The Report below is from THE IRISH BULLETIN the Official Organ of Dail Eireann the democratically established Irish Parliament
and the only legitimate Parliament of All Ireland on 9 June 1921,
All passages in Inverted Commas are quotations from the Dublin’s (Unionist) IRISH TIMES
THE INAUGURATION OF THE “NORTHERN” PARLIAMENT.
On Tuesday, the 7th of June 1921, the Parliament of the six North-Eastern Counties of Ulster elected on May 24th assembled for the first time at the City Hall, Belfast.
Public Apathy.
The “Parliament of Northern Ireland,” as the assembly is called, consists of 52 members. Of these, 12, elected by Republicans and Nationalists, refuse to take their seats as a protest against the partition of Ireland. The remaining 40 are all Unionists, and 15 of them have already secured paid offices. Only 25 will be able to act as independent representatives.
All efforts to interest the citizens of Belfast in the inauguration of this democratic assembly appear to have failed. They acted as if they were unaware that a great political drama was being staged in their midst. The “Irish Times,” the principal organ of the Unionist Party in Ireland, described with unaccustomed frankness the indifference of the Belfast citizens to the birth of their new Parliament.
“There was no bunting, there were no favours, and there were no crowds,” the Irish Times admitted. “It was not until after ten o’clock that people began to gather outside the City Hall. Even then there was little evidence of popular interest. One can often see as large a crowd watching a raid on a public-house in Dublin.”
This public apathy is the inevitable result of the hypocrisy in which the Partition Act originated. An official procession, bearing the new British Viceroy in its midst, drove through the City, carefully avoiding the streets ruined in the Orange pogroms of last year. But the public remained uninterested, and the Irish Times is forced to describe the Viceregal parade as “small but stately.” Some consolation seems, however, to have been given to the processionists in the shape of “greetings cheerily waved from windows and the sidewalks” by some compassionate spectators.
Scenes in the Council Chamber.
Whatever the sentiments of the populace, the Assembly itself, said the Irish Times, was “in deadly earnest.” “The Council Chamber was packed.” The sitting room for members barely accommodated “the faithful Forty,” leaving no room for the Republicans and Nationalists had they “just for the fun of the thing” decided to attend. The rest of the small Chamber was thronged by a galaxy of Marquises, Marchionesses, Peers of the Realm and other spectators, “mostly ladies.” Nor were arrangements lacking for giving to the world at large a graphic impression of an historic scene.
“In the gallery facing the Speaker’s chair a battery of cameras and cinematograph machines was installed.”
And later, the formal business having been unanimously disposed of, this incident occurred. The quotation is from the “Irish Times”:-
“The Speaker gravely requested all members to remain quiet for a few minutes as a photographer wanted to take a photograph of the House. All eyes were lifted to the gallery, whence a voice was heard beseeching the first Parliament of Northern Ireland to be ‘All steady a second, please!’ The House froze into an awkward rigidity. A camera clicked, the Speaker relapsed into reposeful austerity, and the voice broke an almost painful silence with ‘Just another second, Mr. Speaker.’ The ‘second’ expanded itself into about a minute and a half while the gentleman in the gallery rigged up an enormous magnesium ribbon. It was over in a flash; but the flash was so sudden and so uncomfortably intense that most of the people in the room ‘ducked’ involuntarily . . . . . The incident was incongruous, but modern journalism must be served.”
After the photographs had been taken the House adjourned.
Compliments to the Lord Lieutenant.
The next scene in the drama was laid in the City Hall Banqueting Chamber where the fifteen Ministers and Under Secretaries and the twenty-five private members gathered to meet the British Viceroy at luncheon. The situation might be described as tense. Nearly all the members and Ministers of the new Parliament had during the election campaign declared the issue to be “Protestantism or Roman Catholicism,” “Home Rule in Ulster or Rome Rule,” “Protestantism before Politics,” etc., etc. The new Viceroy is a Catholic. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Unionist speeches lacked heartiness, and that His Excellency, in his effort to say nothing tactless, said all the wrong things.
Sir James Craig, as Prime Minister, proposed the toast of “The Lord Lieutenant and the Prosperity of Ireland.” It was not easy to speak in appropriate terms of the Lord Lieutenant, His Excellency’s record of public service and personal attainment not being sufficiently distinguished for a courtly panegyric. The new Premier surmounted his difficulties in one masterly phrase:-
“The Lord Lieutenant’s past life, before he accepted the high office he now holds, is,” he said, “well-known to all of us.”
And he hurriedly passed on to “The Prosperity of Ireland.”
His Excellency, in reply, expressed himself overjoyed at this scant praise. Weighted down with the consciousness that everybody present knew him to belong to the “Church of Rome,” he immediately sought to set the guests at their ease:-
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “unhappily we are not all of the same religion. (Laughter and applause.) I glory in mine. (Hear, hear). I daresay you glory in yours. (Applause). Yes; but a remarkable, rather funny thing occurs to me. If I were to change my religion, I believe everyone in this room would look upon me as a most appalling bounder. If you were to change yours, I would not think anything the worse of you. (Laughter). You have given me a generous and most hearty welcome. I do not deny that I like it.”
The delicate wit and exquisite phrasing of this passage perhaps explain the appreciation of His Lordship’s personality, made at the time of his appointment by more than one important English newspaper, at a loss for other comment, that he was “a great gentleman.”
Belfast and the “Black and Tans.”
Proceeding with his speech he referred to the “Prosperity of Ireland” and said:-
“I am sorry, on a festive occasion like this, to say a word of a mournful character, but, holding the position I do, I think I must. Ireland is not prosperous. Has Ireland or any other country the right to be prosperous when sin is rampant throughout large portions of the country?”
His Excellency, fearing to be misunderstood, hastened to explain that it was “the sin of murder” to which he was referring and that this term applied only to the actions of the Republican Army. At this there was considerable applause. But silence again reigned when the Viceroy referred to the “Black and Tans.” Since his ignorance of Irish conditions probably secured him the office he now holds, or, at least, made him willing to accept it, his Excellency is to be forgiven for not knowing that the “Black and Tans” are exceedingly popular in Belfast Unionist circles, which, indeed, have contributed to their ranks a considerable number of recruits. But he should have known that in Ulster a Special Constabulary fashioned exclusively out of Sir Edward Carson’s rebel Volunteers has been organised and equipped by the British Government, and is, in fact, part of the same force as the “Black and Tans,” and vie with them in looting, arson and murder. Though the coldness of his audience would have restrained a wiser man, he continued:-
“Now I want to say one other word in connection with crime in this country, and I hope you will forgive me if I touch on it, but I feel I want to. We know that the force in this country, commonly called the ‘Black and Tans’ are accused of committing serious and grave crimes. . . . It is true – I do not deny it for one moment – let us be frank about these things – that crimes, horrible crimes, have been committed by members of this force. You may find explanations, but there is no excuse for any force under discipline committing these crimes.”
The Act Nobody Wants need Amending Already.
To his now frigid fellow-guests Lord Fitzalan proceeded to speak of the Parliament he had just opened. Here again he stumbled into distressing blunders. He not only admitted that nobody wanted the Northern Parliament, least of all those who had been elected to it, but, by implication, confessed that the powers conferred under the Partition Act, where not insufficient, were unworkable:-
“The Act of Parliament” he said. . . . “is an historic Act. I do not think it will be less historic because nobody seems to want it. (Laughter) I do not pretend for one moment that this Act, which is the foundation of your Parliament in Northern Ireland, is a perfect Act; in fact, I believe it wants amending already, and I shall not be at all surprised if it is amended in the not very far distant future. I know you here did not want it, and that you only accepted it on the advice of your great leader, Lord Carson – (loud applause) – and your present Prime Minister. (Applause).”
These thorny topics thus disposed of, His Excellency lapsed into homely pleasantries. To the immense amusement of his fellow-guests, he described his Viceregal position as one of “keeping the ring,” presumably for the religious strife the Partition Act was designed to foster. Speaking of Sir James Craig he said: “I have helped to administer in a Government associated with him. I have done more than that. I have whipped him.” The reference – which would surely have come with more grace from Sir James Craig himself – is the only office His Excellency was ever entrusted with, that of Chief Whip to the Conservative party in the British Parliament.
The Six Counties and the Irish Nation.
Such was the inauguration of a Parliament representing the small fragment of our country styled, by the English, for their own reasons, “Northern Ireland;” the public indifferent, the Members already committed to a religious persecution and the King of England’s representative acting as jester to Sir James Craig, and, in his own coarse phrase, as “keeper of the ring.”
No Parliament in history has been founded under circumstances more ignoble and less inspiring. Nevertheless, the Irish people, as a whole, is not discouraged. They recognise in the event one more move in the strategy of the British Government, and it is upon that Government, with this fresh evidence of its power to excite and exploit unnatural divisions in Ireland, that they fix the responsibility. They do not believe that these divisions can be indefinitely sustained. They believe, on the contrary, that events like that of the 7th of June tend in their ultimate effect to weld the nation into unity. They continue to stretch out the hand of friendship to their fellow-citizens of Ulster.
Had the Unionists of the six counties looked to the Irish Nation for any autonomy which they desired, they would have obtained it in generous measure. They can obtain it still. They can receive from the Nation a legislature possessing true dignity, and truly worthy of public respect. This is the future to which the Irish people look forward with undiminished confidence.
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