Foul & Unfair

Angry Irish voices filled the lecture theater of Dublin's handsome, wide-flung Leinster House. Honorable red-faced members of the Dail Eireann threw "reckless," "irresponsible," "pique and petulance" at the bowed head of astute, unbowed Prime Minister Eamon de Valera, crouched on his shiny, mahogany front-row seat. De Valera had just tripped an unwary Dail into an unwanted general election, the second within a year.

The night before, a bill to merge Eire's transport system had come up for its second reading. The opposition parties (which altogether--but they are seldom all together--have 71 seats to the 67 of De Valera's Fianna Fail) asked postponement until an investigating committee could complete a report on ugly rumors of fat profits in transport stocks. The committee wanted to know how speculators got hold of confidential information, supposedly known only to high Government officials. Brusquely De Valera rejected the suggestion, but on a vote he lost, 64-to-63. Next day an astonished Dail discovered that he had persuaded aging, ailing President Douglas Hyde to dissolve Parliament, call a new election for May 30.

"Foully, unfairly, in secret and undemocratically this decision has been taken and hurled at Parliament and the people," roared choleric Dr. Thomas O'Higgins, leader of Fine Gael, the principal opposition. Retorted De Valera, out to get a solid majority for his Fianna Fail: "I have no apology to offer. A minority government has responsibility but not power."

For once, Eire's old master had taken a leaf from the book of his old foe, Winston Churchill. Last month Churchill bludgeoned a vote of confidence from Britain's House of Commons. Last week De Valera, riding a wave of Irish resentment against U.S. and British demands that Dublin get tougher with Germany, was playing a similar, all-or-nothing game.

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