No Interest In Britain Over Irish Affairs

Wanganui Chronicle, 30 November 1948, Page 5

No Interest In Britain Over Irish Affairs

(Special Correspondent—N.Z.P.A.)

LONDON, Nov. 29 (Recd. 7 pm).— The time has long since passed when anything that the Irish chose to do in Ireland could awaken any emotion in British public opinion, least of all the emotion of surprise, says “The Economist,' 1 commenting on the repeal of the External Relations Act. Most Englishmen, it continues, will feel a faint twinge of regret that one more strand of the Union has parted, but it will not be en- ugh to disturb the tolerant indifference with which Irish affairs are now generally regarded in John Bull’s own island.

So far as the matter lies wholly within the British decision, everything will go on as before. The policy of passing indifference, however, lias another aspect. The Irish have been plentifully warned that if their persistence in declaring themselves a country only externally associated with the Commonwealth gets them into trouble through the action of other foreign countries, they cannot expect Great Britain or the other Dominions to put themselves to any effort to rescue them.

If, it says, at some future date Denmark, say, claims to be treated on the same footing as Eire, there can be no doubt sit all which alternative will be chosen in London. It will not be to admit Denmark and every other foreign country into the circle of Imperial preference, but to expel Eire from it.

“It should be very clearly understood that any hanm the Irish may do themselves in this way is neither the wish nor the responsibility of Great Britain.’’ “The Economist” also remarks that the Irish fail to realise how gravely they prejudiced their chances of putting an end to partition. They recognise themselves that the only way in which Ireland can be united is by Great Britain being willing to put pressure on the Protestants in Ulster. Until 1939 there was a respectable body of opinion in Great Britain which sympathised with the object of Irish reunion and m.ght conceivably have been stimulated into doing something about ot. The partition isiue is now utterly dead in Great Britain, "The Economist” continues. It is not the constitutional agilities of the Irish that produced this change, but the neutrality of Eire during the war. “The Irish may still feel—as they undoubtedly do —that they were justied in their neutrality, but they ought to realise that in British eyes it has wiped clean the slate of the centuries. Over and over again the Irish have been able to get what they want by making a substantial part of the British public feel slightly ashamed of themselves, or, at least, of their forefathers. That feeling is now dead. In British eyes Ireland is now a heavy moral debtor."

The paper adds: “The more foreign and neutral tire becomes, the more vital to Great Britain is Northern Ireland.’’