50 Years Ago

1951 -- 'THE KEY YEAR'

THE year 1951 was going to be decisive for the Republican Movement. The Anti-Partition League (in the Six Counties and Britain) and the A-P Association in the 26 Counties had more or less run their course.

Their impact, Bell assesses, was much the same as Clann na Poblachta; great initial enthusiasm, influential speeches and publications, high hopes and then no tangible results.

In 1949 the contacts between the Anti-Partition Association and the Dublin government had convinced many that "a real campaign to end Partition had begun".

But the only result of the Clann’s entry into constitutional politics and the long campaign of the Anti-Partition forces was the declaring of the 26-County republic in 1949.

The reaction of the British government was the Ireland Act which "turned over the future of the Six Counties" to the Stormont regime. Bell estimated that "a united Ireland seemed even further away as a result of all the agitation and excitement".

By 1950, although both the Clann and the A-P Association remained active and apparently virile, the IRA and Sinn Féin had begun to pick up the disenchanted. There were not many but the IRA could not absorb many.

More important was the slight rise in the temperature of Irish politics. Mac Bride’s "reformed republicans" in Dublin, the politicians in the Anti-Partition League, and Eddie McAteer in Derry with the concept of Passive resistance had each excited hopes that could not be fulfilled.

They had revealed the evils of a divided Ireland to many who had grown comfortable in the presence of the Border. They had, however, devised no means to remove the Border. Their methods pacifism, propaganda, and constitutional politics had achieved nothing, no victory only words.

Michael Farrell in his Northern Ireland: The Orange State (1976) says "The Anti-Partition League seemed to be falling apart. It had no consistent policy and no way of enforcing one if it had.

"It had one MP abstaining and one attending at Westminster and two MPs abstaining and seven attending intermittently at Stormont. After the 1951 Westminster election (Sinn Féin did not contest) the two MPs decided to take their seats again though they got an even less sympathetic hearing from Churchill’s Tory government [than they had from the 1945-51 Labour Party administration].

"In March 1951 four [Stormont] A-PL MPs. Charles McGlennan, Cahir Healy, Joe Connellan (South Down) and EV McCullagh (Mid-Tyrone) and two Senators sought admission to the Dáil (sic) as elected representatives of part of the national territory, but they found the Dublin government’s Republicanism and anti-partitionism didn’t extend as far as giving a vote in their parliament to an unpredictable group of Northerners -- who could conceivably make or break Southern governments -- or to issuing such a direct challenge to Stormont and to Britain. They were refused."

Bell goes on: "The victory envisaged by the IRA, a united Ireland achieved by physical force, seemed nearly as far away in 1950 as it had the day the Curragh closed.

"If the politicians had led the Irish people down the garden path of anti-partition to the locked door of British intransigence, the IRA assuredly did not have the key.

"The Dublin unit, strongest in the country, had a paper strength of no more than 40 men, divided into two companies [northside and southside of the Liffey] which could seldom parade more than a dozen men each.

"The traffic in and out of the Army continued year after year . . . In the North organisation had accelerated but units were often small, dotted around one or two strong men and subject to the same regular attrition through boredom.

"Throughout Ireland, large areas still remained unorganised. Some counties might have one or two men and little more. Others might have a unit of four or five, which never grew and never quite dissolved.

"Without action or the prospect of action, without a programme, the climate created by the politicians and the organisation built up by five years of work would go to waste.

"The IRA was either going to decay into a bitter little group of ageing and unsuccessful fanatics, conspiring pointlessly in odd corners, or act even when unready. Thus 1951 would be the key year."

The Sinn Féin Notes in An t-Éireannach Aontaithe/The United Irishman, January-February 1951 comments on "the very dull by-election in South Armagh" which took place the previous December. It said that "both Anti-Partition parties emerged from it with little glory.

"The very small poll by the Irish Labour candidate is a complete rejection by the people of that area of the policy of his party." Charles McGleenan, a respected IRA Veteran of the 1920s was the other candidate.

To be nominated in a Stormont election he was required to sign a solemn undertaking that if elected he would take his seat in that puppet parliament. This he apparently did sign.

The Organ of Irish Republicanism went on: "The official anti-partitionist, who appealed to the people for a mandate to take his seat in Leinster House, and who promised to abstain from Stormont received only one-third of the total electorate votes which shows that the Republican stronghold of South Armagh does not wish to be represented in either of the Partition Parliaments."

In spite of being elected -- even with a minority vote -- to Leinster House, Charles McGleenan and the other Anti-Partition elected representatives from the Six Counties were refused admission in March 1951, as has already being noted in this article.

The Sinn Féin Notes of 50 years ago recalled that South Armagh had elected the then President of Sinn Féin, Pádraig Mac Lógáin in 1933 "by a large majority without holding one meeting". Pádraig, who was a native of the area [near Markethill], had been expelled from the Six Counties under the Special Powers Act of Stormont.

Following his election the restriction on nomination of candidates was brought in. Removed by British Supremo Whitelaw in 1973, it was replaced in 1988 when Thatcher imposed an even more stringent political test oath for nomination.

The Notes also continued the text of a circular letter from A MagCana and S Ó Cearnaigh, Ard Rúnaithe, Sinn Féin to various organisations offering co-operation with them in campaigning against the import of anti-national literature with its anglicising influence.

South Armagh Comhairle Ceantair were active with plans for a Sinn Féin rally in Camloch on St Patrick’s Day, while the Seán Doran Cumann undertook the erection of a memorial to the Republican dead in Carrickcruppin Cemetery.

The editorial in that issue (Jan-Feb 1951) dealt with the coming to Derry of a unit of the Dutch Air Force on the invitation of the English government "without any regard for the wishes of the Irish people..

"Why go chasing after this hare started in Holland, the object of the present propelled and massed hunt, while the British lion is allowed to remain unmolested in his Six Counties’" the editorial asked.

"Why call for a boycott of Dutch gins and lager beers and at the same time remain silent about the distribution and sales of London gins and British ale?"

It regretted the presence of Dutch troops on Irish soil as a "passing phase" and while not expressing opposition or disagreement with the anti-Dutch campaign it sought to inject "some sense of realism and logic" into it.

Protests of this nature were useful provided that those who promote them are prepared to follow them up by advocating without hesitation or qualification, that the Irish race unite in one solid phalanx as a preliminary to taking whatever active measures may be necessary to drive British forces and influence from Ireland if their protests fail, as fail they must".

The fact was that the Anti-Partition campaign was flagging and the Dutch intrusion into Derry gave a temporary post to rally opinion. The A-P campaign had reached the "locked door of British intransigence" already referred to and positive action was needed.

The Dutch interlude provided novelty and a diversion from reality but in John Mitchel’s words "the axe needed to be applied to the root", ie English imperialism in Ireland.

An article gave notice of the Seán Russell Memorial unveiling: "Mindful of the huge crowds that thronged to the Knockmealdown Mountains to see the Liam Lynch memorial unveiled (in 1935), we have every reason to expect still larger crowds pouring into Dublin on 9th September next for the unveiling of the memorial to our late Chief-of-Staff Seán Russell."

"The Return of the Gaels will be a big feature in the event when hundreds of the IRA who were forced to emigrate will return in September to see the unveiling of a monument towards the cost of which they have contributed so much."

"An energetic committee is in charge of the arrangements and the event promises to be an outstanding one in the history of the Irish Republic," the article concluded.

And so it came to pass as we shall see . . .

(More next month. Refs. The Secret Army by J Bowyer Bell; Northern Ireland: The Orange State by Michael Farrell and , January-February 1951.)
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