February 26 1924
Less than a month ago we were rejoicing over a new “Boundary” situation. The British Labour Prime Minister had adopted the plan conceived by his predecessor, and requested the attendance of President [WT] Cosgrave, Sir James Craig and others at Whitehall, London, to confer on the Boundary issues at stake and, in Lloyd-Georgian words, “explore all the avenues” in search of a solution.
The Irishmen went – from Belfast and Dublin. They met, Mr J H Thomas being in the chair; they parted – to meet next day. Then they separated – to meet within a month.
Were they humbugging us all – and all the time?
In my opinion – but what is my opinion worth? Yours, good reader, is just as valuable. Therefore, for the love of Ireland, form it – and stick to it.
Lysander remarked, somewhere about the beginning of A Midsummer Night’s Dream:
“Brief as the lightning in the collied night,
That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,
And, ere a man has power to say, Behold!
The jaws of darkness do devour it up:
So quick bright things come to confusion”.
So quickly have the bright things hoped for from the Conference opened in London come to confusion within the month. But the development of the renewed confusion was really so gradual that it was probably imperceptible to many people.
First, Sir James Craig got ill. Then he got better. Then it was announced in his organ that, owing to his indisposition, the Conference had been “indefinitely postponed”.
No-one associated with the negotiations in the Free State paid attention to the plain statement in the Belfast paper. But Sir James was not idle during the period of his illness…
After an hour’s rest from this labour, he sat down and wrote an article, entitled “Ulster is British”, for the London Spectator. It appeared in last week’s Spectator – three columns of it “By the Right Ho. Sir James Craig, Bart, MP (Prime Minister of Northern Ireland)”.
Amongst the statements made in it was the following: “It is necessary to keep on repeating that Ulster is British and is as much an integral part of the United Kingdom as Yorkshire or Lancashire”.
The author of the article wrote falsehood and nonsense. Ulster is not British; it is a part of the island of Ireland, as far away from the heart of Britain as Brittany is – in France.