November 7 1923
A meeting of Derry nationalists was held in St Columb’s Hall on Sunday evening to consider the position created by recent legislation of the Belfast parliament, imposing intolerable disabilities on the Catholic people within its jurisdiction. Mr Hugh C O’Doherty, ex-mayor, who was called upon to take the chair, said their rights as Catholics were being not only encroached upon, but abolished, and they could no longer refrain from protesting and from taking action to safeguard those rights.
Mr J Bonner proposed the following resolutions:-
That, whilst renewing our protest against the partition of Ireland, we, representing the Catholic and nationalist people of Derry city, who have a majority of 1,900 parliamentary voters, and on a count of heads of nearly 10,000, hereby call the attention of the governments of Great Britain and the Irish Free State respectively to the action of the Belfast government in the utter disregard by them of the rights of the large Catholic population in the Six Counties, and especially (a) in repeal of the Proportional Representation Act; (b) in the gerrymandering of local electoral areas in such a manner as to make large majorities in many districts subject to minorities; (c) in the imposition of oaths and declarations of allegiance to their government in districts which must in accordance with the Treaty be transferred to the Irish Free State.
Derry nationalists also called for the disbandment of the Ulster Special Constabulary and an for immediate convening of the Boundary Commission so that Derry city could be transferred to the Irish Free State.
Lord Douglas Charged with Libel of Mr Churchill
The Hon Alfred Douglas Bruce Douglas, commonly called Lord Alfred Douglas, was charged at Bow Street, London, yesterday with criminally libelling Mr Winston Churchill in a pamphlet entitled “The Murder of Lord Kitchener and the Truth About the Battle of Jutland and the Jews”.
The prosecution was at the instance of the Public Prosecutor, and the pamphlet had been on sale for three weeks. Mr Churchill was in the court during the opening of the case by Sir Richard Muir for the prosecution. Counsel said the truth or falsehood of statements in libels were not in the issue before the court, but there were some facts not in controversy to which he must call attention. These facts were necessary in order that the court might follow the meaning of libellous statements. Mr Churchill had not been connected with the Admiralty since May 1915, and was not a Cabinet Minister from November 1915 to 1917. In the documents with which they were dealing, Mr Churchill was referred to as being a Cabinet Minister when Jutland was fought, namely, May, 1916.
Lord Alfred Douglas, who achieved notoriety for his affair with Oscar Wilde in Victorian Britain, was subsequently found guilty of libelling Churchill and received a prison sentence of six months.
