[matter omitted]

10. The Labour Party’s extreme preoccupation with the middle-class vote is an unfavourable development from our point of view. It means that the party will be more concerned not to irritate the latent chauvinism and complacent Protestantism of the British suburbanite than to cater for the feelings of its own idealists and its numerous Irish supporters, whose strength exists mainly on the working-class front. The British Labour Party, like the Democratic Party in the United States, takes its Irish vote largely for granted. The middle-class vote includes, however, an appreciable part of the Catholic vote in this country. A very large proportion of English Catholics are, of course, Irish in origin, but nowadays their Catholicism is a much stronger factor with them than their interest in Ireland or Irish problems. So far as Partition is concerned, such people are probably more effectively approached from the angle of their Catholic sympathies than from the point of view of whatever degree of Irish sentiment they may inherit from their forebears. This is perhaps an additional reason for placing the main emphasis of our anti-Partition propaganda in this country on the discriminatory aspects of Stormont’s policies.