Orders of the Day — Irish Free State (Agreement) Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at on 31 March 1922.

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Lieut.-Colonel WARD:

I only desire to have the one point made clear. I can see that this delay is very likely intended to produce a deliberate effect, and to secure a bloody military dictatorship in Ireland. I want to be assured that the British Government are not responsible for that delay, but that we were, as I believe, quite willing to have taken a vote of the Irish people at the first available opportunity, and that the Motion officially put forward in this House by the right hon. Gentleman was at the request of somebody in Ireland, and was not really the intentional policy of the British Government.