November 6 1923
The Right Hon JM Andrews, Minister of Labour, addressed a meeting in the Bangor Orange Hall last night, in which he referred to the unemployment question and the Trade Boards Bill.
Mr Andrews said that today they had peace throughout the whole of their area, where people recognised that their Parliament was established on enduring foundations, and in addition to that they were part of the United Kingdom still. They claimed for their people in Northern Ireland all the advantages which their fellow countrymen in Great Britain were privileged to enjoy. How different it was, unfortunately, in the Free State? It was all too sad for words there. They had cut themselves adrift from the rest of the United Kingdom. They had squandered all their financial resources in fighting each other and in murdering each other. Their taxation was admittedly higher than in any other country in the world. They were now forced to make economies, and one of the latest was actually to take a shilling a week from the poor old-aged pensioners. He often heard the Northern Government criticised – not possibly in Bangor – but in many other parts of Northern Ireland, and he thought it was up to their people to remember when they were criticising them what they had saved them from. They had saved them from being submerged in the Free State.
While recognising there were problems in Northern Ireland, including high unemployment, John M Andrews, who went on to succeed James Craig as Northern Ireland prime minister in 1940, claimed that conditions would be a lot worse if they were a part of the Free State.
Call for Release of Argenta Internees
At Newry Urban Council yesterday, Mr [WF] Cunningham drew attention to the prisoners interned on the Argenta and at Larne. Owing to matters being now peaceful, and in view of the approach of Christmas, he thought that these men should be liberated by the Six County Government.
That morning the wife of a well-known Newry man, who had been interned on the Argenta, received a wire that he was in a very dangerous condition, and most of the men interned were cripples. Members of the council were also interned – some of them for over 12 months – without any charge being brought against them, and he considered it a crying shame…
The Chairman [R O’Hegan] said that if all the prisoners were released and bitterness removed, it would give a chance of success to the forthcoming conference on the boundary question. The vast majority of the internees and prisoners were arrested merely on suspicion, and some of them were just as good citizens as anybody present at that meeting.
Internees remained incarcerated in cramped, unhygienic conditions on the Argenta prison ship, as well as other locations, for years, many without trial, even though the security threat had all but evaporated by 1922.
