On This Day / August 30, 1921

Summary: On This Day – 30th August 1921, Derry Corporation rejected Partition while a Northern Ireland minister defended his appointment of a Catholic official. Edited by Éamon Phoenix.

Derry Rejects Partition | On This Day – 30th August 1921

AT A special meeting of Derry Corporation yesterday, Alderman Cahal Bradley [Sinn Fein] proposed the following resolution:

‘That, as a majority of the people of Derry city have expressed in election their determined opposition to a so-called Northern Parliament and have declared they will refuse to recognise its authority, such authority could only be exercised by force and coercion.

We refuse to consent to any such separation from the rest of Ireland and to make the fullest use of our right to nullify it.’

Alderman Bonner seconded. Derry city, he said, rightly belonged to Donegal. The resolution was carried by 18 votes to 15.

Minister Attacked over Catholic Appointment

Mr E M Archdale, Minister of Agriculture for ‘Northern Ireland’, was again on the stool of explanation at Brookeborough where he attended a meeting presided over by Sir Basil Brooke.

The chairman referred to the criticism levelled against Mr Archdale ‘for accepting a Roman Catholic in the Northern Department of Agriculture and said the gentleman in question was a loyalist and not only that, but he knew his job. He [Sir Basil] considered the criticism as wrong in every way.’

The right hon. E M Archdale said the people who made these criticisms did not know the facts of the case.

He knew Mr Coyle, the gentleman whose appointment was criticised, for 25 years as an expert in the Department of Agriculture [in Dublin] and no more efficient man could be found.

He had been requested by several people to resign over the appointment but he had no intention of doing so.

Tyrone Bandsman Shot Dead

The death occurred in the Mater Infirmorum Hospital of John O’Neill, the young farmer of Annaghboe, County Tyrone, one of the victims of a shooting outrage at Coalisland.

Mr O’Neill was a member of a Nationalist band that was returning from a hospital fete at Donaghmore and about a mile outside Coalisland shots were fired at it with the result that O’Neill was wounded in the chest and abdomen and another man, Bernard Donnelly, shot in the foot.

A member of the band named John McGrath stated that as the band were passing through Coalisland main street playing Nationalist airs, a young man appeared at a window and fired four shots, one of which hit the bandsmen.

(Éamon Phoenix editor’s note: A shy, self-effacing Fermanagh landlord, Archdale was shocked to find himself under fire for appointing a Catholic official.

Ironically, he was defended by his successor, Basil Brooke who, as Minister in 1933, would urge Protestants not to employ Catholics who were ’99 per cent disloyal’. Brooke’s reward was the Premiership.)

On This Day – 30th August 1921

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