ULSTER AND THE WAR: BORDER POLITICS

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23802, 23 November 1942, Page 4

ULSTER AND THE WAR: BORDER POLITICS

DISUNITED IRELAND

Travel from Eire to Ulster (both, by the way, convenient misnomers; one can be completely accurate only by writing of the Six Counties, or Northern Ireland, and the Twenty-Six)— travel from Dublin to Belfast, put up with the tedious inconveniences of a border crossing—two customs inspections and a censorship—and you might imagine yourself at first back in ,wartime England. The pillar-boxes are red. the uniforms in the streets and the bread on your plate are each the same shade of khaki that England is used to; but scrawled in whitewash on walls and gable-ends is “Up, the Republic! probably half-obliterated. The pohcemen. in the rifle-green of the R.U.C., have revolvers at their belts. Six lads in their ’teens and early twenties, members of the 1.R.A., were sentenced to death for the shooting of a policeman the day after I reached Belfast. It was the last day of the Parliamentary session, and over the heavy Parliament Buildings at Stormont floated significantly two Union Jacks. Whatever the handful of 1.8.A. desperadoes may do, or the one-third Roman Catholic Nationalist minority may say, Northern Ireland is as large as life and twice as loyal. Under the shadow of Stormont, men responsibly placed in public life will bang their fists on the table and pour forth the wrongs of loyal Ulster in answer to innocent questions about the war, “Why didn’t you march in and take the ports?’’ “Why did you let de Valera persuade you against conscription for Northern Ireland?” If you answer that with, “Wouldn't conscription mean serious trouble?" the answer will be a grim, “Any trouble that s going, we’ll face it.” Future of, the Border Grimmer still is [the answer to questions about the future of the . border. “Suppose," I said to one dignitary, “just suppose that Britain proposed after the war a federal system *or Ireland with a Dominion Parliament in Dublin, as well as the existing separate parliaments.” “Never, never, never!" “But if Britain insisted?” “We’re not afraid of Eire, or of Britain. either." Loyalty goes so far, but no farther. There are many young men in Northern Ireland, it is true, who would go gladly into uniform if they were conscripted, but who make it a matter of principle not to volunteer, so to speak, unless they are made to. (The conventional Hibernianisms of the stage Irishman seem more common in the Protestant North than among the cynics of the Twenty-Six Counties.) Although recruiting has, in fact, been heavy, this does tend, if only to a small extent, to accentuate Ulster’s unemployment problem. Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom where there is still

(By a Correspondent of the “Manchester Guardian.")

any substantial number of , ed. At the outbreak' of war® out of a population of 1,250 door* out of work. There are still like 5000 men and 10,000 women 3 work which is not available Tmm to England has been more than by the virtual closing down nfC linen industry and by the lack of materials for Belfast’s heavy tries. Now that industrial expansion ■ Great Britain is approaching its inA the British production ready to turn to a policy of brim? plants to workers, as a suppi em J®J the policy of bringing workers ! plants. Mr N. V. T. Kipping, man of the Ministry of regional organisation, visjjreft-jS recently and gave Sir Basil BrSS Northern Ireland’s Minister of Can! merce and Production, hoping that greater use will be nZ of Ulster’s supply of labour. ■ In spite of unemployment IjU. in Belfast is less radical in tjZz than it is in similar towns acroaS, Channel. To be politically conscU in Northern Ireland is still large). £ think in terms of Roman CatholicJS Protestant, Nationalist and UniaSt to be a member of an Orange Jmj/ Thus, though the Labour PartyS growing in strength and has se&ttha lively Alderman Midgley to M. Mont, its influence is not such at moderate the traditional tension n is itself Unionist on the only that moves men deeply here. A Lack of Talent That is one Reason why the ft®* tion of a National coalition of the Unionists now y always, in power with the Indttm. dent Unionists and with Labourwould not make much of a change in the complexion of Northern Irelufj politics. Another is the lack of taint and leadership outside the Unload ■ ranks and the lack of new polity blood. As in England, young men jj talent are tied up in the war eft* as in Eire, they preferred, even before the war, to seek careers probably side Ireland, certainly outride Will politics. On both sides of the border political leadership is still largely ia the hands of the men of the troubled times of 20 years ago; in Ulster, moit than in Eire, political thought is still expressed In the terms of those days The staleness of politics express itself in local government, North and South, in an inertia not always proof against corruption. The Belfast Cor. poration has had its financial poweta transferred by the Government to administrators. Similar action, in varying degrees, has had to be taken by the Government of Eire against Dublin's Corporation and other local governing bodies.