TOWARDS A CRISIS?

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 111, 10 April 1934, Page 7

TOWARDS A CRISIS?

FREE STATE POLITICS. LOCAL BODY ELECTIONS. MR DE VALERA’S PLANS. (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) (Times Cables.) Received April 10, 11.0 a.m. DUBLIN, April 9.

Apparently events in the Free State are moving towards a crisis. Mr De Valera, after many postponements, has decided finally to hold the local government elections on June 26, enabling the testing of the electorate as polled on registered ratepayers, excluding large numbers of the Government’s youthful supporters. Therefore, an accurate index of the more responsible sections of the community is secured. The Cosgravite organisation is definitely challenging Mr Do Valera’s intention to capture the local authorities for party purposes. COMMENT ON MR DE VALERA. A MIDNIGHT”INCIDENT. LONDON, April 8. Half a dozen men with blackened faces pounced ofi Robert Russell, niglitwatchman at the Braidwater spinning mills at Ballymena, while he was stoking a fire after midnight. They bound and gagged him, smashed the door of the local constabulary’s arms store, and took 17 rifles, 1000 rounds of rifle and 3000 rounds of revolver ammunition, also many revolvers, and decamped in a motor car. Russell rolled round the yard for an hour endeavouring to loosen his bonds. Eventually he drew a knife from his pocket, cut them, rushed to the en-gine-room and blew the alarm siren, turning out the populace and police. The raiders are untraced.

Opponents of General O’Duffy tore up the rails at two stations on the Tullamore line this morning to prevent supporters attending his meeting, and cut the telephone wires. General O’Duffv declared that Mr De Valera had become the toreador of Irish politics. He wanted to bait John Bull in order to apepal t-o the people with the cry, “Don’t fling me to the British.”