South abandoned North says ex-chaplain

Posted By: November 04, 2014

On this day November 4, 1945

Irish News.( Belfast).Tuesday, November 4, 2014

“As long as partition lasts, the unionists of Northern Ireland will feel that hey are sitting on a volcano.” So said Rev. T. Duggan of Cork, a former senior chaplain of the British forces stationed in Northern Ireland, when he addressed a public meeting in Cork last night when a branch of the Green Cross Fund (in support of political internees) was informed. The Lord Mayor of Cork Mr. M. Sheehan , presided.

Fr. Duggan stated, “If we are to judge anyone at all it must be ourselves—the nationalists of Southern Ireland. Twenty-five years ago we thought more of

sovereignty than of unity.” In our preoccupation we looked on more or less absent-mindedly while 400,000 of our own kith and kin were led away and placed at the mercy of their heredity enemies. They refused to accept their fate with aquiescence and it is not for us to pass judgment on their reactions, he said.

“Even the persecutors in the north,” said Fr. Duggan, “were not bad people, but they have been put in a false position and as long as partition lasts, they will continue to be tyrannical, cruel and overbearing, and persecution is likely to go on.

“Even now,” the former British army chaplain continues, “the war time prosperity is fleeing from the north. In another six months, depression will be raising its ugly head and the Catholics are the people most likely to be affected. The Protestant majority of 600,000 had the unsavory task of inflicting subjugation on the minority and as long as Partition lasted this tragedy would go on.”

Mr. Denis Mc Cullough (1883-1968) a Belfast man who along with Bulmer Hobson and Sean MacDermott, was largely responsible for the revival of the revolutionary IRB in Belfast after 1904. Though president of its supreme council in 1916, McCullough was not consulted about the “inner circle’s’ plans for a rising. Following Connolly’s orders, he mobilized the 132 Belfast Volunteers at Coalisland at Easter 1916 only to disperse in disarray following Eoin Mac Neil’s countermanding order. McCullough played a minor role in the War of Independence, moving his piano business to Dublin in 1922. Though he supported the Treaty and became a TD, he broke with the pro-Treaty party over its northern policy in 1925 and devoted the rest of his life to business.

Edited by Eamon Phoenix