1938: Ireland, Northern

Not in many years has Northern Ireland experienced as eventful a year as 1938 proved to be. Difficulties started on Jan. 17, when Eamon De Valera, Prime Minister of Eire, threw a bombshell into negotiations he was conducting with Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, by charging that the Ulster Government was depriving Catholics of their civil rights, and demanding that Northern Ireland be unified with Eire. Alarmed by this proposal, the North Ireland Government hastened to call a general election to demonstrate that the majority of the population was back of the Government. The election admittedly was also in part a maneuver to divert attention from unrest resulting from Ulster's unemployment problem.

As was expected, the seventeen-year-old Craigavon Government was returned for another five-year term in office by a huge majority. The Unionist Government won 39 of the 52 seats in Northern Ireland's House of Commons, a gain of three seats. De Valera's Nationalists, standing for union of the two Irelands, obtained but eight seats; of the remainder two went to Labor, two to the Independent Unionists, and one to the Industries and Farmers party. Although Craigavon sought to make unification the sole election issue, domestic policies played an important rôle in the elections, the conservative Viscount Craigavon being widely criticised for his handling of unemployment and his failure to obtain an adequate share of Great Britain's rearmament orders for Northern Ireland.

Defeat of the Nationalists at the polls did not silence De Valera. Pointing to the fact that the Unionists carried little outside of Belfast and its immediate environs, De Valera insisted that the Catholic minority in Ulster was larger, proportionately, than the Protestant minority in the whole of Ireland. If Ulster were excluded from Ireland because of local sentiment, he asked that by the same logic it be trimmed down by the exclusion of its Catholic and Nationalist districts. After vainly pressing the issue in his talks with Chamberlain, De Valera finally admitted, on Feb. 26, that a 'comprehensive settlement now seems unattainable.'

The respite granted by this announcement proved, however, to be only temporary. On Oct. 6, immediately after the Czechoslovakian crisis, De Valera demanded a plebiscite in certain areas of the six counties of Northern Ireland. A few days later Thomas J. Campbell, Nationalist leader in the Ulster Parliament, demanded in the House that the Catholic minority be given the right of self-determination. Viscount Craigavon replied by asserting that the status of Ulster as a part of the United Kingdom had been 'finally settled' some twenty years ago. Premier De Valera countered with a plan for a 'Council for Ireland' which would be formed from members of each of the two present parliaments and would deal with common legislative problems. Each parliament would, however, continue to legislate for its own area.

Feeling ran high in both camps during the closing months of the year, resulting, in several instances, in sanguinary disturbances. On Oct. 27, the Government invoked the Northern Ireland Civil Authorities Special Powers Act to prohibit the erection of a monument at Newry to the memory of the Irish Republican Army men killed between 1916 and 1922. A fortnight later Belfast's Armistice Day celebration was interrupted by dynamite explosions, allegedly set off by the Republicans. On Nov. 27, United Ireland sympathizers attacked a police barracks in the Fall Roads area of Belfast. Three days later, two young members of the Irish Republican Army were killed on the Eire side of the border immediately preceding a series of explosions which wrecked six Ulster customhouses. A meeting planned for Sunday, Dec. 11, in Londonderry to protest the partition of Ireland was banned by the order of the North Ireland Government, as was a loyalist counter-demonstration. Further outbreaks were feared to be inevitable.

On Dec. 22 Ulster police arrested 34 men, said to be members of the Irish Republican Army, charged with plotting to assassinate Premier Craigavon and preparing a series of uprisings during the holiday season. Over 100 Irish Republican Army members were in jail at the close of the year.