Northern Ireland

“Not one bob”, says Craig - On This Day in 1924

James Craig attacks the outgoing Labour government for not providing a £1 million grant to fund the Ulster Specials

President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State W.T Cosgrave, British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald and Prime Minister of Northern Ireland Sir James Craig at Chequers in 1924. Picture from Press Association
Northern Ireland Prime Minister Sir James Craig pictured in 1924
By Cormac Moore
October 23 1924

A meeting in support of Sir Robert Lynn was held in the West Belfast Orange Hall, Shankill Road, last night, at which Sir James Craig spoke:

“The Socialist Government had found it possible to honour their pledge, as they called it, to the Free State, and while denying Ulster the million promised them they had found it possible to pay to the Free State within the last week exactly the same amount as they refused to Ulster, and they could not find a shilling to pay Ulster for the upkeep of her special constabulary.

We were not able to get one bob out of the Labour Government while they were in power”, Sir James said. He also said that owing to the action of the Government that had gone out of power the ex-Service men’s houses throughout Ulster had been brought to a complete standstill. “I charge that Government”, he said, “with being partial towards the Free State and harsh and unfair towards the loyalists in the Northern province”.

James Craig attacked the outgoing Labour government for not providing a £1 million grant to fund the Ulster Specials and keeping them at their existing levels.
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Dishonest Tricksters
Sir Winston Churchill visited he Canadian Parliament in December 1941
Sir Winston Churchill's father was an unscrupulous political trimmer; the son has left the father’s shady record far behind (PA/PA)

When Mr Winston Churchill was first asked, as a signatory of the Treaty, to express an opinion regarding Lord Birkenhead’s and Mr Lloyd George’s interpretation of Article XII, he managed to evade a definite reply. Now that he finds it necessary to secure support from all the Tory sections, Die-Hards and Moderates, if he is to get back to public life as the Conservative member for Epping, he allies himself unreservedly with the other knaves who have practically instructed Mr Justice [Richard] Feetham to render a verdict wholly opposed to their own explanations of Article XII in the country and at Westminster “before the ink wherewith ‘twas writ could dry”. Mr Winston Churchill would have delighted the late Signor Lambroso, who laboured scientifically on the ancient theory of Heredity. The Tory candidate’s father was an unscrupulous political trimmer; the son has left the father’s shady record far behind.

Irish News editorial condemning British signatories of the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, like Winston Churchill, for changing their explanations on their interpretations of the Boundary Commission clause, Article 12, from one of potential major surgery of the border to one of mere rectification by 1924.