MOUNTJOY PRISON. (Hansard, 12 April 1920)

§ Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHY
I wish to ask the Attorney-General for Ireland if he has any information with regard to the prisoners in Mountjoy Gaol. During the first part of the sitting of the House, I received a telegram from Ireland, and, in view of the seriousness of the situation, I feel that it is up to me to question the Government as to the truth of the statements contained in it. Is it a fact that some 100 political prisoners in Mountjoy Gaol are on hunger strike, and, of these men, mostly young men, are the majority men who have not been tried or even charged before a magistrate? Are they men who have simply been arrested on suspicion of having committed or being about to commit some crime, and who have not been put on trial either before a court of their peers or before a court-martial? Is it a fact that there is great anxiety in Dublin in particular, and in Ireland in general, that certain of these young men may die within the next few hours? Is it true that a general strike, with all the complications and hardships and developments that may arise, has been threatened to bring about the release of these men, and is it the policy of the Government to permit purely political prisoners, who have not been placed on trial, in their present state of exaltation to starve themselves to death and so commit suicide? If that be the 1487 Government policy, it ought to be plainly stated in the House so that we can discuss it, but, until I have heard the Government reply, I do not intend to express the perfectly obvious opinion of such extraordinary criminal folly.

§ The ATTORNEY-GENERAL for IRELAND (Mr. Henry)
Since the hon. Member for the Scotland Division of Liverpool (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) put a question to me, and which at the moment I was unable to answer, I have communicated with Dublin, and I will read the telegram that I have received in reply: Mountjoy Prison under strike. The Prisons Board report that the condition of all the prisoners on hunger strike in Mountjoy Prison this morning was weak and some were nearing the danger zone. The number on hunger strike at present is 89. The total of the so-called political prisoners at present in Mountjoy Prison, including those excluded from the ameliorative treatment, is 151. The number of those under sentence is 70, and the number under detention, including those for trial, is 81.

§ Lieut.- Commander KENWORTHY
Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman mean by "waiting for trial" that the men have been arrested on suspicion and have been committed for trial?

§ Mr. HENRY
They include both those waiting for trial and those arrested on suspicion.

§ Lieut.- Commander KENWORTHY
Could the right hon. and learned Gentleman give the number arrested on suspicion?

§ Mr. HENRY
I regret that I cannot do that. The number under sentence is 70, and the total number is 151. The 81 include those arrested on suspicion and those for trial. I cannot divide the number further than that. The classes of prisoners on hunger strike are:

(1) Convicted prisoners who are excluded from ameliorative treatment, and

(2) Untried prisoners.

The former include several prisoners who were committed by juries at assizes, and sentenced to terms of imprisonment varying from 9 to 18 calendar months, with hard labour. The result of the figures, so far as I can give them, is that there are 89 out of 151 on hunger strike, the 89 including a 1488 number of convicted prisoners, and the convicted prisoners including men convicted in the ordinary way before a jury just as they would be in this country without any recourse to the Defence of the Realm Regulations.

§ Mr. MacVEAGH
Before a jury?

§ Mr. HENRY
Yes, that is my information. The former (the convicted prisoners) include several prisoners who were convicted by juries at assizes.

§ Mr. MacVEAGH
Several, but not the number that you referred to.

§ Mr. HENRY
I said that there were a number: I did not at all convey that the whole of them were convicted by juries at assizes. They are made up of men convicted probably by court-martial, but also of some convicted by juries at assizes, and those are exactly in the same position as the others. I may mention that the Chairman of the Visiting Justices, Mr. Clark, has resigned, and also that the Lord Mayor of Dublin—I am trusting to the Press in this respect—sent a telegram to His Excellency yesterday and that the reply sent was as follows:— There is no power under the Rules made in November last to extend ameliorative treatment to convicted prisoners, who are excluded from ameliorative treatment. Untried prisoners are treated under the Rules for untried prisoners. His Excellency does not propose to modify the rules in the direction you suggest. All prisoners on hunger strike have been forewarned as to the consequences of persistence in their conduct, in accordance with the decision of His Majesty's Government. The House will recollect that immediately before the Adjournment—I think it was on Friday—the Leader of the House made a statement in reference to the condition of a prisoner in Wormwood Scrubbs. I may also mention that I was informed that a similar hunger strike was progressing in Wormwood Scrubbs, but I am glad to say that it has been abandoned.

§ Mr. MacVEAGH
I think that of all the explanations offered from the Government Bench that which we have just heard is about the weakest. The right hon. and learned Gentleman conveyed to us—I accept his statement at once that he did not intend to do so—that a large proportion of these prisoners were convicted by jury. The truth of the matter is that there are only two or three of them who 1489 have been convicted by jury. The rest have been either convicted by court-martial, having been denied civil trial under a pretence that the war is still proceeding, or have not been convicted and are men against whom no definite charge whatever has been made. They are men concerning whom the last Chief Secretary declared that the Government did not intend to make any charge or to put them upon their trial. These are the men whom the Irish Government are willing should die in prison. All I wish to say, and I speak with a sense of responsibility and in no light-hearted manner, is that if one of these men dies while interned in an English prison you will lay up for yourselves trouble of which no man can see the end. The death of one of these men will have its effect, not for to-day alone, but for generations yet unborn. Really the hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Hopkinson) might keep his sniggering for some other occasion. This is not a matter for laughter. It is one of the most serious positions that any Government has ever had to face, and if the hon. Gentleman knew a little more about the subject he would understand it. I can imagine nothing more calculated to embitter the position or to worsen matters, which are bad enough already, than the ill-considered sneers and laughter of hon. Members about a subject about which they know nothing. English public opinion as well as Irish public opinion, will feel outraged by what is happening in Mountjoy Prison to-day, because Englishmen pride themselves upon one thing, and that is liberty of the subject. They believe that every-man who is imprisoned has the right to be told what is the charge levelled against him and that he is entitled to be put on trial on that charge. The hon. Member to whom I have already referred makes some remark. I would invite him to become more coherent and articulate and to deliver a speech, if he knows anything about the subject—which I know he does not.
English opinion will not tolerate this system of the Irish Government, and it is perfectly useless for the Attorney-General to shelter himself behind the Cabinet. This is being committed by the Irish Government and by the Irish Government alone. English opinion will not tolerate a system under which men, 1490 against whom no charge has been made, are being kept in prison until they die from the results of the hunger strike. There are more facts about Mountjoy than we were told by the Attorney-General. He did not tell us that the Visiting Surgeon of that prison has resigned as a protest against the conduct of the Government, and neither did he tell us that all the doctors concerned, the whole medical staff of the prison, have called upon the Government to release these men and not to hold them there until they die. The Irish Government are prepared to send telegrams to all the relatives of these men telling them that their friends are in a most dangerous condition, as they are almost at death's door, and inviting them up to see their friends before they die. Hon. Members may not know what the effects of that will be on Irish public opinion, but if they had read anything of Irish history they would know that the men who will be done to death in prisons to-day will be the heroes and martyrs of to-morrow, and the Government which plunges lightly into conduct of this kind is only laying up for itself a store of trouble in the years to come. I should like to know why a different policy is adopted by the Government in England from that adopted by the Government in Ireland. When these political prisoners reach a dangerous condition in England they are immediately released. The Lord Mayor of Dublin was released a few days ago. Mr. William O'Brien, the secretary of the Irish Trades Union Congress, who was arrested without charge and imprisoned without trial, was released by the Home Office. Why has the Irish Government persisted in a course which humanity forbids the Home Office from pursuing in this country?
The Attorney-General quoted a telegram sent to the Lord Mayor of Dublin by the Lord Lieutenant. He did not tell the House that the Irish Government has given orders that the Lord Mayor of Dublin, although Chief Magistrate of the Irish Metropolis, is not to be permitted to enter the prison to see how the men are getting on. That is a condition of affairs which would be absolutely impossible in any city in England. I defy any English Member to say that he could conceive of a state of affairs in which the Chief Magistrate of a city in this country 1491 would be refused permission to enter a prison to see whether men were really in danger of death as a result of their prison treatment.

§ Sir W. DAVISON
Can the hon. Gentleman say whether the Chief Magistrate has taken the oath of a Justice of the Peace?

§ Mr. MacVEAGH
I have no knowledge whether he has or not.

§ Sir W. DAVISON
I understand he has not, and that that is why he is not admitted.

§ Mr. MacVEAGH
What has that got to do with the situation? He is the Lord Mayor of the Irish capital, and he has always been allowed to enter the prison. He has never been prevented until the Irish Executive, with the object of cloaking up this whole transaction, issued an order that he is no longer to be admitted. If he has not taken the oath, there are lots of men who have declined to take the office of Justice of the Peace, just as there are lots of men who have declined the O.B.E. If he were a Justice of the Peace at all, it would only be in an ex-officio capacity, and not permanently, but as Lord Mayor. It is as Lord Mayor that he has always been allowed to enter the prison and not as a Justice. I can assure my hon. Friend, who I know does not approach this question with any bitterness, and knows something about the subject to which he refers, that the Lord Mayor has never been admitted as a magistrate, but as Lord Mayor. He has been admitted to Mountjoy prison for three years, and why is he stopped now?

§ Sir W. DAVISON
The Lord Mayor as such is an ex-officio magistrate and per forms judicial functions as a magistrate, and as such ought to take the oath of a Justice.

§ Mr. MacVEAGH
The hon. Member has not answered my question, which was, why was the Lord Mayor allowed to enter the prison day after day and week after week for the last three years, and why is it that it is only now he has been stopped?

§ Sir W. DAVISON
He ought not to have been admitted.

§ Mr. MacVEAGH
That is one of those puzzles of Irish Government which no 1492 intelligent man can understand and I am not surprised that the hon. Gentleman has difficulty in doing so. That is not the only instance we have. One of the prisoners from Ireland in Wormwood Scrubbs received a telegram announcing that one of his children was in a very serious and dangerous condition. He applied to be released on parole, which is a privilege which has always been granted to untried prisoners arrested under the Defence of the Kealm Act in the case of illness in the family. There has been no case in which it has been refused, and it was certainly never refused in the case of any prisoner in England. The Home Office has always acted quite fairly in that respect. They allow these men to go home on parole to the sick members of their family and, to their honour be it told, every man obeyed the parole and returned on the date named. In the case of this man in Wormwood Scrubs, his relatives wired to the Governor of Wormwood Scrubs prison asking whether this man was to be released in order to go home to see his dying child. The reply that the Governor sent was, "he is not being released on parole as the Irish Government objects, mark you—not the Home Office, but the Irish Government. They would not allow him out, and the man's child died, and he is still kept in Wormwood Scrubs. I advise hon. Members who are inclined to defend this state of affairs to be very careful and to remember that there is an English public opinion, even if they disregard Irish public opinion, and that acts of barbarism and brutality such as that will meet with a speedy vengeance when the English electorate gets the opportunity.

Lieut.-Colonel MALONE
When we were discussing the Army Annual Bill I wished to draw attention to a very urgent matter in connection with the War Office. I desire to do so now because the Attorney-General gave us an indication of a general strike in Ireland next week. I have here a communication which has been sent officially to members of the Ex-Officers' National Union. It is headed: Ex-Officers' National Union, and begins: Dear Sir, Thank you for offering to assist should any national emergency occur. Preparations 1493 are being made in case the food supply is suddenly cut off. I shall be glad if you will fill in and return the enclosed form so that you may be allotted a position. A telegram will be made out so that in the event of any emergency you can be called immediately. Any alteration of address should be sent to me as soon as possible.—Yours faithfully, Gr. H. Home, Major. Please notify any change of address to Major G. H. Home. Then follow particulars of addresses and telephone numbers, and a few questions, such as "Are you able to drive a railway engine?", "Have you had any railway experience?" "Are you able to take charge of a power station?" "Are you able to drive a motor car or bicycle?" "Have you had any clerical experience?" "Did you assist in the last strike? If so, please say how." I gave notice of this question to the War Office, but I was informed that the Secretary of State for War was in France in connection with the industrial trouble in the Ruhr Valley and other matters, but I take this opportunity of raising the question, because the right hon. Gentleman can then read it in the OFFICIAL REPORT, and then perhaps explain it. I hope the House will realise 1494 that this circular means that an attempt is being made, possibly under the guise of unofficialdom, to raise a force of White Guards, such as has been raised in the European countries in which there has been civil war. That means civil war. In Ireland, the first body to organise were the reactionaries. The Ulster Volunteers were organised a long time before there was any desire to raise the National Volunteers, and that led to the organisation of the National Volunteers. In the same way, the organisation of White Guards in England will only provoke the workers to organise and drill a Bed Army. I hope the House will realise how serious it is that an organisation of this sort should be tolerated and permitted by the War Office. When we get an opportunity of discussing the Army in the future, I hope the Secretary for War will be in a position to describe it, and to explain why it is allowed to be proceeded with.