The Politics of Constitutional Nationalism in Northern Ireland, 1932–70: Between Grievance and Reconciliation by Christopher Norton

Author:Christopher Norton [Norton, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, Nationalism & Patriotism, Political Ideologies
ISBN: 9781526112149
Google: b3C5DwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 18810565
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 2014-03-06T00:00:00+00:00

5

Deteriorating relations with Dublin, 1950–55

The Westminster general election of February 1950 was to reveal both an incapacitating divisiveness among northern constitutional anti-partitionists, which placed very real constraints on their strategic options, and a deepening strain in relations with Dublin. In the months leading up to the election the Information Section of the Irish Government’s Department of External Affairs (DEA) had become exasperated by the verbal attacks directed against the British Labour government (in the aftermath of the Ireland Act, 1949) by leading members of the IAPL. The decision taken by the British section of the IAPL, in October 1949, to stand candidates in opposition to British Labour Party candidates at the election had already resulted in the resignation of leading FOI member, Hugh Delargy, from the chairmanship of the League.1 In November James McSparran’s vituperative assault on Attlee’s Labour Party, delivered in Glasgow to the Gorbals Branch of the IAPL, in which he claimed that the Labour Party was atheistic, anti-Catholic and pro-communist, stretched Conor Cruise O’Brien’s patience with the IAPL Chairman. O’Brien’s hand-written comment on the DEA report of McSparran’s speech – ‘Completely in character. The man is an appalling liability’2 – reveals his irritation. Shortly before the election Captain Seamus McCall had visited Belfast and found the IAPL Executive divided in their attitudes towards Dublin. Some, he reported, were demanding that Dublin play a greater role in providing ‘active leadership’ while others considered ‘the people in Dublin’ to be too ‘concerned with their own selfish party interests than with the removal of the Border’. The latter favoured a policy of IAPL ‘independent actions’ designed to expose an Irish government which, they felt, ‘was doing nothing for the people in the North’.3 McCall was also frustrated in his attempts to convince the IAPL Executive to give their support to other anti-partition candidates in the election; namely the two candidates from the IrLP (Jack Macgougan and Jack Beattie) who were standing in seats (South Down and West Belfast respectively) not being contested by the IAPL. His suggestion of cooperation, in order to maximise the chances of anti-partitionist electoral success, was ‘scornfully rejected’ by members of the Executive in what he saw as a pique of ‘imbecile jealousy and selfish concern’.4 And yet McCall himself displayed a characteristically cool attitude towards the IrLP. He called into question the integrity of their West Belfast candidate, Jack Beattie, accusing him of being unwilling to cooperate with party colleagues and suggesting that he may have appropriated political funds for his own use.5 It was certainly true that Beattie had a reputation as a political maverick and that he was not a ‘party man’ by instinct, but McCall was aware that the IrLP leadership in Dublin had called for the release from prison of Beattie’s Sinn Féin opponent in the election (the IRA man Jimmy Steele)6 and that Beattie suspected that some of his Dublin comrades favoured his rival over his own candidature. This knowledge did not, however, lessen the severity of McCall’s conclusion that Beattie was ‘so little trusted that we should be better off without him’.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.