Ireland.

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at on 24 June 1921.

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Photo of Sir Francis Acland Sir Francis Acland , Camborne

I should normally have agreed with anyone who suggested that a rather warm Friday afternoon was not the time to raise an Irish debate, but the question of Ireland is such a misery and an anxiety to many Members of this House that it seems to me that any time is a good time upon which to call attention to the matter. This has been a very dramatic week in the history of Ireland. I shall refer to His Majesty's Speech in Belfast knowing quite well that constitutionally His Majesty gives utterance to the words that his Ministers have advised him to use, and I shall refer to his speech only as being an expression of the considered opinion of the Government. It was a noble and splendid utterance, and did credit to them, and to the Monarch who uttered it. What was the thing, above all things, that the Government should have tried to do at the time they advised His Majesty to make that speech? Why, create a good atmosphere in Ireland for the reception of those magnificent words, asking the Irish people to forgive and forget. And yet, I think, it was the day before, we had pronouncements in another place and in this House, known the next day by every Irishman through the Press, which must have made them think that, either the utterances in these Houses were hyprocrisy running entirely counter to the speech, or that the speech which His Majesty had been advised to deliver was hypocrisy, running dead counter to the policy to which utterance was given in the two Houses of Parliament. I listened from the steps of the Throne to the speech in another place, and every suggestion that had been made, trying to bring a new atmosphere and a new spirit into Irish administration, was gone through with great ability and great power by the spokesman of the Government, but one after another they were absolutely turned down. Suggestions had been made for revising the financial provisions of the present settlement, and we were told that if it were proposed only to make a partial revision of finances, that would reconcile no one; whereas, if it were proposed to give Ireland fiscal autonomy, that would result in people in Belfast having an income tax of 1s. 6d. and people in Glasgow one of 6s., and that that was clearly impossible. Suggestions had been made with regard to entering into negotiations. We were asked, in a rhetorical way, with whom we were to negotiate. If we were to negotiate with Dail Eireann, many of them were responsible for murder, and that was impossible; and if we were to negotiate with anybody else, that also was impossible, because nobody would take any account of negotiations, except with those who had been chosen by the great majority of the Irish people.

One suggestion after another to bring about a better atmosphere was turned down, and at the end, we were told that if the Government found it necessary to send more force, that force would be unhesitatingly supplied. And the same evening in this House, the Secretary of State for War chimed in with an expression of the same policy. Troops, and still more troops, were to be sent to Ireland. The policy of troops was the only one the Government had in its mind. The policy of troops, the policy of force, has never succeeded in the British Empire as a way to settle any question. It never will succeed, and still less can it possibly succeed with a very high-spirited, ingenious nation like the Irish. Everyone knows it cannot be a settlement, and yet here, when we had a chance through the splendid words of His Majesty in turning the thoughts of his Irish people, if it is not too late, in the direction of friendliness to this country, that chance seems to have been deliberately smashed by the utterances of representatives of His Majesty's Government itself. How can the Irish people come to any other conclusion than that a certain section of His Majesty's Government is determined to checkmate and to overthrow the policy of His Majesty's Government in general as it was enunciated in Belfast the other day?

This is the central tragedy of the Irish position as I see it at the present time. Things must be done soon. The demand for absolute, unconditional independence is hardening out every day. The sands are running out. People are getting tired of having any truck or lot with us, and we know quite well that, if you take the ordinary citizen of this country, practically never would he agree to Ireland being an entirely independent country. We are faced, if we do not take care, with two unalterably hard determinations on the opposite sides of the Channel—on one side a determination to have absolute independence, and on the other a determination that it shall never be given. I believe these next two months are absolutely vital if we are to prevent that hardening out of opinion on the two sides of the Channel, and yet in power here is a Government which, owing to its actions, no Irishmen really will trust to give them anything like fair play and fair dealing, even if both sides did meet together round the council table for mutual discussion and accommodation of difficulties. I suppose the right hon. and learned Gentleman opposite (Mr. Henry) cannot deal with these great, terrible and tragic questions this afternoon, and it would be hard to expect him to do so, but I have thought it right for five minutes in this House today to express the terrible anxiety, and indeed misery, with regard to this question that is in the minds of so many of us, I am sure, in all quarters of the House at the present time.