August 23 1924
“We in Belfast are tired of the stuff we are getting from our politicians at the street corners, in the Ulster parliament, in the Orange halls, the Ulster Hall, and halls all over the country, by which the enemies of Labour and of the unity of all creeds and classes are trying to inflame sectarian passion and to stir up the fires of hatred and bigotry in our midst,” said ex-Alderman Samuel Kyle at a largely-attended Labour meeting held at Carlisle Circus last night in furtherance of the candidature of Mr Robert Dorman for the aldermanship of Court Ward.
Alderman George Donaldson, who presided, said the Government of Northern Ireland and the Corporation of Belfast had failed in their duty to the people because they did not follow the example of the British Government in providing proper and cheaper dwellings for the working classes. The people of Court Ward would look in vain to people who only represented landlordism and Toryism if they asked them to remedy the conditions under which the workers were compelled to live.
The Labour Party on the contrary knew what the people required – and that party would uplift the workers and middle classes, and save the higher classes from the consequences of their own folly. That was the policy for which Bob Dorman stood – the policy which would lift their people from the thraldom of capitalism.
They might well feel ashamed in Northern Ireland that they had not a Labour Government in power, nor even a single representative in that assembly. They had camouflaged Labour men who stood behind the party whip. It was up to the people themselves to remove all these anomalies and send men like Bob Dorman to the vorporation and other public bodies to look after their interests. That contest was only the prelude to many a fight in the future for the parliament and the public boards, and when the time arrived the people must be prepared to assert themselves.
Ex-Alderman Sam Kyle, supplementing the remarks quoted at the head of the report, said he would ask every intelligent person in the ward to look up to the record of the official Unionist Party in the corporation and the other public boards of the city and they would find that these men had done nothing but feather their own nests and of their friends and henchmen.
