UNITED IRISH PARTY

Greymouth Evening Star, 18 September 1933, Page 7

UNITED IRISH PARTY

CHALLENGE TO GOVT. DE VALERA AS DICTATOR [BY CABLE —PRESS ASSN.—COPYRIGHT.] (Recd. September 18, 1 p.m.) LONDON, September 17. The United Ireland Party opened the campaign at Thurles, with a parade of the National Guard, Blue Shirts carry-

ing the Free State tri-color, in the presence of General O’Duffy, Mr Cosgrave, Mr McDermott, and Mr Dillon. The orderly crowd from six counties included many ex-servicemen. The Dean of Cashel wrote saying he had finished with politics, because all must combine to save the nation. General O’Duffy expressed a hope for a speedy national reunion. He said that Republicans gave careful lip service to the ideal which they were care-

ful not to fulfil, their methods of seeking peace being to plunge Ireland into an external quarrel. If Ireland could get rid of the bedlam of the Generalissimo and his incompetent staff and end the waste of the livelihood of her best material, it would be the best way to win. The United Party would lend farmers two million sterling for stock if elected.

General O’Duffy added it was clear that/Mr De Valera was demanding a dictatorship. Let him take warning. He could not illegalise by his own fiat, things that were inherently lawful. If he attempted to pervert the law, and abolish, a law-abiding movement on the- pretext of ’political danger, his Government would be speedily and sharply ended. ' Mr Cosgrave declared that the economic was maintained as the Government’s 'greatest political asset. The United Party advocated the opening of external markets competing on the British market with other countries. There -was nothing un-Irish in selling produce to Britain. Mr De Valera had ruined Ireland, as the result of engineering an illegal and dishonest movement, by pjcking a quarrel with Britain, and leaving Ireland to pay the cost of his folly. Mr De Valera knew how to encourage disobedience of the law, but was stern with farmers not paying rates. The Government struck the first blow in the civil war in bringing the Waterford farmers before a military tribunal. Its mad policy had reduced the farmer to a sorry position. Mr McDermott and Mr Dillon also spoke.

GOVERNMENT-LABOUR PACT. LONDON, September 17. Mr De Valera addressed 20,000 people at Cork. He said that the Government and the Labour Party were agreed on all of the main issues of public policy that are likely to arise during the lifetime of the present Dail Eireann. They were standing together to assert the authority of the people of Ireland to build up a stable and a just economic system. Apy minor difficulties between them had been set aside in order to work wholeheartedly together, and to bring the nation through dangers threatening its existence. \

Mr De Valera condemned Republican raids •on public houses that were selling British beer. He said that only in Bedlam could a parallel be found for such madness as that which necessitated that the Government should defend itself on the one hand, from militarists-who were wanting to compel surrender to Britain, and, on the other hand, from the people who were professing to believe that the Government were not prosecuting the economic -war with sufficient vigour.

LABOUR LEADER'S SPEECH. DUBLIN, September 17. Mr Norton, Labour leader, gave his Kildare constituents details of the Labour’s counter fusion agreement with the Government, -which he endorsed. He said that Mr De Valera had guaranteed provision of widows and orphans’ pensions, financial assistance to unemployed, increased house building, and also consultationsi with Labour regarding higher wages on relief schemes, and all projected legislation. Labour was not bartering its. identity. The arrangement would permit a united front against Britain’s challenge to Ireland’s independence.-

NATIONAL GUARD. LONDON, September 15. A surprise sitting of the Military Tribunal ordered the closing of the National Guard'premises in Parnell Square, Dublin.

THE POPE’S COUNSEL.

LONDON, September 17. Thei Empire News’s Dublin correspondent, referring to Mr McDermott’s statement that a “high authority counselled a settlement of the land annuities dispute,” declares the personage meant is the, Pope. Doctor Paschal Robinson, the Papal representative at Dublin, frequently consulted the Pope in this connection, and recently interviewed'the Primate of Ireland. Mr McDermott’s pronouncement has encouraged hopes that peace is assured, qs with the Pope’s. support, it could not fail.