Opinion

Derry bishop on housing crisis

"I HAVE statistics of the population and of the overcrowding in the Catholic quarters of the town and they make appalling reading." So said Bishop Neil Farren at a concert and presentation of prizes in St Columb's Hall, Derry under the auspices of the Long Tower Boys' Club.

His Lordship said there was no matter which concerned him more at the moment than the welfare of the young people and particularly of the boys of the city who had to contend with great difficulties in their most formative years. Some of those difficulties arose from the housing conditions in Derry. Day after day mothers came to him, beseeching him, if possible, to find houses for them in which they could have an opportunity of bringing up their children in some semblance of morality, decency and comfort. Parents had come to him telling him that their eldest boy had to sleep in the same room as his father and mother. "And this", declared the bishop, "is called a civilised community."

Carson rejected 'NW Britain' title for north SIR Wilfrid B Spender, who was chief of the Northern Ireland Civil Service until a few months ago, has stated in the press that the Anti-Home Rule leader, Lord Carson considered a suggestion from him in 1919 "that our land should be called North-West Britain". Sir Wilfred adds that probably Carson was right in deciding that the proposal "would not appeal to the Ulster people".

Unlike Sir Wilfrid Spender, Carson had not the advantage of being educated at Winchester College. Whatever his faults, he was an Irishman and knew that "our land" was Ireland, and not Britain. The proposal was too much even for Carson. Sir Wilfrid has no doubt that the name would have some advantages in present circumstances. These are not apparent. The average Englishman who today is puzzled to know where exactly 'Ulster' is will, by the change of names, become still more bewildered. Sir Wilfrid would like his fellow countrymen to remember that North-West Britain is neither Cumberland nor yet the Outer Hebrides, but the Six Counties.

Carson was wise in being guided by the Geography lessons he learnt as an Irish schoolboy, even though politics led him astray. In rejecting the Spender idea as he did, he may have wanted to get rid of a nightmare that haunted him - the nightmare of a monument directed in his honour as the leader of North-West Britain in the precincts of the North-West British Parliament, for his admiration of North-West Britons. (As an all-Ireland Unionist, born in Dublin in 1854 with a Galway landed ancestry, Carson's aim in accepting the leadership of Ulster Unionism in 1910 was to "save my own people". Forced in the end to broker the best deal he could for his Northern clients - six counties rather than 32 - he rued his political failure to his dying day. His great Nationalist adversary, Tim Healy, wrote of 'the lawyer with the Dublin accent': "Though a Unionist, Carson was never un-Irish." Carson's rejection of Spender's name change for the new Ulster state - as The Irish News editorial implied - was, therefore, not surprising.

Edited by Eamon Phoenix e.phoenix@irishnews.com