ULSTER POLITICS.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 172, 23 July 1929, Page 6

ULSTER POLITICS.

Under the above heading your correspondent writing from Dublin on June 6 last informed your readers that the Craigavon victory came as "the surprise of everybody." To those who followed events in the six counties it was no surprise at all. Proportional representation, which gave minorities a chance, had been abolished, and this was followed by a scientific jerrymandering of the constituencies, which further added to the utter impossibility of fair representation for the minorities. Triangular areas, irrespective of community of interest, were wedged into other areas, thereby splitting the minority votes. In Central Belfast, despite this, Mr. Devlin was returned to the six-county Parliament with a majority of six thousand votes. There is one electoral division Lord Craigavon cannot touch, that i»> the electorate which sends members from the six counties to the English Parliament. At the general election prior to the last one the combined constituency of Tyrone-Fermanagh returned two Conservatives, Messrs. Falls and Pringle, with a majority of 37,899. Owing to dissensions the Nationalists took no part in that election. This time the Nationalists were united, with the result that two Nationalists, Messrs. Devlin and Harbison, were returned unopposed. The Conservatives would not face the music. The result is that the Craigavon party represent in the English Parliament only four of the six counties, and but four out of the nine counties constituting the province of Ulster. Mr. Baldwin's Government and its immediate predecessor made regular and considerable money grants to the six-county treasury. Mr. Philip Snowden, present Chancellor of the Exchequer, when in opposition, stoutly opposed those grants, and should the Mac Donald Government cancel them the Craig- , avon Government may not be, as your con I respondent said, in an "unassailable position. JUSTITIA.