HC Deb 19 June 1890 vol 345 cc1342-5
MR. CLANCY

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland if he will state the number of constables employed for the last six months, and now employed in Ireland, in the operation known as shadowing, and the cost to the State in pay, allowances, and car hire of those constables?

MR. DILLON

Before the right hon. Gentleman answers the question, I wish to supplement it by another of which I I have given him private notice. Is it true, as stated in the Irish Times this morning, that the Executive Government in Ireland have ordered the police to put a stop to this system of shadowing?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

No, Sir; there is no truth in that statement. In regard to the question on the Paper, the Constabulary Authorities report that it is not the practice to employ constables specially on the duty in question. The number discharging this duty on any particular day would depend upon the particular circumstances of that day. There is no record of the additional cost involved by this duty; but it consists, for the most part, of car hire, which is believed to amount to no considerable sum, as police transport cars are, when possible, made available.

MR. SEXTON

May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether the practice of shadowing at Dungarvan Fair has been given up in consequence of the issue of a circular by the Inspector General of Constabulary? Has such a circular been issued?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

No, Sir; there is not a word of truth in the report.

MR. FLYNN (Cork, N.)

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, in the case of Mr. Thomas Barry and others who have been lately shadowed, they were followed all over Ireland by the same constables?

[No answer was given.]

MR. PICTON (Leicester)

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he will lay upon the Table of the House, or place in the Library, a copy of the instructions under which Commissioners of Police in Ireland act in directing persons to be shadowed by constables in the mode recently adopted; whether he has seen copies of the instantaneous photographs, taken on Whit Monday, in three different parts of the town of Tipperary, by the hon. Member for North Monaghan, showing the Rev. Father Humphries shadowed by two constables, namely, John Ahern and Jeremiah Wallace, as he was going about his pastoral duties; whether he is aware of any precedent in English police procedure for such treatment of any of Her Majesty's subjects, unless when pursued on account of definite crimes for which they were about to be brought to trial; and whether he will re-consider his sanction of a practice which risks the infliction of grave inconvenience?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I am not aware that any written general instructions of the formal kind to which the hon. Gentleman alludes have been issued on the subject since the present Government came into Office; those issued previously are of a confidential character. I have not had the pleasure of seeing the photographs in question. In answer to paragraph (3) the shadowing is in connection with a definite class of offences against the law, and I have not the least doubt that if any English town were in the condition of Tipperary measures of at least equal severity would be adopted.

MR. PICTON

May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he will accept copies of these photographs?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Yes; I shall feel very much obliged if the hon. Gentleman will give me copies of them.

MR. DILLON

Have any instructions in regard to this system of shadowing been issued since the right hon. Gentleman came into Office? It is different from anything of the kind that existed under the right hon. Gentleman's predecessors. The House is entitled to know whether this system of shadowing has been introduced on the authority of particular Magistrates or constables, or whether fresh instructions have been issued.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I do not admit the correctness of the assertion that there is a great variation between the present and the previous system. As far as I am aware, no instructions of a formal kind have been issued by the Government in Dublin, and of course I am in constant communication with the officials.

MR. DILLON

I must press for a distinct answer. The right hon. Gentleman stated in the House the other day that this system of shadowing was done under his authority. I can state of my own knowledge that the system of shadowing now pursued is something absolutely different from anything which ever took place in the country before. Are we to understand that this system of shadowing was initiated without an order of the Executive, and on the responsibility of individual Magistrates or policemen?

EARL COMPTON (York, W.R., Barnsley)

Are we to understand that during the years 1880–82 this practice existed? I was in Ireland at the time, and saw nothing of it.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The time to which the noble Lord refers was when Lord Cowper was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and I do not know that the system to which I allude was in operation before the Lord Lieutenancy of Lord Spencer. On the 19th of June, 1882, Mr. Healy asked the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Bridgeton Division (Sir G. Trevelyan), then Chief Secretary, whether his attention had been called to a statement in a Belfast newspaper to the effect that Inspectors of police had watched a local contractor, and the right hon. Gentleman replied, "It is quite true that the police have been carefully watching persons, but I decline to say on what ground."

MR. T. M. HEALY

I may explain to the House that this man was suspected of being the murderer of Lord Frederick Cavendish. It turned out that he was unjustly suspected; but he was persecuted by that abominable system for over 12 months.

MR. DILLON

I state of my own knowledge that the system of shadowing now pursued was never in force before. The question and answer which the right hon. Gentleman has just read had no reference to a system of shadowing similar to that which is now adopted. It simply amounted to watching.

MR. SPEAKER

It is impossible to raise an argument now as to what happened in 1882.

MR. DILLON

The right hon. Gentleman mentioned it.

MR. SPEAKER

Only in answer to a question by the noble Lord the Member for the Barnsley Division (Earl Compton).

MR. DILLON

The noble Lord did not mention that year.

CAPTAIN VERNEY (Bucks, N.)

I understood the right hon. Gentleman to say that if the same state of things existed in England that exists in Tipperary the same method of shadowing would be observed. Are we to understand that if in the town of Buckingham a state of things existed similar to that which exists in Tipperary the system of shadowing by the police would be enforced at Buckingham?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The hon. Member must know either very little of Buckingham or very little of Tipperary.

MR. J. MORLEY (Newcastle-upon-Tyne)

Questions of this kind must occupy a great deal of the time of the House unless the First Lard of the Treasury will consent to take the Irish Police Vote at some very early date. Will the right hon. Gentleman do that?

THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. W. H. SMITH,) Strand, Westminster

If the right hon. Gentleman will repeat the question on another day, I will endeavour to answer it.

MR. J. MORLEY

I will repeat the question to-morrow.