COWAN SOUGHT ALL-IRELAND JURISDICTION FOR LEINSTER HOUSE

On August 26, 1949 no less than 41 of the Regulations which enabled the Stormont regime to penalise the nationalist population in the Six Counties since 1922 were revoked.

These were some of the regulations under the Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Acts 1922-43 which the British National Council for Civil Liberties had condemned in 1935 as "contrary to the fundamental principles of democratic government in that it imperils the rights and freedom of law-abiding citizens."

The regulations were withdrawn only after the question of human rights had arisen for discussion at the Council of Europe at Strasbourg. The 26-County State had been a founder member of this body in May and it was now turning up the heat on Stormont violations of human rights.

The Legal Committee of the Council listed eleven basic rights for submission to the Consultative Assembly. Of these eleven rights, nine were infringed in the partitioned area by regulations under the Special Powers Acts.

Certain of the more objectionable of the regulations were not revoked and because the Special Powers Acts themselves were left in force as part of the ordinary law of the Six-County statelet, Stormont was able to re-impose a number of the revoked regulations by the spring of 1950.

Republicans pointed out in August 1949 that the Stormont Minister for Home Affairs retained that power to re-impose them at a moments notice and that is what happened once the spotlight of publicity from Europe was off the puppet regime.

LEINSTER HOUSE

The stand taken in Leinster House (surprise, surprise!) on May 10 — not May 9 — is deserving of further examination. The "two houses of parliament" (Dáil and Seanad) met in "Special Assembly" to protest against the British government's Ireland Bill in its House of Commons.

John A Costello as head of the Dublin government proposed the motion. His speech was loudly applauded. Mr de Valera, as leader of the Opposition spoke next.

The full text of this unanimously adopted declaration was as follows:

"Dáil Éireann,
"Solemnly re-asserting the indefeasible right of the Irish Nation to the unity and integrity of the national territory, "Re-affirming the sovereign right of the people of Ireland to choose its own form of government and, through its democratic institutions, to decide all questions of national policy, free from outside interference;

"Repudiating the claim of the British Parliament to enact legislation affecting Ireland's territorial integrity in violation of these rights, and "Pledging the determination of the Irish people to continue to struggle against the unjust and unnatural partition of our country until it is brought to a successful conclusion.

"Places on record its indignant protest against the introduction in the British Parliament of legislation purporting to endorse and continue the existing Partition of Ireland, and

"Calls upon the British government and people to end the present occupation of our Six North Eastern Counties and thereby enable the unity of Ireland to be restored and the age-long differences between the two nations brought to an end."

Captain Peader Cowan, solicitor and TD for Dublin North East was the third speaker. Elected as a Clann na Poblachta candidate in 1948, he soon left that party and early in 1949 he formed a force of Volunteers in Dublin "to deal with the question of Partition." They were never armed and simply faded away.

However, with north-side and south-side battalions of unarmed Volunteers to his back in May fifty years ago he proposed an interesting amendment to the declaration. Cowan sought to delete the last three clauses and substitute for them the following:

"Denying the right of the British armed forces to occupy any part of Ireland, "Solemnly declares that the national territory is integrated, that the jurisdiction of the Oireachtas embraces the whole island of Ireland, its islands and the territorial seas, and that the laws enacted by the Oireachtas shall henceforth apply to the whole of Ireland; and "Relying on the Proclamation of the Irish Republic in Dublin on Easter Monday, 1916, on the Declaration of Independence made at the first meeting of the First Dáil Éireann in the Mansion House, Dublin on January 21, 1919, on the Constitution of Ireland on 1st July 1937, and on the sovereign rights of the People of Ireland.

"We, the majority of the elected representatives of the Irish people, pledge ourselves in the name of the Irish people to make this declaration effective, by every means at our command."

Captain Cowan sought to amend Article Three of the 1937 Constitution by declaring the "national territory integrated" and enforcing the laws of Leinster House on the whole of the island "by every means at our disposal".

It was a prescription for immediate struggle by the 26-County State for Irish unity and independence, for action -- not just for words. It had no seconder from among the 146 other TDs or the 52 Senators and it lapsed.

The original motion was put and agreed to. De Valera proposed that the resolution as agreed be sent to all friendly countries. Costello agreed and it was so resolved. Nothing else was done on the ground to implement it.

In 1956-62 when Seán Sabhat, Fearghal Ó h-Anluain and others gave their lives "continuing the struggle" as called for unanimously in Leinster House seven years earlier, their comrades were thrown into Mountjoy Jail and the Curragh Concentration Camp while the 26-County police and army patrolled the Border in collaboration with the British Occupation Forces.

Whatever else about him, Peadar Cowan did put it up to the posturers in Leinster House at the peak of their striking patriotic attitudes -- and -- found them wanting. He exposed them.

In the early 1980s Seán Mac Bride published the text of the May 1949 Declaration along with the 1916 Proclamation, the Declaration of Independence 1919 and the introduction to the 1937 Constitution. The entire pamphlet was entitled Ireland's Right to Sovereignty, Independence and Unity is Inalienable and Indefeasible.

In view of the dilution of Articles Two & Three of the 1937 document as a result of the Stormont Agreement of April 10, 1998, the attempt by Captain Cowan to give meaning and effect to Articles Two & Three and make them more than just an empty formula makes interesting reading today.

Meanwhile in the summer of 1949 the Ulster Herald reported that during June the Queen of England came to Belfast Airport. An Irish Tricolour was put up on an official flagpole but it was removed by British colonial police (RUC) before she arrived.

The same paper eported on an Anti-Partition rally in Strabane in July organised by one Jimmy Bradley. It was addressed by The O'Rahilly from Dublin -- son of the Easter 1916 leader -- and Douglas McGinley, son of "Cú Uladh", the Irish language writer and activist.

During August copies of the [Catholic] Standard newspaper were on display as reading material in the National Library in Dublin. The paper carried a full-page attack on Republican prisoners in the Curragh during 1941-42.

This denigration was countered by Micksie Conway in a letter to the Editor but it was denied publication -- a tactic familiar to present-day Republicans.

The July-August issue of An tÉireannach Aontaithe/The United Irishman contained a full-page report from Sinn Féin on page 10.

It began on an optimistic note: "As a result of discussions with Republicans from all four provinces at Bodenstown we are confident that when the next Ard-Fheis assembles there will be representatives from every one of the 32 Counties as well as from Cumainn overseas."

'BOYCOTT BRITISH' CAMPAIGN

The "Boycott British" campaign being promoted through public meetings in Ireland and among Irish Americans in the USA was reported on. The necessity to "Buy Irish Goods" was urged at all times. Similarly the offensive nature of English newspapers circulating in Ireland was pointed out. This included "special Irish editions dressed up with sufficient Irish news to make them more palatable to the reading public here".

An illustration of their unashamedly anti-Irish bias was in the Sunday Chronicle of June 26, 1949. Reggie Dunne and Joseph O'Sullivan were hanged for the shooting dead in 1922 of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, "Military Advisor" to the Stormont regime.

"What must they think when a paper is allowed to circulate freely in Ireland in which Dunne and O'Sullivan are referred to as 'Irish gunmen', 'assassins', 'murderers', and which compared them to 'Chicago gangsterdom'.

"The same article refers to the Indian hero Udham Singh who was executed in London in 1940 for the shooting of Sir Michael O'Dwyer, who had been Governor of the Punjab at the time of the Amritsar massacre.

"We are proud to have the name of this Indian hero linked with those of Dunne and O'Sullivan, even though the intention in linking them was to defame them.

"Our only regret in the incident is that it should have been an Irishman who had sold himself to out national enemy, who had by his part in the butchery and oppression of the Indian people so richly deserved the punishment meted out to him by Udham Singh."

The report concluded by pointing out that it was not enough to protest about articles of this kind but "we should prevent the circulation of these papers altogether in this country".

"The sooner we get down to tackling this job, the sooner we will start to rebuild our national self-respect which has been allowed to drop to a very low level."

(More next month. Refs. Ireland's Right to Sovereignty, Independence and Unity is Inalienable and Indefeasible, edited by Seán Mac Bride (published early 1980s); An tÉireannach Aontaithe/The United Irishman, July-August 1949.