On the invitation of the Taoiseach, a Conference was held today at the Mansion House to consider how best to aid the Anti-Partition candidates in the forthcoming election in the Six Counties.¹ Leaders of all parties including Opposition attended. Present were Taoiseach, Norton, Mulcahy, MacBride, Blowick, Everett, Dillon, de Valera, Frank Aiken, Patrick Smith. After the Conference following statement issued:

'Efforts are being made to represent the result of the forthcoming elections in the Six North Eastern Counties as justifying the continued unnatural division of our country. We, representing the overwhelming majority of the Irish people, assert that the continuance of Partition is a flagrant denial of the democratic right of national self-determination and is bitterly resented by the Irish people.

The partition of Ireland was effected by a British Parliament in 1920 in defiance of the clearly expressed wishes of the Irish people and no Irish vote, north or south, was cast in favour of it.

We assert once more the right of the Irish people to the ownership and control of all the national territory and we repudiate the right of Britain to carve up the Irish nation or to occupy any portion of it, even though a local majority against unity can be procured in the area which was deliberately selected for that purpose by the British Parliament.

Elections in that artificially selected area and based as they are - on the gerrymandered constituencies and an out-of-date register, are a violation of democratic principles. They are calculated only to serve the interests of the privileged group who, by electoral manipulation in Derry City, the Counties of Tyrone and Fermanagh and many other areas, have not hesitated to make one partitionist vote equal to two or more anti-partitionist votes. The result of elections in these circumstances must be a foregone conclusion.

Efforts are being made to arouse sectarian hatreds and to create intolerance. We appeal to our fellow countrymen in the north-east irrespective of creed or politics not to allow such efforts to blind them to their common interests and duty as democrats and Irishmen.

The continued domination of a small and privileged ascendancy in a portion of our island can hold out the prospect of nothing but bitterness and strife. A united Ireland could make what a divided Ireland never can - an effective contribution to the causes of world peace based on democratic institutions and Christian principles.

The candidates in the forthcoming election who stand for the unity of Ireland vindicate the just demand of the Irish nation in this regard and, as such, deserve the support of the united Irish nation.'

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