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History Ancient secrets of the Hill of Tara revealed. Opinion James O'Keefe's triumph and the lessons Democrats can learn. Comments Show Comments. On the question of land annuities, out of which the dispute really arose—and not out of anything connected with the Statute of Westminster—the present Government of the Irish Free State believe that they are not due, and in fulfilment of that belief they have offered to leave the question to the arbitration of any neutral tribunal.
In ordinary disputes between other countries an offer of that kind would be considered fair. It is a matter of principle and not of personality. No doubt there could be found some Colonial jurist or statesman who could settle the matter amicably as between the two disputants. I will come to that in a moment. The Irish people point to the arbitration settlement of , to which the hon. Member for Londonderry Mr. Ross has just referred, and the disastrous effects it has had upon the Irish people.
Member knows that it was stipulated in the Treaty that the wishes of the people as to which side of the border they were willing to live should be ascertained. That article of the Treaty was as sacred as any other article of the Treaty. There was also, it is true, economic and geographical considerations, but the paramount question was the wishes of the people.
The Chairman of the Boundary Commission refused to ascertain the wishes of the people in any given area, and, therefore, I am afraid, that when you suggest to the Free State Government or to the national people of Ireland a Dominions tribunal, they are not going simply to accept it, having in mind what occurred in on the boundary question.
Therefore, it does not necessarily mean that the umpire might not be a citizen of the British Empire. On the other hand, the Dominions Office stipulate that the umpire must be a citizen of this country. My colleague and I in this House represent , Northern Nationalists, one-third of the population over which the Northern Government holds sway today.
They have no other representative here. When you talk about the implementation of other Treaties, remember that the Irish Treaty has never been implemented. Probably we shall hear something from the right hon. Member for Epping Mr. Churchill to-night. He was one of the original signatories of the Treaty. Griffiths and Collins, two of the original signatories of that document, went to their graves in defence of it, believing that their co-signatories on the British side would be equally honest, but when the Free State Government meticulously carried out their share of the contract you refused to carry out the most vital part of it, Clause You refused to ascertain the wishes of the people of the north, with the result that you have got a large body of people held unwillingly under the control of the Northern Government who from a sense of fair play ought to be under the Free State Government.
The majority of the Irish people do not believe that you are entitled to the land annuities, either in law or in justice. I would suggest that the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs should look into this matter with a view to ascertaining whether there is not a great deal more in the contention of the Irish Free State than he was prepared to admit in when he rushed legislation through this House of a retaliatory character.
The claim to the land annuities rests upon two documents, one of the 18th February, , and the other of the 19th March, , which the Dominions Secretary says are as binding on both countries as the Treaty.
The first agreement was evidently and clearly of a provisional kind. It was not signed by a British Minister and it was not disclosed to Parliament until Members can form their own conclusions, as the people of Ireland have formed their conclusions, as to the reason for concealing this document for a period of nine years in the archives of the Dominions Office. I suggest that it was because the Irish signatory found that he had made a mistake.
Member for Epping and a number of other right hon. Gentlemen, and by three Free State Ministers and two Ministers representing Northern Ireland, released the Irish Free State from the obligation of contributing anything to the public debt of the United Kingdom. Except on the assumption that the land annuities do not form part of the public debt of the United Kingdom, Ireland's obligation in that respect was entirely wiped out.
When the Irish land stock was issued in , both in the speech of Mr. George Wyndham, in introducing the Measure in this House, and in the money article in the "Times" of the 23rd and 25th October, , it was made perfectly clear that the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom would be responsible for the payment of the annuities, ultimately. When the Secretary of State for Dominions Affairs says that this is not a public debt but a debt as between the stockholders on the one hand the Irish tenant farmers on the other hand, he has no public document to confirm his statement.
In the "Times" of the 23rd October, , it was stated that if the income from the land annuities was insufficient it would be charged on and made payable out of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom.
Therefore, it was a public debt and the agreement of absolved the Free State from any contribution towards the public debt of the United Kingdom. On the contrary, he has said that if an impartial tribunal decide the money is due, he will reconsider the whole matter. It must be very difficult for the American people, whose good will you seek, to see the honesty and consistency of statesmen who fail to pay their own debt, contracted through recent borrowings, and yet turn round and throttle the Irish Free State for a debt of another kind, although the alleged debtor has offered to submit the whole matter to an impartial tribunal.
It must be difficult likewise for the Italian people to recognise the disinterestedness of your efforts for peace, even to the extent of ceding a part of your own territory, when they see you making war on a neighbour over a debt of which you are so uncertain and so doubtful and which you refuse to submit to neutral arbitration. We saw recently how willing you were to keep the ring during the Saar plebescite. You were exceedingly anxious that the wishes of the Saar people should be unhampered and unhindered.
I can scarcely think that it is the same people and the same Government who refused to ascertain the wishes of the people of Ireland but who were so tremendously interested in seeing that the people of the Saar Basin should have no obstacles placed in their way of going to the poll.
You have created a special Ministry for the creation of friendliness among other nations, but your action at home nullifies your efforts abroad.
You have forgiven millions of debt to foreign countries in exchange for friendly relations. You forgive and forget major injuries, even from old foes like Germany, but on the first opportunity you raise the mailed fist to the Irish people because of a small disputed debt.
Last year instead of paying any contribution Northern Ireland received a grant from this country. In the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland made a declaration that the time might come when instead of paying this country a contribution he would be coming to you for a contribution.
No party in this House has made the suggestion that Northern Ireland should be subjected to penal enactments because she has not been able to fulfil the conditions of the Act of Therefore, the only conclusion that one can draw from the disparity of treatment as between Northern Ireland and the Free State is that you are more concerned here with national prejudice and that the question of land annuities is merely a red herring drawn across the trail.
It is not a real figure. Therefore, you have largely extinguished this debt yourselves. You have bought it up, and to say that the Irish Free State owe a certain sum of money when you know perfectly well that they do not owe it, is wrong. You extinguished the debt a considerable time ago. Many times during the War you earned 6 per cent. Therefore, the figure which it is stated the Irish Free State owe is not real but bogus, almost as bogus as the whole case that you put up for the Land Annuities.
You cannot coerce the Irish people into doing something that they feel they have a right not to do. History ought to have brought that lesson home to you a long time ago. There is another aspect of the matter which may not have occurred to hon.
The Irish people are threatened from two sources. One is the die-hards who sit in this House and the other the die-hards in Ireland. You say to the Irish people that they cannot have a republic, and the republicans in Ireland say that nothing else but a republic can be set up.
I suggest in these circumstances that the advisable thing to do is to allow the Irish people to decide whether they want a republic or not. Probably they do not. There are many people in Ireland who would go a long way to win the friendship and good will of the people in this country, and, if you would allow them to decide for themselves, you would only be doing what you have done in other parts of the world.
The Irish people contend that they should have this opportunity and that you should not refuse to allow them the right of saying whether they want one type of government or another.
They have been the best customers of this country and in the War took a most conspicuous part, but you give preferential treatment to those people who were your enemies a little while ago. I should like to remind the right hon.
The assemblies of the nonconformist churches have borne willing testimony to the fact that they have been given fair play by the Government, but there is not a single clergyman or individual in the North of Ireland who can truthfully say that of the Northern Government, which you bolster up with huge grants year after year.
If you want a settlement of the Irish question you can have it, but not on the basis of partition or a division of the country. There are many people in the North who are as intensely patriotic as the people of this country, and it is not their wish that the country should be partitioned. That was not their solution. That solution was found in this House, not, in Ireland. Until you allow the whole of the Irish people an opportunity of saying how and in what manner they desire a settlement, you cannot settle it at all.
It is always a real pleasure to hear the hon. Member for Fermanagh and Tyrone Mr. It is a still rarer pleasure to hear his colleague, who has been a Member for a year and a-half and has only been here once. I am looking forward to seeing him again soon.
Member claimed to represent , people. I cannot recognise the grounds on which he makes such a claim, because his colleague who was elected later only succeded in collecting 28, votes out of ,, about 25 per cent.
That does not look like , people. Member talks of Irish unity. He is always talking about it. He spoke in my constituency during the election for the Northern Parliament about 15 months ago, and gave us his solution. He said that until partition was ended nothing would be achieved.
He was reported to have said—I will accept his denial if the report was inaccurate—that the opportunity to achieve unity in Ireland was on the next occasion when the British Empire would be involved in war. Is that so? Apparently it is. Member is looking forward to taking advantage of a war in which the British Empire is involved; perhaps he may help to involve us in war. If it is to be such an advantage, is it not a logical course for him to assist in involving us in war.
And this is the hon. Member who comes here and says that he and his people are being brutally treated. Members can judge for themselves. The speeches which are made in Ireland are different from the speeches which are made here. Then there are the complaints of oppression, which are all nonsense. What is the test? The population in Northern Ireland is suffering from an influx of people from the Irish Free State, who are eager to get into Northern Ireland.
Persons living in the Irish Free State have actually offered to change on a valuation basis with people living in Northern Ireland so that our own people can get back under the British flag, but there has never been a single instance of anyone living in Northern Ireland of the hon.
Member's political opinions offering to exchange his holding with any one in the Irish Free State. I should like to tell the hon. Member that if he has any hope, however remote, of the people of Ulster consenting to enter the somewhat dilapidated utopia of the Irish Free State he is building on false foundations.
Apart from an entire difference of sentiment and feeling, on mere material grounds such an act would be folly. What is the present position in the Irish Free State? That is the situation which has been brought about by the Government of the Irish Free State. The allegation has been made—not for the first time; indeed, it is one which is so stale, old and utterly discredited that I should have thought the hon.
We never agreed to any such tiling. It was part of the Act of , which was not supported by either the Nationalists or the Ulster party. That Act merely laid down the contribution as a first contribution which was to be varied by the Exchequer according to circumstances. That is under Section 23 of the Act, and we have always fulfilled our obligations under that Section, always, whereas Southern Ireland has avoided paying anything.
The Act of functioned for a little while, but the Irish Free State did not pay anything under that Act or under any other Act. Then there is the question of the Boundary Commission. On one point the hon. Member was prepared to be subject to the judgment of a colonial judge. I reminded him of Mr. Justice Feetham, a man of the highest standard, who has been entrusted with Imperial discussions not only in Ireland but elsewhere, and has fulfilled them with the greatest distinction and impartiality.
Because Mr. Justice Feetham decided against the view of the hon. Member—who incidentally always comes here to represent the Irish Free State and not his own constituency—the hon. Members says, "No, Mr. Justice Feetham was a Colonial judge. He did not decide in our favour, and we will not have any more Colonial judges.
We will look for someone who will decide in our favour. Those people could have been transferred by the decision of the Feetham Commission.
That decision was received by the Irish Free State Government. They were given a very good inducment to accept a status quo, which was far more than they deserved, and for accepting the status qua they were to be relieved of the national debt. With what gratitude is that received? We have the preposterous argument that the land annuities are part of the national debt.
I do not need to argue that point any further, because it is so manifestly absurd. We have constantly the cry from all Irish parties about the crime of partition. Of course, partition was only produced by the Nationalist aspirations of people in Southern Ireland.
They made partition; they split the country. We were prepared to exist in the unity of Ireland and in the larger unity of the British Isles. It is no fault of ours that these two unities have been fractured. Let us examine for a moment the policy of successive Free State Governments as regards partition. Have they endeavoured to struggle with the disadvantages of partition? Have they endeavoured to counteract its effects? Not they. There has been no single instance where they could emphasise partition that they have not done so.
Long before this controversy, in the days of the Cosgrave Government, every obstacle has always been put in the way of trade from North Ireland to the Free State. Every opportunity to flout the opinions which we hold has been used by the Government of the Free State. The policy of complaining of partition is controverted by every act they do.
Partition need only be just a line on the map. It is the Free State Government who have made it more. I do not wish to allude to the remarks of leading people in the Free State. I will. I am always ready to oblige the hon. One remark will suffice. That is the kind of thing which makes the division between the two parts of Ireland a real one and a lasting one, as well as the mere fiscal and Customs regulations along the border.
There is a disunion of hearts there which it will be hard to bridge. The situation has become such that now we are getting, instead of one community, two communities crystallising on each side of the frontier owing to the actions of the Free State Government. So the hon. Member says, but that plea is not supported by very much evidence. Who was it that began putting on duties at the border?
Not the British Government. It was the Irish Free State Government. Who is it that is constantly being aggressive and alluding to the intention to secure the whole of Ireland under its rule?
Not Northern Ireland. They have had enough of that. There was a sonnet written which fittingly expresses the attitude of this House towards Southern Ireland: Since there is no help, then let us kiss and part. No, I have done; You get no more of me. And I am glad; yes, glad with all my heart, That thus so cleanly I myself get free.
That is fairly accurately the position of this House towards the Irish Free State. Let me turn to what is really the subject of this Debate. The Statute of Westminster is indeed a melancholy subject, because the position as it transpires is in fact so contrasted with the position as it was represented to us at the time of the Debate. I use the expression, not with any hostile intention, but with very great regret. I think that at that time the Government were buoyed up with a feeling of optimism which was entirely unjustified, perhaps even in a spirit of complacency.
Reid , my hon. I think we did agree in one thing. Friend the Member for Fermanagh spoke with that sincerity which I know is always his and which I have always respected and always shall. He took the Statute as being a step on the road to the destruction of the Treaty. So it is, and so it was. But the Government had formed a different view. I do not propose, as I am a very humble member of the legal profession, to deal with the legal aspect of the Statute of Westminster, but I do hope that towards the end of this Debate one or other of the Law Officers of the Crown will be able to explain to us why their advice on that occasion was so entirely different from the advice given by a Law Officer of the Crown to the Privy Council upon the present position.
Will my hon. Friend be a little more explicit if he makes a statement of that sort? Is it contended by my right hon. If so, it is rather startling. I hope my right hon. I did not propose to deal with a matter which seemed to me so obvious. I do not know that it is very important, but my hon.
Friend has made a statement, and then he asked me whether I deny something about which he fails to be explicit. If he will call the attention of the House to the point on which he says I have expressed two different opinions, I shall be able to deal with it.
That is all. I think on the occasion of the Second Reading of the Statute of Westminster the right hon. Gentleman did not inform anybody that the appeal to the Privy Council would thereby be destroyed.
He cited with complete approval the maiden speech of my hon. To me, in my ignorance, it appears that by the recent decision to which the right hon. Gentleman alluded earlier, the position has been altered fundamentally and that one of the most important safeguards if not the most important safeguard, has by the Statute of Westminster been utterly destroyed. But we did not know that such would be the case when that Measure was going through the House.
I know that there were some guarded statements by Members of the Government. I know that there was a certain amount of caution, but I certainly do not think that anyone in the House, particularly any Unionist Member of the House, believed that the safeguards of the Irish Loyalists in Ireland were going to be destroyed by the action which we were taking at that time.
I hope I have been sufficiently explicit. I raise this point not with any idea of engaging in a futile discussion on legal doctrine, because what I am interested in is the position of the Southern Loyalists and our relations with the Irish Free State. As to the general position, I cannot see how the Treaty can be wiped out by the Statute of Westminster. All that Statute purports to do is to put the authority of the Irish Free State Legislature on a parity with the authority of other legislatures in the British Common-wealth of Nations.
Does that mean that a solemn agreement entered into between two of these great communities can be thrown into the waste-paper basket? In my submission, it cannot possibly mean anything of the kind, and that view is supported not only here but in the Irish Free State.
What was the view of the Irish Free State Government at the time? They deposited the Treaty with the League of Nations as being, in their view, a Treaty between parties who were competent to make a Treaty irrespective of the British Commonwealth of Nations. It was deposited with the League, and I think that, technically, on a breach of the Treaty—though of course such an action would be absurd—we would be entitled to appeal to the League of Nations and to get one of those forceful interventions which the League from time to time makes in order to get its will observed in the world.
The view which I have mentioned was the view of the Irish Free State Government at that time and it is the view of Mr. Cosgrave to-day because he said only the night before last at a meeting in Dublin that the position of the Treaty, in his opinion, was unaffected by the Statute of Westminster.
As to general considerations I think that is so. I have only to add this. We all know that the Irish Free State, however much they may repudiate the British connection are always very well represented in London and that negotiations for trade agreements have been going on.
If such negotiations are going on at present it would be interesting to know exactly what they are about. I suppose it would be too much to ask for that information but it certainly would be interesting.
However, I have heard two pledges from the Secretary of State for the Dominions and I merely repeat those two pledges with the remark that, unless the right hon. Word in Definition. Freebase 0. How to pronounce irish free state? Alex US English. David US English. Mark US English. Daniel British. Libby British. Mia British. Karen Australian. Hayley Australian. Natasha Australian. Veena Indian. Civil war broke out even before the declaration of the Irish Free State on December 6, , and ended with the victory of the Irish Free State over the Irish Republican forces in Conflicts persisted over Northern Ireland, however, and the IRA, outlawed in the south, went underground to try to regain the northern counties still ruled by Britain.
Violence between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland escalated in the early s, and to date the fighting has claimed more than 3, lives. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! On December 6, , the 13th Amendment to the U. Constitution, officially ending the institution of slavery, is ratified. It was the worst mining disaster in American history. In , the creation of the Norfolk and Western Railway opened a gateway to the At a.
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