FREE STATE RAIDS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 313, 2 December 1933, Page 7

FREE STATE RAIDS.

BLUE SHIRTS’ HOUSES. DISCUSSION IN DAIL. DUBLIN, Dec. 1. i Although, it was not accompanied hy arrests, Mr de Valera’s new swoop on his opponents caused astonishment throughout the Free State when polico officials searched General O’Duffy’s headquarters and residence, Mr Blyth’s residence and the home of Commandant Cronin, Blue Shirt commanders. The raiders in each case consisted of a superintendent, an inspector, and ten detectives armed with warrants authorising a search for arms, ammunition and seditious documents. A police sorgeant told Commandant Cronin that he discovered four boxes of ammunition in the party’s offices. Commandant Cronin denied that the ammunition was there an hour earlier. Commandant Cronin later said: “A police official asked me if I accused them of planting the ammunition. I replied, ‘I not only accused them of planting it, but was prepared to swear that either they or their agents had planned it.’ ” General O’Duffy, in an interview, said: “The police found nothing, because I have nothing to hide.” Speaking in the Dail, Dr O’Higgins denounced Mr .de Valera’s conduct in the economic war, and condemned the raids, in which the Government’s opponents’ homes had been entered and their wives treated as no woman should be treated by Free State officers. If the Government could not provoke members of the United Ireland Party by what they did to them they would provoke them by what they did to their wives. He added that he possessed proof of 100 brutal assaults on members of the United Ireland and Young Ireland organisations. Young and old men were being taken from their beds and beaten.

Mr Patrick Ruttlege, Minister of Justice, replying, read documents, some of which he said had been seized in the raids, which he alleged proved conclusively that the Young Ireland Party’s aims were revolutionary. He added that arms and ammunition had been discovered. The raids had been carried out in daylight, thus guaranteeing that arrested persons, if any, would reach prison alive, which was more than could be said, of the methods of the previous Government. Professor O’Sullivan, amid uproar, protested against irrelevant statements He declared the Government was goading young men into committing illegalities. He appealed to the young men not to play Mr de Valera’s game. Professor O’Sullivan was still speaking when the Dail rose until January 31.