THE BELFAST BUTCHERY.

NZ Truth, Issue 116, 7 September 1907, Page 1

THE BELFAST BUTCHERY.

Cooked Cablegrams Contradicted and Confuted.

"Base, brutal, and bloody Whigs," Daniel O'Connell called the Liberals of his time, and"base, brutal, and* bloody" the Liberals are still. The present Liberal Government of the United Kingdom contains one man, "Assassin" Asuuith, who is responsible for having, when he was m power some years ago, massacred, with the aid of soldiers, a number of miners on strike at Featherstcne, . England. It also contains another man, "Honest John" Burns, who defended that massacre. Now it has developed another monster, pious ' Nonconformist Conseiencer Augustine Birrell, who expresses atrocious approval of the military massacre of mothers and their children. This torute Birrell— who should henceforth be known as Butcher Birrell— has actually attempted to justify the recent slaughter of the unarmed people of Belfast as a "precautionary measure !" Yet if some grief -stricken man whose wife or child had been murdered by Birrell's military hirelings m Belfast proposed to- take Birrell's life as a possible "precautionary measure" against potential future but-' cheries, no one would be more" horrified or indignant than Butcher Birrell. himself. His horror and indignation would be natural and proper : f but, as for his defence of the Belfast butchery, such a defence would only be natural and appropriate m (the mouth of a ghoul or a vampire. ' * * • An entirely false impression as to the nature of the butchery at Belfast has been sought to be conveyed by the journalistic manipulators of ithe cable, m both Great Britain and! Australia. The whole civilised world knows that Ulster is the Protestant province, of Ireland, and that m the principal . city of Ulster— _3clf-ast-^ •Protestants are greatly m the' majority. Catholics constitute . little more than one-fourth ' of the population of -Belfast. This being the case, 'Engli-h^speaking people throughout *he world would naturally suspect that ihe. military massacres m Belfast "were massacres of Protestants •very largely., Consequently not only would Protestants m other . parts of !the world be inclined to sympathise with the bayoneted women and children of Belfast, but the powerful and energetic Orange Institution might be aroused against the persons . responsible for tlie butcheries recently perpetrated m that city. .Therefore, jt>he manipulators of the cables have sought to humbug the people into Relieving that the military have been compelled to put a stop to rioting by rebellious Catholic Nationalists, which rioting, would otherwise have resulted m "terrible loss of life." Such a belief -would, however, be entirely unjustified by, the facts. *• * » Nearly two months ago the Belfast Branches of the National Union of Bock Laborers demanded improved conditions of toil, Seven out of ten of tha companies of employers at 'once increased the wages, and improved conditions m other- respects, hut three very wealthy English railiway companies refuse'di to have any negotiations with the unioni, and a strike took place. The employers .then imported hordes of. blacklegs, ibut really to intimidate the strikers. fThe dockers were, however, unexpectedly strengthened by the carters, iwho also went on strike. The soldiers fthen, it appears, began to make picketing by the strikers extremely difficult, if not impossible, and the matter was several times referred to by Labor members m the House of Commons. Of course, Butcher Birrell denied that there had been any interference with the union pickets. At last, after about a month of this sort of thing, some "hooligans" appear to have come m conflict with the police. Thereupon, police, cavalry, and infantry charged the people, bayoneted a number of women and slew b, child. This was on Sunday, the 11th instant. The next day another conflict occurred. It is* said that more stones and bottles were thrown *t the Soldiers. Perhaps they were Vfcivroft hr the husbands of the womtl whom tHe "gallant" _»l«e_s had transfixed with their bayonets.. Again i__-io\A hoys of the hull-dog tor**' SSrfciStißiy attacked with that Scapofis tfifi -Mimed worries and iff Sren of Belfast. Possfoly some

ia this line as bSood-thirsty butchers of women and children m Boerland. *'* * ■ . * The hired and uniformed murderers yelled curses, we are told, and charged down the street with fixed bayonets, no fewer than forty times. They were "infuriated," we ate also told, because such of the people as were not lying weltering m their blood retaliated for bayonet thrusts by throwing stones and bottles ! ; O sadly surprised soldiers !. Did you then expect the men and women of Ulster to he as meek as lambs m the shambles? At last ,. a ruffianly swashbuckler named Welsh, who is described as "Captain Welsh, a military magistrate," ordered the brave soldiers to fire upon the outraged people. They did so ; they fired seven rounds of ammunition at. the people, and a woman, a child and a man at once fell dead, while hundreds were wounded. The wounded were suhse* quently taken to the hospitals, which they filled, and another woman has since died from her wounds. ■ Now we are told m. connection with all this slaughter, that ''the rioting was confined to 'the Nationalist part of the city" ; and that the men held vi) the women m front of themselves to protect themselves from the soldiers' bayonets. The Sydney "Daily Telegraph" eagerly adds that the Nationalist quarter is the Catholic quarter. The cabled statements are, however, transparent lies, as we shall proceed to show.., ***■ ■ • , The same cablegram that informs us that "the rioting was confined to the Nationalist quarter of the city," says that "Grosvenor Road" became a pandemonium.';' This is the only road or street named m the cablegram. This street is, however, ,not m the Nationalist quarter ;• on the , cofcifcrary, it was an Onajnge centre. Thus the cablegram man convicts himself of lying. The same cattlegram also says that the women whom the male rioters . are alleged to have "held before them," exclaimed "Jesu, Mary, you won't hurt a woman." This is another impudent,ly transpiarent lie ; no modern woman, whether Catholic or Protestant, exclaims •'•'Jesu, Mary" ;i a Catholic woman would most probably cry "Holy Mother. "J The conflict on the next day- occurred m Fall's Road, which street constitutes the boundary road between the Orange ahd Catholic .quarters of Belfast. What, therefore, the streets, or "roads" mentioned indicate is that the conflict on Sunday took place m the Orange quarter of Belfast, and that on Monday it took place on the boundary between the two quarters mentioned. Probably, the soldiers attacked Protestants on Sunday ; and on Monday both Protestants and Catholics, burning with a desire .to avenge the previous day's butchery, poured simultaneously out of their respective quarters, and meeting the soldiers on the' boundary^ attacked them .with stones., * 0. » That the Protestant '"boys": of Belfast are quite capable of most serious rioting, is. demonstrated by the history, of the Belfast sectarian riots of 1886.; These arose from some Orange demonstrations, and they lasted four months. "Fast firing went on for days, and Mr .T. McKnight, a Belfast Protestant journalist, says m '-'Ulster As It Is'- 7 that the Oijangemen showed deadly antipathy to the policemen drafted into Belfast to stop the rioting. In these disturbances tlrirty-twb lives were lost, three hundred and seven-ty-one policemen were injured, thirtyone public-house was wrecked, and twenty-nine private houses were treated m the same manner. .Twenty of these houses belonged to Catholics. The fact, therefore, that during the reoent slaughter m Belfast, so little damage was done by the alleged rioters shows that they were entirely unprepared for an attack upon them by the military on the first day, and that even on the second the crowd consisted mainly of women and children. In fact, the admission is made m the cablegrams that women and children were m the forefront of the "mobs." Captain Welsh and the rest of the gang m Belfast responsible for tha massacre may thank their stars that they had not to contend with aimed men instead ot .women and

children. Orangemen, m tbe days of

the Reverend "Flaming" Flanagan, threatened to "Icicle the Qaieen's crown, into the Boyne" ; if they had been armed acd "ready for business" m Belfast during the- recent • massacre, they might have kicked somebody's head into the Boyne. Let it not be forgotten, too, that, m 1796, Belfast was the headquarters of the revolutionary republicans, of whom some of the most courageous and thorough .were Protestants. ■ * . • That the capitalists have, m their attempt to crush the organised dockers and carters . attempted to made use of .sectarian differences is proved m detail by tin information published m some of the English newspapers. The strikers have two leaders. One of these, James Larkin, is said to. be a Catholic ; the other, Boyd, is an Orangeman. Many of the striking carters are Protestants, and a large proportion of the striking dockers are Catholics. The employers are seeking to' take advantage of these religious differences ; the Protestants are told that Larkin is a "Fenian Papist," who has organised the strike as a "Popish plot" against the Protestants, while the Catholics are assured that the strike, is an Orange plot organised by Bovd to drive Catholics and Nationalists out of work. However, this sort of trickery has had no effect upon the strikers, and so the capitalists, with the aid ox the cable-mandpirlators, are trying to humbug people m other parts of the world -who might give monetary and moral assistance to the slaughtered people of Belfast. They are willingly assisted by- the journalistic fa , ers of cablegrams at this end, who even go so far as to* interpolate false statements into the messages received from London. Thus, the Sydney "Daily Telegraph," obviously for the purpose of representing the alleged rioters as of d most dangerous type interpolates into one of the messages published a statement to the effect, that Larkin, the. Labor Leader m Belfast, is a constable recently dismissed for leading a strike of the Royal Irish Constabulary. This statement does not appear iri the message as it is published by the other newspapers; and it is not true : James Larkin- is •the Belfast organiser of the National Union of Dock Laborers^ * » » More cable-faking is exhibited with, regard to Victor Grayson, the re-, cently-elected Socialist member of the House of Commons. The very natural remark made by Mr Grayson, that the" people of Belfast had only broken bottle's with which to contend against the military, was cabled to Australia m such a way as t 0 indicate that Grayson had- been ass enough to advise the Belfast people to meet bullets, bayonets and Maxim ' guns with— 'broken bottles '! The cablegram was possibly faked iri London by someone connected with the notoriously untruthful half-penny Yellow Press. Here, the cablegram was dressed up so as to make it appear that the use of broken bottles was a part of the tactics of -"pure< Revolutionary Socialism." The statement m the cablegram as published' in the MDaily Telegraph" that Grayson was < "returned on an avowed policy . of pure revolutionary Socialism" did not appear m the cablegram as pub- j lished by the evening newspapers , and was, . therefore, evidently interpolated. Subsequently, m commenting upon Grayson's repudiation of the meaning that had been put upon his speech by the London Press;, the Sidney '-'Daily Telegraph" said that Grayson Was m favor of "State ownership and control of everything and the abolition of sex-ties,." This is, almost certainly, another He, for the' London Socialist papers just re- j ceived say nothing whatever of Grayson's holding such extraordinary views, while London "Justice" shows that Grayson was assisted m his. candidature by the Reverend W. Graham, of the Church Social Union, and the Reverend Mr Pickup, a Dissenting Minister. These men would not be found supporting a candidate m favor of '-'.the abolition 'of sexties."- --* * » It is evident that tlie plutish 1 press of Australia, m collusion with the Yellow ' Press of England, is engaged m a campaign of calumny against Catholics and Socialists. Thus, the capitalist newspapers are giving the people an entirely false notion of what has recently taken place m Belfast, together with a malignant; misrepresentation of what has been said by the only member of Parliament, Victor Grayson, who appears to have been manly enough, and pub-lic-spirited enough, to denounce the Belfast butchery. As lor those res-' oonsib-le for this butchery, it is probable—and sincerely to be hoped— that m spite of the lies of the British Yellow Press, Butcher Birrell's actionin defending the military slaughter of women and children will seal the political doom* of Butcher Birrell, Assassin Asiquith, Jtidas John Burns, and their colleagues. There has not been m power a more murderously merciless and mercenary mob of miscreants since the days of that notorious Liberal Nonconformist Consciencer "Buckshot" Forster (who '•'mercifully,^ ordered the people of -

Ireland to be shot down with buckshot instead- of #ith^ ordinary,., rifle bullets) , and, therefore, the -present Campbeli-Bannerman. capitalistic coterie of. butchers, assassins and Judases • should be vigorously kicked out of office into thsi hell of political obscurity and. ignominy. • Possibly, they may not have long to wait. Englishmen have, endured 'much- of recent years, but this is the first time since the infamous Manchester Massacre at "Peterloo" that they have endured the disgrace of toeing governed by wretches that gloat iike ghouls, and exult like fiends, over the. shooting down ofthe starving women and crying children of the working-classes.