The success of nationalist politicians, especially the East Mayo MP John Dillon, in preventing the British government from introducing conscription in the early years of the first World War had one unintended consequence for some of his constituents, as The Irish Timestook satisfaction in pointing out in this editorial. – JOE JOYCE
WHEN MR. Dillon induced the Coalition Government to exempt Ireland from conscription he hardly foresaw that he would be rewarded by a vote of censure from his own constituents.
On Tuesday a resolution applauding the political sagacity of the Nationalist Party was marked “read” by the Swinford District Council. This was a nasty blow for Mr. Dillon. Swinford has always been his stronghold in County Mayo – his Egeria from whom he sought comfort and encouragement in troubled times.
It has turned against him now because it blames him for the fact that Mayo harvest-men in England are being “hounded from pillar to post.” Great Britain accepted compulsory service, and most of her farm labourers of military age are now in the training camps, or fighting the Germans in France, at the State’s Spartan wage of one shilling a day. Mr. Dillon’s efforts enabled the western peasant to escape compulsory service, and he went to England as usual, in the joyous hope of taking the place of the conscripted Englishman at a wage of five or six shillings a day.
Apparently neither he nor Mr. Dillon saw anything discreditable in the transaction, but the English labourers’ women and friends take a different view. They refuse to employ them, and the women cannot be prevented from being very rude to them. This year’s Irish harvest season in England is going to be a failure. For the moment, the councillors of Swinford do not censure Mr. Dillon’s success in exempting Ireland from conscription; they blame him for the natural and inevitable results of that. They were led to believe during many years that the “Party” was omniscient and omnipotent. They want to know now why it is not protecting the Irish labourers in England, securing employment for them at five or six shillings a day, compelling English soldiers’ wives and mothers to be civil to them. Their disappointment is acute, and we may admit that it has made them uncharitable.
It is sad that any Nationalist of Swinford should have permitted himself to say that “we will get nothing through the Party, as they are only interested in jobs for themselves and their friends.”
The Government made one of its worst mistakes when it allowed the Nationalist Party to frighten it into the exclusion of Ireland from the National Registration Act and from the Military Service Acts. If service had been enforced from the beginning, we should have had no rebellion. The Irish recruiting problem would have been settled in the only satisfactory way, and the disgrace with which we are now threatened – the possible extinction of our three Irish Divisions – would have been averted.
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