26-COUNTY REPUBLIC MAKES ‘NO FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCE’

This main front page article consisted of a statement from Óglaigh na hÉireann — the Irish Republican Army — saying that the declaration of a 26-County republic made no fundamental difference to the Republican position.

This was not the All-Ireland Republic of 1916 and of the First Dáil Éireann. It was merely a further reform of the 26-County Free State which was now to be taken out of the British Commonwealth.

British troops still occupied the Six Counties and the British government claimed sovereignty there. These facts remained a challenge to the coming generation of Irish people, a challenge the Army Council believed would be taken up in due course.

Republican prisoners still remained in Belfast jail and in English prisons and their immediate release was called for. The great Irish writer and former Curragh internee Máirtín Ó Cadhain did a translation to Gaeilge of the entire statement. This text in Irish is to be found in one of the many books on Ó Cadhain.

LEGISLATION

That had been the case also during WWII as has been noted in this series. Nevertheless the Stormont regime, anxious to underline its “loyalty” to the English Crown, publicly declared its wish to participate in conscription to the British armed forces.

Unionist fervour to join those same forces during the actuality of WWII was not so marked with the number offering themselves from the 26 Counties exceeding that from north of the Border.

Unlike their participation in WWI and their casualty list 1914-18 which was indeed remarkable it must have seemed preferable to stay at home and join the ARP, the Home Guard or the B-Specials.

Further the Victoria Cross for bravery won by Irish people in WWII all went south of the Border with one exception — that went to a man with a nationalist background from Belfast’s Falls Road.

On January 6 ministers from Stormont crossed over to meet with British cabinet ministers to discuss the implications of the declaration of a 26-County republic outside the British Commonwealth. Stormont Premier Sir Basil Brooke — he was made Lord Brookeborough in 1952 — had two demands: (1) that the Six-County statelet be renamed “Ulster” and (2) that there would be no change in its constitutional position without the consent of a majority of the Stormont parliament.

Note: Stormont from 1921 until its removal through the people’s struggle in 1972 was ranked as a “parliament” — not a mere “assembly”.

Brooke was turned down on the conversion of “Northern Ireland” to “Ulster”, but his second proposition was accepted by the British Labour government led by Clement Attlee. Thus was the Unionist Veto born in 1949.

South of the Border the 26-County administration published during January a White Paper entitled a “Long-Term Recovery Programme” which was financed by £47 million of Marshall Aid from the United States.

The Marshall Plan, called after General George Marshall, US Secretary of State, was also known as the European Recovery programme or ERP. It proposed US assistance to Europe to repair the economic damage of WWII.

In July 1947 at an economic conference in Paris attended by 17 countries (including the 26 Counties) the ERP was founded. Together these states formed the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation or OEEC.

The Marshall Plan ended in October 1951. Projects such as land reclamation, building and industrial improvement were funded. The Western Powers were particularly interested to re-build West Germany as a bulwark against the Soviet Union expanding its sphere of influence.

Of course all the ballyhoo made by the Leinster House politicians — from which Fianna Fáil abstained — about the imminent 26-County republic raised morale among the nationalist people North of the Border and much of the population South of it.

BROOKE’S RESPONSE

When the Anti-Partition League, as the reformist nationalist party was then known, announced its intention to contest all 52 seats for Stormont, it became obvious that many candidates deposits in unionist constituencies would be forfeited.

To provide financial support for the all-out nationalist election campaign an all-party conference was called for Dublin’s Mansion House on January 27. This led to a church-gate collection throughout the length and breadth of the 26 Counties which netted a total of £54,000, a sizeable sum of money in those days.

The Fianna Fáil “national” collection at that time would bring in about £23,000 to the largest party by far in the 26 Counties.

Brooke accepted the challenge thrown down by what he termed the “chapel-door collection” south of the Border and called on unionist supporters to rally against it.

Of course, as the man who told a July 12 demonstration in Newtownbutler in 1922 that he “would not have a nationalist about the place”. Brooke would not dignify Catholic places of worship as churches.

The dictionary defines “chapel” as a place of worship inferior or subordinate to a regular church. When Basil Brooke said “about the place”, he meant on his Colebrooke estate where he employed many people in 1933.

With the Republican Movement simply reorganising after its near extinction in the early and middle 1940s, it was safe for the establishment politicians to raise morale on the national question. An interesting sequence of events was about to unfold . . .

(More next month. Refs. A Chronology of Irish History since 1500 by Doherty and Hickey.)