ABSOLUTE MAJORITY WON BY UNIONISTS IN ULSTER POLLS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 22869, 12 February 1949, Page 5

ABSOLUTE MAJORITY WON BY UNIONISTS IN ULSTER POLLS

(N.Z.P.A. —Reuter—Copyright.) (11.30 a.m.) LONDON, Feb. 11. In the Northern Ireland elections yesterday the Unionist Party gained an absolute majority with 32 seats. There are 10 results to come. The Nationalists who favour union with Eire won only , six seats. The poll was one of the biggest in Ulster’s history representing about 90 per cent. The Unionist Party gained 190,000 votes, almost twice the total of the combined opposition.

The Eire Prime Minister, Mr. JCostello, and the former Prime Minister, Mr. E. de Valera, issued a joint statement on behalf of all the Eire political parties repudiating the, suggestion that the Northern Ireland election is a plebiscite on partition. “Britain has no more right to partition Ireland in the interests of a favoured minority than Russia would have to partition the States of Eastern Europe,” the statement added. Nationalist supporters took to the polling booths stretcher cases, blind people, cripples, infirm and voters aged from 70 to 100 to vote for Nationalist candidates. Old men and women hobbled on sticks into the booths. Nationalists returned from England, Scotland and Wales to vote. Police were sent to Sion Mills. County Tyrone, when fighting broke out . between Nationalists (anti-partitionists) and Unionist workers in which men and women took part. This was the worst instance In the polling. The Nationalist workers objected to a Union election placard and would not return to work until it was removed. The election, the most hotly contested in 28 years, has been called by the Prime Minister, Sir Basil Brooke, to counter Eire's decision to become an independent Republic and demonstrate that Northern Ireland is determined to stay an integral part of the Empire.