These days THE TIMES reprints some snippets from 100 years back.The above was reprinted on Saturday 29 July 2023.
“The Hyde Park demonstration was held simultaneously with gatherings in various parts of the
country……the processions may come to have real influence in promoting international friendliness
– the League of Nations Union, the National Peace Council, the Fellowship of Reconciliation,
the Women’s Freedom League , and many trade unions. On the other hand there were elements
which prevent many people from giving open support to a ‘No More War’ Movement. Girls with
hair cut too short associated with young men whose hair was too long. Girl Guides carried a Union
Jack but Communists waved squares of red calico tied to poles. The platforms were not widely
separated and it was difficult to pick out individual speeches from an unintelligible torrent of oratory.
The intrusion of the Communists was particularly impudent. Their speeches were made from a platform adorned with red flags and what was claimed to be a banner of an Irish Republic. The revolutionaries jeered at the ‘mouthing’ of the earnest-minded men and women on the the other platforms…
Drums were sounded and a resolution was carried sending fraternal greetings to similar meetings…
throughout the world……the time had come to insist on total disarmament.. a..motion called on the British Government to take the initiative……through a perfected and inclusive League of Nations.. ….
Among the speakers who supported the resolutions were Mr Oswald Mosley, MP., Mr.C.R. Attlee and
Mr. George Lansbury, MP.”
Both Mr Mosley and Mr Attlee had fought bravely in the Great War, and Mosley had opposed Black and Tan conduct in Ireland. Attlee had fought in Gallipoli, and as (Labour) Mayor of Stepney, in his Civic Regalia, together with other Labour Mayors in the British Capital, had walked in procession behind the hearse carrying the remains of Cork’s Lord Mayor MacSwiney which was flanked by a uniformed Guard of Honour of the First Cork Brigade, IRA, little over 2 years previously.
George Lansbury was a life long pacifist who battled for women’s suffrage, and social justice and served periods in prison .
Attlee maintained a belief in Christian principles ” but not in the mumbo ijumbo.”
He was happy to serve in a Government which imposed Famine in Bengal in 1942-1943 and , to my
mind, was as much an Imperialist as Churchill and at least as underhand.
When John A Costello, as Taoiseach in 1948 unnecessarily labelled the Irish State, whose citizens had created “A sovereign democratic (Irish) polity eleven years earlier, a “Republic” Ireland was deemed to have left the British Commonwealth. Not a comma was changed to what was already a republican Constitution. Under that Constitution the island of Ireland, its islands and territorial seas by belonged by right to the State.
British Cabinet Secretary Sir Norman Brook prepared a memorandum which examined the Unionist
claim to the Six Counties and judged it of little merit.
Overriding that merit-lite consideration “for Strategic reasons, some part of Ireland must remain within His Majesty’s Dominions.”
Atlee marked the document “Read” and initialled it. He was co-founding NATO at the time
A New “Ireland Bill” was prepared purporting to place the final disposal of the Six Counties in the
hands of the Northern Ireland Parliament. Under the 1920 Act, then in force ‘every person, act and
thing’ in the statelet came under the Imperial Parliament in Westminster. The Monarch in Parliament
remains the Sovereign Power in the UK. Not the populace/subjects/citizens/vot
Norman Brook’s memo was kept under wraps for 30 years.
Well before that, in 1972 the Northern Ireland Parliament was stripped of its pretensions by Edward Heath with little ceremony.
More on the Peacenik Clement Attlee anon.
“The Hyde Park demonstration was held simultaneously with gatherings in various parts of the
country……the processions may come to have real influence in promoting international friendliness
– the League of Nations Union, the National Peace Council, the Fellowship of Reconciliation,
the Women’s Freedom League , and many trade unions. On the other hand there were elements
which prevent many people from giving open support to a ‘No More War’ Movement. Girls with
hair cut too short associated with young men whose hair was too long. Girl Guides carried a Union
Jack but Communists waved squares of red calico tied to poles. The platforms were not widely
separated and it was difficult to pick out individual speeches from an unintelligible torrent of oratory.
The intrusion of the Communists was particularly impudent. Their speeches were made from a platform adorned with red flags and what was claimed to be a banner of an Irish Republic. The revolutionaries jeered at the ‘mouthing’ of the earnest-minded men and women on the the other platforms…
Drums were sounded and a resolution was carried sending fraternal greetings to similar meetings…
throughout the world……the time had come to insist on total disarmament.. a..motion called on the British Government to take the initiative……through a perfected and inclusive League of Nations.. ….
Among the speakers who supported the resolutions were Mr Oswald Mosley, MP., Mr.C.R. Attlee and
Mr. George Lansbury, MP.”
Both Mr Mosley and Mr Attlee had fought bravely in the Great War, and Mosley had opposed Black and Tan conduct in Ireland. Attlee had fought in Gallipoli, and as (Labour) Mayor of Stepney, in his Civic Regalia, together with other Labour Mayors in the British Capital, had walked in procession behind the hearse carrying the remains of Cork’s Lord Mayor MacSwiney which was flanked by a uniformed Guard of Honour of the First Cork Brigade, IRA, little over 2 years previously.
George Lansbury was a life long pacifist who battled for women’s suffrage, and social justice and served periods in prison .
Attlee maintained a belief in Christian principles ” but not in the mumbo ijumbo.”
He was happy to serve in a Government which imposed Famine in Bengal in 1942-1943 and , to my
mind, was as much an Imperialist as Churchill and at least as underhand.
When John A Costello, as Taoiseach in 1948 unnecessarily labelled the Irish State, whose citizens had created “A sovereign democratic (Irish) polity eleven years earlier, a “Republic” Ireland was deemed to have left the British Commonwealth. Not a comma was changed to what was already a republican Constitution. Under that Constitution the island of Ireland, its islands and territorial seas by belonged by right to the State.
British Cabinet Secretary Sir Norman Brook prepared a memorandum which examined the Unionist
claim to the Six Counties and judged it of little merit.
Overriding that merit-lite consideration “for Strategic reasons, some part of Ireland must remain within His Majesty’s Dominions.”
Atlee marked the document “Read” and initialled it. He was co-founding NATO at the time
A New “Ireland Bill” was prepared purporting to place the final disposal of the Six Counties in the
hands of the Northern Ireland Parliament. Under the 1920 Act, then in force ‘every person, act and
thing’ in the statelet came under the Imperial Parliament in Westminster. The Monarch in Parliament
remains the Sovereign Power in the UK. Not the populace/subjects/citizens/vot
Norman Brook’s memo was kept under wraps for 30 years.
Well before that, in 1972 the Northern Ireland Parliament was stripped of its pretensions by Edward Heath with little ceremony.
More on the Peacenik Clement Attlee anon.
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