§ MR. A. O'CONNOR (Donegal, E.)In the short time which remains to us, I wish to call attention to the fact that every vestige of constitutional and legal administration in the county of which I am one of the Representatives has now been cast aside by the Executive. They have introduced into use for what they call police purposes, but really for landlord purposes, a battering ram; they have given over to the police functions which are not properly police functions, and besides that, they have caused the police to assume an attitude towards the people which is absolutely illegal and unconstitutional. The inhabitants of portions of Donegal are not at liberty to pursue in ordinary and personal security their daily avocations without permits from the police, and there is established, especially in West Donegal, a kind of "white-terror." People are threatened with indiscriminate and momentary arrest, and no man knows from hour to hour how far his personal safety will be respected. A step further has been taken, and we are assured, on the authority of three Members of this House who are now in Donegal, that the police have started burning the houses of the people. It is difficult to see what more the police can do in the way of disregarding every constitutional duty and every limitation of their official functions. I do not wish to dwell at any length on the matter, and I shall best consult the convenience of the House by reading the following telegram:— 660
Reinforcements of police from all parts of county are being brought into Falcarragh Armed sentries posted at all evicted houses to arrest or keep out tenants. Non-evicted houses dangerously overcrowded through evictions. Wholesale evictions threatened and hourly ex-expected. People simply destitute. Furniture and bedding destroyed by emergency men. One house not destroyed re-entered by tenant, deliberately set on fire last night by police.Mr. Speaker, I think that before the, House adjourns we have a right not only to ask the Government to cause prompt and searching investigation into the present conduct of the police in Donegal, but to ask also for an assurance that, whatever the conduct of the police may have been in the past, they shall be directed not to overstep the, plain lines of their duty, and to respect not only the property but the liberty of the subject in Donegal.
§ THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,) Manchester, E.The hon. Member in the opening sentence of his speech has gone back to matters which, however important and interesting, are not of immediate urgency, having occurred some weeks ago, and which need not therefore have been raised on this debate. I refer to permits which were issued by the police on the occasion of the arrest of the persons charged with the murder of Inspector Martin, and I am not aware that for many weeks past anything of the kind has been done. I suppose it has been merely introduced as a topical matter, and is not one calling for any observation from me. I therefore pass from that portion of the constitutional liberties which the hon. Member says are being broken down and will go to the others. The hon. Member's charges were, that the police had used a ram; that the police were stationed near the houses from which tenants had been evicted; that arrests were contemplated; that the people were destitute; that emergency men had been destroying bedding; and that some of the police had destroyed one house by fire. On the last accusation I have no information at all, but I confess I am wholly sceptical as to the accuracy of the information supplied to hon. Gentlemen opposite. I do not believe, and shall not believe this. 661 charge, until I get much more detailed information. I would, however, point out that the house in any event is not the house of a tenant, but the house of a landlord. I repeat that I do not believe that the police have done anything of the kind alleged against them, and shall continue to disbelieve it in the absence of much better and more detailed information than appears to be in the possession of hon. Gentlemen opposite. I pass then to the other accusations. The hon. Member says that bedding and furniture are destroyed by the emergency men. But, Sir, if a house is defended elaborately and in such manner that it cannot be entered unless the roof or the side is broken down, it may be sometimes absolutely impossible to avoid some injury to the contents of that house. But who is responsible?
§ DR. TANNER (Cork, Mid)You.
§ MR. SPEAKEROrder, order!
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURIs it the people who make a forcible entry, or those who fortify the house so that no other mode of entry is possible? The people themselves and those who have prompted the people are alone to blame. Every care ought to be, and I believe is, exercised by those entrusted with carrying out the law. I would, however, point out that this accusation is made not against the police, but against the special bailiffs, for whose conduct I am in no respect responsible. Then the hon. Member says the police are watching evicted houses. I do not know whether it is true, but I do not think it unnatural if it is true. The people, as I have heard within the last few hours, have been retaking forcible possession of the houses from which they have been evicted. That is a grossly illegal act, which the police are bound to stop, and if, as the hon. Gentleman says, there are police in the neighbourhood of the evicted houses, considering that illegal possession is being taken by the tenants, I do not think that any complaint ought to be made of it. Then I come to the question of the ram. I am not aware that the ram has been used in these evictions; I rather think it has not.
§ MR. SEXTON (Belfast, W.)The hon. Member did not say it had.
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURAn hon. Member says it was never alleged it had been used, but the hon. Member for East Donegal complained that it was used for unconstitutional and illegal purposes.
§ MR. A. O'CONNORI beg the right hon. Gentleman's pardon. What I said was that the Government furnished the police with a ram, nominally for police, but really for landlord purpose s My complaint is that the police are allowed to go beyond the scope of their functions, and to do that which the Constitution does not contemplate.
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURIf the use of the ram be improper, it has not been used on this occasion. I had thought we were discussing a concrete question arising out of the evictions in Donegal, to call attention to which the adjournment of the House had been moved; but I am quite willing to discuss the abstract question of whether or not, under any circumstances, a ram can be legitimately used by the police. I say emphatically it may be so used; and I say more—that if the police have in their possession or can use any method by which injury to themselves and to the people and violation of the law may be diminished, abridged, or prevented, they are absolutely bound to use those means. The hon. Gentleman was entirely wrong in his interpretation of the law. I do not believe that the police have done anything, further than perform the usual duties of protecting the bailiffs, but I do not believe that the functions of the police are necessarily limited to those duties. If the hon. Gentleman will read the charge of Chief Baron Palles on the occasion of the Woodford evictions, he will find that, in the opinion of the Chief Baron, there may be circumstances under which the police would be justified and even obliged to go beyond the special functions of protecting the bailiffs, though neither in the case of the evictions in Donegal nor any other place, as far as I am aware, have 663 they done so under any Administration. So much for the law. Then the hon. Gentleman says that the people are destitute. He has discussed that question upon two separate occasions in the course of last week, and in the speeches he then made he admitted that probably at that time, and probably at any time in the last 50 or 100 years, there had been some distress in those congested and overcrowded parts of Ireland. I do not believe that there is anything in the nature of a general famine. I do not believe that the distress is widespread, or that it prevails especially among the persons evicted, and I believe that the attempt which has been made to rouse the sympathies of the public has been made for political purposes, and for political purposes alone. If you had searched other Unions in Ireland where no evictions have taken place, you would find equal or greater distress, as to which it has never occurred to right hon. or hon. Gentlemen opposite to move the adjournment of the House, or to excite the sympathy of the English philanthropists. I have already given the House the result of certain figures which have been supplied to me, and I have also told the House that I am going to make further investigations. Until those investigation are completed I do not pretend to give a complete or final judgment to the House on this matter; but I will tell the House a fact which has been communicated to me to-day by telegram. Although I have not had an opportunity of examining it in all its bearings, I state it to the House as being probably significant, and, at all events, of interest. The amount given in Poor Law relief in the particular Union where these evictions have taken place is less, and much less, than in other Unions in the same county of Donegal.
§ MR. A. O'CONNORBecause Mr. Olphert is Chairman.
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURNo Board of Guardians, no Chairman of a Board of Guardians, has either the right or the power to allow starvation in the Union over which they have jurisdiction.
§ Mr. A. O'CONNORHow little you know of Donegal!
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURI give that fact to the House not because I have 664 had either opportunity or time to investigate it in all its bearings, but because I think it is an important and a significant fact in regard to the condition of these people. When hon. Gentlemen attack the conduct of the police they must be perfectly well aware that the whole object and aim of their policy is to render the task of the police as difficult as it can be. Hon. Members talk of Donegal and the evictions of the peasants and the distress, but they are looking not to Donegal, but to English platforms and the English people. It is manifest in every word they utter that their desire is to turn to political account these unhappy incidents. That is why they object to the ram. It is not because of any additional hardship which the ram inflicts. They object to the ram because they know that the use of that instrument will shorten the scenes at evictions, and will diminish the sufferings which evictions are calculated to inflict, and in those two ways defeat the game which hon. Gentlemen desire to play. As I have said, I do not believe that the distress is of such a kind that the ordinary Poor Law is incapable of coping with it. If that belief is modified by any further reports which I may receive, I will take any action which may be necessary in the matter. But until the necessity for action is demonstrated, I repeat you cannot be guilty of a more mistaken kindness to the people of Donegal than by unnecessarily relaxing the regulations which limit the use of the Poor Law, or by giving public and private funds unnecessarily and recklessly to subventions for this purpose. If subvention should be necessary, at all events, let care be taken that it is not given under circumstances which would in the long run do more harm than good. I hope—I fear I hope in vain—that if that task be put upon the Government we shall receive the assistance of hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway, and that they will not urge the House, with the weight of power which belongs to them, to induce the Government to carry out measures which have perhaps done more harm of a permanent kind in creating the congested districts than even temporary benefit to the population which they affected.
§ *MR. J. STUART (Shoreditch, Hoxton)There are three main accusations contained in the telegram read by the hon. Member; first, that the bedding and furniture have been destroyed by emergency men. The right hon. Gentleman has answered that by saying it was probably destroyed during the defence of the houses; but if he had ever been present at an eviction, he would have known that it is destroyed by being thrown into the roadway and trampled upon by emergency men. The next was that police sentries had been posted in the neighbourhood of evicted houses to prevent the people from re-entering them. An hon. Member has suggested that this is a matter for the Civil Courts, and that the police had no right to take this step; but, Sir, that is not so, for it is made a crime by the Coercion Act of 1887 for a man to re-enter a house from which he has been evicted. It is one of the new crimes created by that Act, and which at the time we protested against. Lastly, Sir, there is a definite accusation here in this telegram that one house which had been re-entered by the tenant was deliberately set on fire last night by the police. The right hon. Gentleman, I take it, did not endeavour to apologise for such action on the part of the police, if it be true; but he doubted whether it had taken place. I hope that one result of the debate may be that the right hon. Gentleman will hasten to ascertain whether such an event has taken place, and, if it has, will prohibit such conduct in the future. We have here a definite statement that it has taken place, on the authority of three Members of this House, and I cannot, therefore, but think that there is some truth at the bottom of it. You have sent to gaol the priest of Falcarragh, and now you are taking the roofs from over the heads of these poor people. I cannot think that the answers given by the right hon. Gentleman are satisfactory, and I trust that we shall yet receive some assurance that the police will be warned against setting fire to houses.
§ MR. SEXTON (Belfast, W.)The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, who is a master in the art of evasion, 666 has not informed the House how the battering ram, with all its unrecognized virtues, can be used by the police as an engine of self-defence, and I charge the right hon. Gentleman with having purchased this ram, not as vindicator of the public law, but as a piece of machinery to assist private persons in collecting debts, and in exacting vengeance when the money is not forthcoming. The right hon. Gentleman rather blamed my hon. Friend for referring again to the system of police permits; but let me say that this unfortunate county is subject to an elaborate system of tyranny by the police, and the fact that people are forbidden to pass along the highway is an indication of the callous and cruel system pursued by the police. The right hon. Gentleman has endeavoured to account for the breaking of the furniture by saying that it is broken in the defence of the houses. Sir, the police are not assailed at evictions, and this furniture is broken, not in the defence of the houses, but by the emergency men, who, when they succeed in forcing an entrance, will break it by striking it and throwing it out into the roads. I challenge the right hon. Gentleman to name one Union where so much distress prevails as in this Union of Falcarragh. Let me point out that the landlord who has evicted these tenants is also the Chairman of the Poor Law Union, and owing to the poverty of the district he nominates the Guardians, and practically the whole question of out-door relief is in his hands. Now, I ask is it not the duty of the Government to save these poor people from starvation? They are being turned out of the houses which they have built with their own hands; the workhouse is so many miles away that many are unable to go there; is not the Government bound to provide them with food and shelter or with vehicles to convey them to the workhouse? Has it come to this, that the British army is to be employed to prevent men, women and children from committing a civil offence by crawling back for shelter to the homes from which they have been so cruelly evicted? I ask for a pledge from the right hon. Gentleman that he 667 will inquire into the allegations made in this telegram from Members of this House, and I think we are entitled to have from him an assurance that the police, who are paid from Imperial funds, shall not be used to serve the private interests of the landlords. I want the Government to provide shelter for these poor people, so that they shall not die from exposure on the roadside. We know that in the houses of the evicted no food has been found; we know that their potatoes failed last Christmas, and that they have since been existing on Indian meal; but the Representative of the Government cares nothing for all this; he lounges on his Bench and yawns and laughs. Under his elegant Criminal Code he has made it an offence to re-enter houses in which evictions have taken place; but surely it is not such a heinous crime to crawl into a dismantled building for shelter. It appears to me that if the Government desire to promote confidence in the law, they will put a stop to this action on the part of the police. I believe the right hon. Gentleman himself the very worst enemy the Government have, and that his conduct in regard to the evictions in Donegal is calculated to make the people hate the Government and detest the law.
§ MR. M. J. KENNY (Tyrone Mid)challenge the Government to show any authority by which the police can prevent a man re-entering the house from which he has been evicted. If you allow that they can do that, you give them the right to break down houses with a battering ram, and to set fire to buildings, and I submit that in firing houses, as they have done recently, the police have committed an offence against the law. The right hon. Gentleman, by his smiles and yawns, encourages the police thus to act, and whereas only one house was fired last night, we shall, as a consequence, have 30 or 90 fired to-night.
§ Mr. WADDY (Lincolnshire, Brigg)Let us see where we are. Slowly, yet purposely and deliberately, the people are being murdered in this part of Ireland. Whatever may be the desire of the Government, that is the effect and 668 result of their action; and yet when complaint is made by hon. Members that that is so, we are met with the inevitable suggestion that this is the game being played by hon. Members on this side. I think we are justified in saying that the game played by the Government is by deliberate brutality to stamp out all opposition to their policy. I say we should be justified—
§ *MR. SPEAKEROrder, order!
§ MR. SEXTONThere are still ten minutes. Cannot the debate be continued?
§ *MR. SPEAKERThe last ten minutes are reserved for unopposed business. We are placed in very peculiar circumstances by the fact that the debate on the Motion for the Adjournment stands adjourned under the Rules of the. House at ten minutes to Seven.
It being ten minutes to Seven of the clock, the debate stood adjourned.