May 27 1974
Mr Harold Wilson announced no new measures for Northern Ireland in a broadcast to the nation on Saturday, but he pledged government support for the assembly, saying: “We intend to see it through with them.”
In a bitter attack on the “thugs and bullies” behind the 11-day strike, he said: “It is a deliberate and calculated attempt to use every undemocratic and unparliamentary means for the purpose of bringing down the whole constitution of Northern Ireland, so as to set up there a sectarian and undemocratic state, from which one third of the people of Northern Ireland will be excluded.”
The prime minister called for patience from “citizens and taxpayers” for as long as needed.
“As the holiday weekend begins, Northern Ireland faces the gravest crisis in her history. It is a crisis equally for all of us who live on this side of the water,” he said.
“What we are seeing in Northern Ireland is not just an industrial strike. It has nothing to do with wages. It has nothing to do with jobs – except to imperil jobs.”
The crisis has never been a party matter in the Commons or in Britain at all.
“Where the political wildcats seek to divide and to embitter, all the major parties in Britain have sought to heal and to unite… We stand by, as predecessors stood by – and still stand by – the decision taken last year that the Northern Ireland Assembly and the Northern Ireland Executive provide the only basis for peace, the only basis for order and good government in Northern Ireland.
“The people on this side of the water, British parents, British taxpayers, have seen their sons vilified and spat upon – and murdered. They have seen the taxes they have poured out almost without regard to cost – over £300 million a year this year with the cost of the army operations on top of that – going into Northern Ireland.
“They see property destroyed by evil violence and are asked to pick up the bill for rebuilding it. Yet people who benefit from this now viciously defy Westminster, purporting to act as though they were an elected government, spend their lives sponging on Westminster and British democracy and then systematically assault democratic methods. Who do these people think they are?”
