support the products of the factories in which their husbands, brothers and sons work. Instead of bringing home foreign goods and material, they should bring home goods made in the Irish factories. I was assured when I raised this point before that there was a campaign conducted by the Congress of Trade Unions, but I saw no evidence of this. Now when there is an emergency is the time for a union such as the Transport Union to tell their members that if they wish to preserve employment, they can do the Sinn Féin job themselves by buying Irish goods which are as good as any coming from abroad. They should not expect the community to do everything. Instead of wasting their time threatening people, the union should urge their members, particularly their female members, to buy Irish. This also applies to the other unions.
It was stated on RTE last night that last year ladies fashions imports cost £15 million. Who the hell sends out £15 million to buy dresses and so on manufactured abroad except workers' families? There are not so many wealthy people in Ireland to spend £15 million so they cannot put it down to the petit bourgeois or multi-millionaires. If the families of the ordinary workers spend £15 million buying imported dresses, hats, kneeboots, and so on, they cannot blame anyone if their boot factories are on short time and if their clothing factories are closing down and if there is redundancy in many of the shops in which their sisters work. The buying power of 150,000 disciplined, organised members is of great importance, but the injection of money by 500,000 members, which the Congess of Trade Unions presume to speak for, would be a tremendous injection into the economy if they spent their money on home-produced goods.
There is a great variety of foreign-produced foods in the supermarkets, such as cheese and biscuits. Irish cheese, biscuits, tinned goods can be had and are as good and are cheaper. But because it is not considered fashionable or because psuedo-expert women writers in some of our newspapers blow up the foreign goods as being what the "quality" buy, people do not buy Irish.
The time has come for the trade unions to tell their members that, if they do not wish to see more people lining up at employment exchanges and more people trying to leave the country, they should do something about the industries which are already there and which are producing magnificent goods. They had better drop this inferiority complex which favours foreign fashions and foods and be satisfied that we can produce as good as, and better in most cases than anything which is imported. Last year we sent out of the country £38 million to pay for holidays in the sun.
