"ALL FOE IRELAND," FACTION FIGHTS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 20, 25 January 1911, Page 3

"ALL FOE IRELAND," FACTION FIGHTS.

SOME "SWEET AMENITIES" OF THE ELECTION. (From Our Own Correspondent.} LONDON, 16th December. In England and Scotland the election has been a fairly quiet one. In Ireland it has been thoroughly and typically Irish. It began with the threat of an armed insurrection of the Unionist north. It proceeded to the bomb-throw-ing at the Orange Hall in Belfast; and it wound up with such trouble in Noila Louth that Mr. Tim Healy, the bestdressed man in the Nationalist Party, and the right hand of Mr. William O'Brien, escaped defeated and dishevelled to pour sorrowful invective on the head of the Eedmondite Irish. ULSTER, VIOLENT. We have heard no more of the armed resistance with which Ulster was preparing to meet Home Rule — Dr. Chappie alleged humorously in Stirlingshire that a celebrated chocolate firm was filling the order for 100,000 revolvers for the infuriated north — but the spirit is apparently there still. "We are never going to- submit to Home Rule,'' declared a North of Ireland clergyman, the other day. "We will not- pay taxes to a Home Rute^ Parliament, and we will not obey its laws. 1i a measure of Home Rule is, by trickery, carried through, I tell you without any hesitation whatever, it means civil war in Ireland and the breaking up of the Empire." And so on. But that fire is apparently dying down. THE BOMB AT BELFAST. The most violent incident of the election, so far, was the bomb outrage at Belfast. There was bad feeling over the action of a- seceded branch of the Orange Order, who supported the Nationalist member, Mr. T. H. Sloan. This time Mr. Sloan was defeated and a procession of the orthodox Orangemen paraded the fact by marching to and fro before the hall of the Independent Branch. The second time they passed, just as the band had reached the front of the hall, Ene bomb was thrown from the opposite side of the street, and over the heads, of the bandsmen. Th& infernal machine struck the well near the porch. There was a loud report, which was heard three-quarters of a mile off, and the shattered fragments of the bomb fell at the feet of two young men who were standing at the door of the hall, John Watson and Thomas Irwin. Both were hurled into the air. trwin alighted on his feet and escaped injury, but Watson had the big toe of his right foot blown away, and theankle of the same foot fractured in two places. Mr. Irwin, who assisted to carry Watson into the hall, states that while he was attending the injured man stones were thrown through the windows, in fact theTe was scarcely a window in the hall that was not broken. Mrs. Irwin was warned ou Friday evening not to aDow her husband to leave the house that night and got o. the hall, as it was to be wrecked. The police were also informed on Friday of the threatened danger, and three men were told off to guard the hall. In the excitement following the outrage the man who threw the bomb escaped. In other parts of the city, boys and girls wrought havoc on the quarters of the Orangemen. Armed with heavy sticks, pieces of iron and paving stones, they attacked- the ice cream shops of the Italians, smashed windows and doors, and looted right and left. In Northstreet a crowd of mill-girls was passing an ice- cream shop singing Loyalist songs, when a stone was thrown through the window, and a few moments later a revolver- shot was fired, the bullet passing over the heads of the crowd. Later there was danger of a collision between rival factions in North-street, ! but a few revolver shots— fired by unI known persons — effected a dispersal, and the crowds simply passed along breaking windows. TERROR IN LOUTH. Mr. Tim Healy 's defeat in North Louth was a triumph for something or other — he says, for the intimidations practised by the Redmondites. The gentleman who drove Mr. Healy in a motor-car was set upon by a crowd and pelted with mud, while the car was smashed. Mr. Healy himself was prevented by the police from leaving the polling-booth, owing to the threatening character of the crowd. "Give us four of your men to stand at my back," he said to the head constable, "and I will fight my way through." But the head constable said the attempt might cost him his life, and he refused. Mr. Healy then wrote the following protest, which he handed to the presiding office : — "Being compelled by the police to remain besieged in this station owing to the violence of a mob inflamed with drink until a further force is obtained from Dundalk, I beg to protest against the intimidation which prevails, and whjch makes a free poll by my supporte impossible. Numbers of them have, under terror, been compelled to vote as illiterates, although on previous occasions they were able to mark their papers, and have polled for my opponent, and others of them are evidently deterred by mob violence from coming to the booths." Mr. Healy then had a telegram sent to Dundalk for another motor-car, and, after some delay, picking up a bar bell which lay on the floor of the schoolroom in which the polling took place, he pushed his way through the police, saying : "On the heads of the Chief Secretary and my opponents may lie the responsibility. lam going to leave this place now." And he did so, fortunately unobserved, and reached a motor-car. In Dundalk his hotel was under police protection, owing to the violence of a crowd, who threw missiles, and had to be charged with batons. THE POWER THAT PREVAILED. Mr. Healy says he never believed such "appalling and concerted intimidation" was possible of Irishmen. "Outside the booths in Dundalk, Louth, and Dromiskin., gangs of roughs, many of them full of drink, were allowed to "congregate, in spite of the express and written requisitions served on the police authorities by my agent. I cannot conceive why intimidators should be allowed 'to congregate around a pollingbooth any more than burglars with jemmies should be allowed to gather at night around a dwellinghouse to commit a felony. I myself was jostled on the steps of the courthouse in Dundalk, and told I deserved to bo shot, and this within the earshot of a group of police." Mr. William O'Brien and Mr. Moreton Frewen offered Mr. Healy the uncontested division of North East Cork, but he declined, saying that if his supporters liked he would unseat his successful opponent. Mr. Frewen is the Nationalist who was elected for* Cork after distinctly declaring that, rather than submit to Parnellite Home Rule, he would join the Ulstermen in taking extreme measures against it. The causes which have contributed largely to Mr. Healy's defeat are the increasing powers of Mr. Devlin's secret organisation, and the fact that the influence of the priests on the present occasion had been withdrawn. Hibernians have been working Btrenuously in North Loath for the. last, two years to turn put

Mr. Healy, and R-edmondite newspapers are boasting of the fact that he was not permitted to address a single open-air meeting in the constituency. Wherever he attempted to speak organised gangs of bludgeon-men were present to howl him down. MR O'BRIEN IN WESTPORT. ''A thousand times over," declared Mr O'Brien passionately at Westport, Mayo, " I would prefer to fall with Mr Hea-ly after his most gallant battle than to succeed with the hirelings who two years hence will be execrated and cursed by the whole Irish race." Ireland was rising in rebellion against "the Dublin bosses and place-hunters, who have robbed and ruined it in the interest of their masters, the English Treasury, and the English Liberal party." "You're right, sir ; we're behind you ; they are all wretches," roared the audience. A man made a hostile remark in one- part of the hall. The whole gathering rose in a mass, and, stopping Mr O'Brien's speech, lifted the interrupter up and "threw him out amid a tornado of chrieks of "A rat, a rat ; out with him." After this disturbance, Mr O'Brien referred to Mr Dillon's coming into Westport on Sunday. "The gombeen king of Connaught is coming here to abuse me." "We'll see to him." shouted the crowd ; "we'll shoot him." "He forced Lloyd George's infamous Budget on Ireland," declared Mr O'Brien. "We'll settle him, we'll choke him," cried the crowd. " Every statement that gentleman makes about me on Sunday," says Mr O'Brien, "is the statement of a, confessed and con victed libeller and liar." The crowd shouted furious applause. THE OTHER VIEW. The other view of Mr Healy is illuminative. "For ten years," said Mr Dillon, "the Nationalists of Louth have been tormented and humiliated by having forced upon them as their representative Mr T. M. Healy, a man who devotes all his energies to the destruction of the National parly and the ruin of the National cause; a man whose abominable and disgusting scurrility has been the curse of public life in Ireland for twenty years, and who- has long been i - ecognised and cherished by all the bitterest enemies of the National party and the National cause as their greatest champion, and their chief reliance to break up and destroy the united party, which has so well earned their implacable hate. For twenty years now Mr Healy has been the boss factionist of Ireland. He could follow no leader, and he could work with no party. So long as, he was a member of the Irish party the meetings of the party were disgraced by quarrelling and violent abuse, so that it finally became almost impossible to hold party meetings at all. Since Mr Healy has left the party there has been nothing but peace, harmony, and goodwill. I have not heard an angry word used. His whole life has been spent in endeavouring to destroy his leaders, and yet this man has no single gift of leadership. "In December, 1900, Mr Heaiy was expelled from a National Convention by a majority of 2000 to 40." When, on Mr Dillon's notion "Tim" was allowed to re-enter the fold in 1907, in two months he was "at "his old work again." "The party became once more an absolute bear-garden (said Mr Dillon), and his abominable tongue was once more let loose upon his leader and his colleagues. For the last ten years this man had pursued Mr Redmond, whom he himself boasts of having made lea-der of the party, with an almost incredible vindictiveness. The incessant stream of his abominable vituperation reminds one, to use one of his own classic similitudes, of nothing so much as ' the Liffey at ebb-tide.' "