Dr. Noel Browne on Irish Emigration and Partition

Two lone voices speak out in the Southern Irish Parliament against the reactionary bigots of the two main parties, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael.

Last week on behalf of the Socialist Labour League I talked to one of these men, 44-year-old Dr. Noel Browne, one-time Minister of Health in Ireland’s 1951 coalition government and a former leader in the Clann Na Poblacta Party.

The most outstanding figure in Irish Left-wing politics, Browne is now a member of the executive committee of the National Progressive Democrats and represents that party in parliament along with Jack McQuillam, MP for the rural County Roscommon.

Browne was forced to resign his position as Health Minister because of the opposition of the Church and big business to his new National Health Bill. The bill was designed to provide free—no ‘means test’ aid—to pregnant mothers and children under 16 years of age.

No less a figure than the Bishop of Dubiin sent for Browne and told him to drop his bill. High clerics argued that Browne’s Bill was encouraging legal abortion and the use of contraceptives. When he disproved these charges he was told that the bill would cost too much.

Not one member of the Cabinet supported Browne. His own party the Clann Na Poblacta repudiated him. Finally he resigned from the Government and since then has worked to build up the National Progressive Democrat Party which according to Dr. Browne works for ‘the creation of a properly democratic socialist republic’.

The Newsletter is pleased to print the following contributions from Noel Browne on Emigration and Partition. These will be followed by two further contributions dealing with Socialist revival and the Church in Ireland, both of which will appear in our next issue.—Editor.

Yet at the same time they have shown our people one thing clearly. Exploitation, the callous and pitiless neglect of the happiness and welfare of the masses in any nation is no monopoly of the British. It is an evil common to the British or Irish or any national ruling class alike and is inseparable from capitalism. Our home-bred Gaelic variety is as bad as the worst.

In short, then, to stop emigration and the consequent evils associated with it, let us answer James Connolly’s call of 40 years ago and work for the creation of a properly democratic socialist republic for the whole of Ireland. Take up the fight where he left it when they shot him.

PARTITION

Partition is maintained in many ways. ‘There are genuine fears, and there are artificially-fostered fears. Among the professions, businessmen, industrialists and, above all, the politicians both unionist and nationalist, Catholic and Protestant, there is a very powerful vested interest in the retention of partition. Each of these groups has developed and encouraged a_ beleagured ‘loyalty to your own’ mentality among their own sections of the population. There is some, but less of it, in the Republic.

In these circumstances, then, it seems clear that there is at least one basic pre-condition to the solution of a new desperately complicated problem. The people on both sides of the border must be able to be certain that in a united Ireland the government would not be the pawn of any of the great sectarian interests. In establishing this pre-condition they would be impressed not by constitutional guarantees or assurances, but by the activities of their working politicians faced with practical issues and decisions in government and Opposition.

It seems to me clear that with.so many differences, real or imagined, which exist at present, based on the older religious and political associations, unity can best be re-established by the declaration of a common aim and a common policy for its achievement. In the struggle to establish that the complete ownership and control of all the national wealth of the whole of Ireland is the rightful heritage of the people, north and south, the nation would be united ideologically. There _ could be no border in the united struggle against capital since its power and pattern of exploitation are directed equally against the worker, north and south, Catholic or Protestant, alike.

A true socialist can permit no barriers of nationality, creed or colour to keep him divided from fellow-socialists. In a united Socialist Republic neither side need have any fears of exploitation or victimisation by the other. That would be a negation of socialism., The creation of an all-Ireland socialist movement would surely be the first step, all else would flow logically from that.