The meeting made arrangements for the setting up of branches of the APL in every electoral area in London with a view to getting the support of all the Labour MPs in the city in the fight for the independence of Ireland.
Great enthusiasm prevailed in the meeting hall which was bedecked with tricolours.
Telegrams wishing the meeting every success were received from Most Rev Dr Downey, Archbishop of Liverpool; Archbishop Amigo and Miss Sybil Thorndike, the actress.
Mr Hugh Delargy, MP (Labour, Manchester) referred to the gerrymandering and Special Powers Act in the six counties and said these were some of the evils of partition.
Even the Ulster Unionists did not vote for partition, he said. However, he revealed that he had found himself unable to answer a question put to him in Dublin about the difference in policy of the Labour government and the Tories in their attitude to Ireland.
Mr Cahir Healy, MP said they had come to London to appeal to their fellow-countrymen to lend a hand in the work they had undertaken in getting the 1920 Act repealed.
England passed this Act against the wish of every Irishman, Orange as well as Green, and now that it had proven to be unacceptable to the mass of the Irish people, it ought to be dropped into the statesman’s wastepaper basket.
Mr Harry Diamond, MP (Republican Labour, Falls) said he came from the last surviving Fascist state in Europe where the nationally-minded people were driven into ghettos like the Jews under Hitler.
Mr Diamond criticised the Friends of Ireland group and said that they in Ireland wanted to see them doing something more concrete.
Miss Ethel Mannin, the well-known English novelist, said that many people (including herself) thought that the IRA campaign in England some years ago was a tragic mistake.
Be that as it may, the ideals that activated that campaign were ideals they all had at heart. They must make the English people understand that Partition was the imperialist problem nearer home.
There were five million Irish voters in Britain and they should bring the matter of partition before their MPs and make it an immediate issue.
