POLICY OF FREE STATE

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21354, 22 December 1934, Page 15

POLICY OF FREE STATE

CRITICISM IN LORDS BRITISH ATTITUDE EXPLAINED (CIITED PRESS ASSOCIATION—BT ELECTMO TELXGKAPH —COPTEIGHT.) (Received December 21, 10.20 p.m.) LONDON, December 20. "n the House of Lords, Lord Danesfort drew attention to the Free State Government's Citizenship Bill, and enquired whether the Government had protested against the measure. He said no other Parliament in the British Empire had ever proposed anything so preposterous. It would deprive men and women of the rights of British citizenship they had enjoyed for a lifetime. This legislation, he said, was only part and parcel of a deliberate attempt to establish an Irish Republic. The distressing aspect of this attempt was the degradation of the office of Governor-General, who, in Southern Ireland, had been degraded to the position of a clerk in an office. Lord- Lucan, replying for the Government, said nobody o'enied the Free State's right to declare who would be regarded as a Free State citizen, but when it claimed that the recent bill was in accordance with the principles laid down at the Imperial Conference, the British Government entirely disagreed. The statement by Mr J. H. Thomas m the House of Commons on November 27 made the British position clear. If a Republic were declared an entirely new situation would arise. He could not indicate the action the Government would then take. The British Government's policy was to make it as easy as possible? l'o: the Free State to remain a member of the British Commonwealth. (Mr Thomas. in the statement referred to, said that the Government had informed the Irish Free State Government that the Citizenship Bill could not be regarded as providing the maintenance of the common status of subjects of his Majesty, as contemplated in the conclusions of the Imperial Contcrence of 1930. An Irish bill could not in any case deprive any person of his status as a British subject.l