§ Whereupon Mr. SPEAKER, pursuant to the Order of the House of 19th October, proposed the Question, "That this House do now adjourn."
§ Mr. ADAMSONAs a matter of great national importance, I want to inquire from the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether he can give the House any information Regarding events in Ireland. During this evening it has been brought to the notice of the party with which I am associated, through an official source, that the town of Tipperary is being burned by Crown forces, and that these Crown forces have cut the fire hose and prevented the council firemen, at the point of the revolver, from using the same. If that information is correct—and from the source from which it has come I have no doubt that it is correct—it is a serious matter, and one that ought to be raised and discussed in the House at the earliest possible moment. In the last few weeks we have had our methods of government in Ireland brought again and again before the House, and again and again we have had the Chief Secretary explaining these occurrences from the. Government point of view. In a matter of the kind now under discussion the Chief Secretary will have great difficulty in justifying such a method of government. The telegram from which I have quoted says:
Tipperary town being burned by Crown Forces who have cut fire hose and prevented the council's firemen at point of revolver from using the same.The telegram is signed by the Town Clerk of Tipperary.
§ Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHYHe will be shot to-morrow.
§ Mr. ADAMSONThe hon. Member says the town clerk will be shot to-morrow for sending this telegram. I question very seriously whether he will be shot for sending the telegram. This matter is of so serious a character that we thought it was our duty to raise it even at this late hour with a view to ascertaining whether the Chief Secretary has any information regarding it, and also with a view to seeing what he, as representing the Government in Ireland, proposes to do in order to check action of this character. Again and again the question of reprisals has been raised, and we have had the Chief Secretary defending his officials in Ireland. If this telegram represents the truth, it will be very difficult for the Chief Secretary to represent and defend them now. On the Third Reading of the Government of Ireland Bill, I said that the methods of government that had been brought to our notice within recent times made us positively ashamed of the manner in which we were attempting to govern the people of Ireland, I do not know of anything worse than this that has been brought to our notice to-night. If this town is being burned, and steps are being taken to prevent the Council's firemen from subduing the flames, it means that women and children will be dispossessed of their shelter, and that, as on other occasions, they will be running elsewhere for shelter. It represents a method of government that cannot be justified. I hope we are to have some assurance from the Chief Secretary that steps are to be taken immediately to stop conduct of this kind. The telegram is very specific, and I will not elaborate it. I want to give the Chief Secretary as much time as possible to let us know what information he has been able to secure since I sent him notice of my intention to raise this matter, and the information which had been passed on to us. I hope that he is in a position to give us that information, and to state that effective steps are being taken to prevent the continuance of a policy which makes us in Britain ashamed of our methods of government in Ireland.
§ Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHYBefore the Chief Secretary replies, may I say that no doubt his defence will be that some foul murders which I deprecate as much as the Chief Secretary have been committed in this neighbourhood. If that is the Government defence it is a 1844 defence of anarchy. Murders should be punished with the rigour of the law, but burning houses of innocent people because murders have been committed is the negation of all government.
§ The CHIEF SECRETARY for IRELAND (Lieut.-Colonel Sir Hamar Greenwood)The hon. and gallant Gentleman has no right to prophesy what my defence will be.
§ Mr. DEVLINWe knew.
§ Sir H. GREENWOODMy defence will be that there is not a word of truth in the telegram read out. As soon as I got notice from the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Adamson) I wired to Dublin Castle. Dublin Castle communicated by telephone with the town of Tipperary. The telegram received by the right hon. Gentleman was sent off from Tipperary at four o'clock to-day. The telephone message I received was sent off at six o'clock this evening. I will give it as it came to me from Dublin Castle—
I have just been given a telephone message from the District Inspector at Tipperary, who says that he personally and his men helped to extinguish fires last night, and that there is absolutely no truth in the statement that the town is being burned. The town to-day is perfectly quiet.I referred to-day in my answer to the destruction of five houses yesterday, but the suggestion that this is a matter of great national importance, namely, that the forces of the Crown cut the hose, and prevented the Council's firemen from using the same, is not true. This telegram which the right hon. Gentleman has received is symptomatic of a great deal of the information that comes from unofficial sources. The reason it comes to certain hon. Gentlemen in this House is because they are only too anxious to make out that the loyal forces of the Crown are guilty of these outrages. I cannot resume my seat without referring to the record of Tipperary county and Tipperary town during the last two years, and I regret that the right hon. Gentleman had no word to say about the brutal murders of policemen and soldiers that have been committed in this town and county.
§ Mr. ADAMSONMay I remind the right hon. Gentleman that on Thursday last, in speaking upon the Third Reading of the Government of Ireland Bill, I stated 1845 specifically here that neither I nor the party I represented had any sympathy either with murders or reprisals.
§ Sir H. GREENWOODI am sure the right hon. Gentleman has no sympathy with them, but the difference between him and me is this: that I think the main question in Ireland is the murder of policemen and soldiers, not the reprisals. The latter is important, but it is consequential. The great issue before the Government and this House to-day is the murder of their servants. In the county of Tipperary since 1st July, 1919, there have been 20 policemen murdered and 34 wounded. In the town of Tipperary itself during that period there have been seven murdered and three wounded, and on Saturday last, within a few miles of Tipperary, there were four policemen brutally murdered (one having his remains charred by reason of the burning of a motor) and two wounded. I want to emphasise to the House that, while I condemn reprisals, or alleged reprisals, as much as anyone, and have taken the most drastic steps to stop them—and I am stopping them, and General Sir Nevil Macready is stopping them in the Army—the best way the House of Commons can help in this matter is to assist the Government to stop these murders, which are the great blot upon that section of the Irish people responsible for them. I wish the eloquence of the right hon. Gentleman and the power that he and others in the House have in the country wera used as much to prevent murders as in condemning consequential reprisals,
§ Mr. DEVLINThere is not the slightest necessity for the right hon. Gentleman to work himself into such a white heat of indignation. We are all just as much opposed to murders as he is. The only difference between the right hon. Gentleman and ourselves is that the Government is responsible for these murders. lie recited to the House a number of murders which had taken place in Tipperary during the last two years. He did not tell the House that for nearly 20 years there was hardly a murder in Tipperary at all. There were more murders in his own constituency in England in one month than there were in Tipperary in 20 years.
§ Sir H. GREENWOODThat is not true.
§ Mr. DEVLINTherefore when Members of this House come here and listen to the 1846 right hon. Gentleman declare that such an enormous number of assassinations have taken place within the last two years it is a strange thing that these outrages run concurrent with all scandals which have been associated with the policy of the right hon. Gentleman and his Government. I would like the right hon. Gentleman to make one thing perfectly clear to the House. Is it his claim that because a policeman is murdered in a certain part of a certain county, the forces of the Crown, garbed in all their authority are to go into a peaceful community, burn down houses, hunt the people on the roadside, drive thorn out of the villages, and force them to sleep in the open air on winter nights? Does the right hon. Gentleman defend a policy of that character?
§ Sir H. GREENWOODCertainly not.
§ Mr. DEVLINOne would think, from the tone and spirit of the right hon. Gentleman in dealing with these cases of reprisals, that it is quite a justification for the uniformed forces of the Crown to organise and wage war upon innocent and inoffensive citizens who an; discharging their duties lawfully to themselves and to the State, and they are to be subjected to this atrocious treatment at the hands of what he calls his servants. [An HON. MEMBER: "Servants of the House."] If there are crimes in Ireland, this Government has been given as rigid and as extreme powers as were ever given to a Government to deal with these things. We spent a whole Session of this House passing a Coercion Act. We were told by the right hon. Gentleman that if he were given fresh powers he would end all these murders and outrages in Ireland. He got those fresh powers—powers greater than were ever given to any Chief Secretary or any Government to suppress anything in the nature of outrage; and I say that this organised conspiracy of governmental anarchists is one of the worst blots upon the escutcheon of the Empire and on the British name. With all the powers which he asked for in the House, and which he has used with a rigour that has not been paralleled in the history of any other Chief Secretary or any other Government, his minions take the law into their own hands, and do not carry on reprisals against those who commit these deeds, but wage war upon the poor people who 1847 dissociate themselves from them, and who are in no way responsible for them.
When the right hon. Gentleman rose to-night he gave a flat contradiction—I think he said it was an absolute falsehood—to the statement of the Leader of the Labour party that this town was burnt down. I suppose what he meant by the town being burnt down was that there was not left a single stick or stone in any shop or building in the town of Tipperary. What we mean by burning down a town is setting fire to shops, and I have here in my hand a list, which the right hon. Gentleman can have, of the largest shops in the town of Tipperary. I know these shops myself, for I knew Tipperary when there were no murders in Tipperary, and it was a great and peaceful community, and I can give the right hon. Gentleman a list, not of one, but of seven or eight shops with the names of the owners, describing the onslaught made upon these buildings by what he chooses to call his servants—the servants of the Crown. One of these shops belonged to Sir Thomas Lipton. The right hon. Gentleman should not be asking me for the names of these places. When I put a question to him to-day, with regard to the destruction of this property, he told us that he had not got any information about it. Yet in a Dublin paper yesterday was published a recital of all these horrible instances, described in all their vividness in the public Press, and the Chief Secretary, who ought to be acquainted with every one of those acts when they are committed, tells us to-night that the first time he sought information upon these matters was when my right hon. Friend told him that he intended to raise the question on the Adjournment. I prefer the declarations of the people whose property was destroyed to the declarations either of the District Inspector or any interested person in the town of Tipperary. I would not believe the oath of a single one of the informants of the right hon. Gentleman who send lying briefs which he can read. [HON. MEMBERS: "Withdraw!"] It is all very good for these light and airy Gentlemen. I wish they lived in Ireland for a while. I wish they had to undergo the treatment to which these innocent people are subjected. 1848 I repeat that every one of the statements contained in the telegram which was read by the Leader of the Labour party is perfectly true. Here is what is said by Mr. O'Callaghan, who lived about a quarter of a mile from the town. He says that about a quarter of a mile distant the uniformed men burst in the shutters of his grocery and set the place on fire. As no warning was given, Mrs. O'Callaghan and her children had to escape by the rear. I wonder whether the sneering Gentleman opposite has any children of his own. I wonder how he would like, instead of being a successful profiteer, to be a shop-keeper in the town of Tipperary. Mr. O'Callaghan goes on to say that the neighbours gathered and extinguished the flames. All the windows and most of the contents of the shop had been destroyed, and the neighbours, who went for the fire brigade, were turned back under the threat of being shot. A bomb was thrown into the private residence of Mr. Mortell in the same street, but not much damage was done. At Mr. Frank O'Mara's confectionery shop the door was smashed and the stuff was thrown into the street, and a bomb left inside exploded, but the place did not go on fire and the damage was small. Mrs. O'Mara had only left a few minutes before the occurrence. The door of Mrs. McGarrigle's drapery in the main street was also broken in and a bomb was thrown, which exploded. The damage done was very considerable, the entire stock being destroyed either by fire or water. No one resided on the premises since they were bombed a few weeks ago. Having battered the shutters of the Irish house, and called for admission in vain, the incendiaries moved on to the millinery establishment of Mrs. McGarrigle. Here a shutter was forced and petrol thrown in and set alight. Fortunately the window had been cleared on Saturday night, and the fire did not extend. Three ricks of hay, the property of Thomas Ryan, were set on fire and completely destroyed. Mr. Ryan was absent at the time, the only occupants being his mother and sisters. Tipperary is not a very large town. I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman was ever there in his life. I know that the geographical position of Ireland is not a matter of close acquaintance with occupants of the position of Chief Secretary for Ireland, but, at all events, Tipperary is not a very large town.
1849 These are the only shops we know of at present, but I am confident there were others, and there is a clear and distinct statement by Mr. O'Callaghan that when the citizens attempted to put out this fire they were driven back under threats of being shot if they continued. If this were an isolated case it would be bad enough; if this were simply a sort of passionate outburst of a momentary character that would be bad enough, but everyone in this House who takes the slightest interest in Ireland is well aware that wherever a policeman is shot, wherever an outrage takes place, the whole community and the population of all the surrounding villages and towns are in a state of complete terror. This is war, we are told by the Chief Secretary and the Prime Minister, but was there ever war of this character waged in any civilised or savage community in the world, a war on innocent people? Show me a single civilised or uncivilised community in which these things occur. Let me say here, that most of the shooting of policemen by Sinn Feiners is done in the open. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, oh!"] Yes, it is.
§ Mr. LANE MITCHELLIn the back.
§ Mr. DEVLINYes, a great many of these murders, or whatever you like to call them, have occurred through the operations of fights and ambushes, which have taken place in different parts of the country, but I do not want to go into that. I am not concerned with that. The Government have the power in their hands. They have had all the powers they sought for, everything they have asked for to put down these murders. What I am concerned with is the appalling condition in which innocent people are placed in every parish and town in three and a-half of the provinces of Ireland to-day. Much as an Irishman may feel intense indignation at what is going on in Ireland to-day, the shame does not rest on Ireland, it rests on this country. [HON. MEMBERS: "NO, no!"]. Then the Archbishop of York and the Archbishop of Canterbury, and every spiritual leader and every man who has an honest faith in the high-mindedness and dignity and glory of his race in England—every one of them is a liar, and the only true spokesmen of the honour of England are the unintelligent Members of Parliament, who by an accidental process have sneaked their way into this 1850 august Chamber. I say here that I would cease to believe in British human nature if I thought those Gentlemen represented it. I do not rise to-night and I do not interest myself in these questions in the House for any sympathy I may get here. We have roused the public attention of all that is honest and sincere and genuine in the national life of England in revolt against these appalling proceedings, and the heart of England has been touched. Great Englishmen and kindly Englishmen believe that all these things are a stigma upon the name of this country. I tell the right hon. Gentleman, finally, that I am glad from the first time that I heard a note sounded in his speech that he was doing his best to put an end to these things. I would say to him that the position of Chief Secretary for Ireland is a very transient position. I have known, even in my short experience of Irish national life, how many Chief Secretaries have sat on that Bench. I have watched them pass, some to obscurity, and others to conversion, but I have seen many of them, when they had to do the dirty work of their masters, cast on one side. The right hon. Gentleman comes from a great, free land of free institutions. Such horrors as these would be impossible in Canada. I tell the right hon. Gentleman, when he has passed along the procession of past Chief Secretaries—I would beg of him to be remembered in Ireland as something more than the apologist of the transactions which we have ventured to describe here to-night.
§ Mr. W. R. SMITHI do not know if it is necessary, when an hon. Member rises, to disavow at once any sympathy with the murders that are taking place. In case one may be charged with lack of sympathy, I should like to take this early opportunity of expressing my disapproval, on behalf of myself and colleagues, with those murders in Ireland. It is not the case that we have any sympathy in that direction when we rise to take part in these discussions. The Chief Secretary generally has one argument and statement to make when these questions are raised, and that is to deny that they took place. To-night he has made a denial. Then, most strange to say, he goes on to emphasise the fact that those in authority who are over the police and military forces in Ireland are taking drastic steps to punish those forces of the Crown who take part in these reprisals. That is the 1851 most remarkable position. Why do they want to take steps to punish people who have taken part in things that never existed? It seems strange that these two statements should be made on matters of this kind. Again, one would be more convinced if drastic steps were taken to deal with the culprits, and if we had more information in regard to any punishment that has been inflicted upon those taking part in these outrages. The Chief Secretary himself from that box has admitted that the forces of the Crown do commit murder, yet, so far as I am aware, the only punishment that has been inflicted on the forces of the Crown are a few reductions in rank—at all events, that is all that has been reported in this House—and one or two dismissals. That would suggest that the offences are of a very minor character. When we are told that murder has been committed it certainly does not seem that drastic steps are being taken to punish it.
But there is one further point. The right hon. Gentleman has made a statement to-night, in reply to my right hon. Friend (Mr. Adamson), who raised this question, that we are always receiving information from unofficial sources. I want to ask quite definitely: Is the Town Clerk of Tipperary an unofficial source? Is a man occupying a position of that responsibility to be termed an unofficial source I want to say that we shall be more convinced that these statements are false if the right hon. Gentleman will 1852 take steps against the people who make them. He has been asked in this House on several occasions by the hon. Member for the Falls Division (Mr. Devlin) why he does not take steps against the people who make these false accusations against the forces of the Crown, and the absence of any such steps does not convince as that these statements are false. D.O.B.A. still reigns in Ireland as well as in this country, and the right hon. Gentleman is not lacking in powers to take steps against the people who, he says, are making the false statements against the forces of the Crown. The fact that these steps are not taken does not convince us that these statements are false and are not based upon reliable evidence. It is not sufficient for the Chief Secretary to get up and answer the questions in the way he has done to-night, first of all by denying them, then saying that steps are being taken to punish these people, and then terming the Town Clerk of Tipperary as an unofficial source, who was quoted in connection with the telegram. The whole position is wrapped in mystery, and to some of us it appears that the Chief Secretary is more concerned with camouflaging the position than in any real endeavour or attempt to meet the statements that are made from time to time in regard to these lamentable occurrences.
§ It being half-past Eleven of the clock, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Order of the House of 19th October.
§ Adjourned at half after Eleven o'clock.