LONDON’S NEW PERIL.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 February 1921, Page 5

LONDON’S NEW PERIL.

SINISTER SINN FEIN PLOTS. BARRICADES IN DOWNING STREET. London, November 30. Barricades in Downing Street, suspension of the time-honoured Saturday privilege permitted to the public of being shown over the Houses of Parliament, and strict supervision to be exercised over the admission of strangers within the precincts thereof, and triplicated police guards, remind one of the evil days when Fenianism was rampant in the land. Well, Sinn Fein has proved abundantly that such precautionary measures are very necessary, and those optimistic souls who imagined that the outrage and murder gangs of the Irish Republican forces would confine their active campaign to Ireland have already been disillusioned by last Sunday’s events in Liverpool and in London. It is only a few days since the Irish Office published docurpents showing that the plans had been prepared for a destruction campaign on a large scale in the great Lancashire seaport and on Sunday the Sinn Fein conspirators attempted to put part of it into operation. Seventeen incendiary fires were started in cotton warehouses and timber yards, and, though timely discovery was made, damage was done to the extent of at .least a million pounds, and a boy was shot by one of the desperadoes in an attempt to murder a policeman.

Mr. Devlin denounced the Sinn Fein plans disclosed in the House of Commons by Sir Hamar Greenwood as Dublin Castle “fakes.” Liverpool has swiftly supplied him with a crushing answer. It is well knou’ft that Ministers for some time past have been receiving threats of assassination and warning letters, which it would be folly on their part to ignore. It is the duty of Ministers to take no unnecessary risks for themselves, especially as they cannot be careless of their own safety without involving innocent people in the consequence of their carelessness. The obvious place where; strict precautions should he taken is the Houses of Parliament and the Ministerial residences and official habitats also. When the great northern cities arc being made, the object of Sihn Feiners’ criminal attentions, we may be sure that London will not be overlooked, and we can be quite sure that the idea of outrage in the Houses of Parliament will naturally appeal to their imagination. Crime is imitative, and we are most of ns convinced to-day that the crimes of the Irish and Irish-American dynamitards of 1884 and 1887 will be imitated and possibly “improved” upon The conviction is not comforting. Tn the earlier year a plot was hatched for the simultaneous wrecking of railway stations at Paddington. Victoria, ’Charing Cross, and Ludgate Hill, though only at Victoria did an explosion actually occur. But in January, 1885, a dynamite explosion at the Tower .caused many casualties, and on the same day, when Parliament was not sitting, a parcel of dynamite exploded under the Treasury Bench in the House of Commons, blew Mr. Gladstone’s usual seat to fragments, and a bomb was discovered on the steps of the crypt under Westminster Hall. These outrages, which, it is to be remembered, were the work of ignorant men. much less dangerous than the scoundrels who control the dark forces of, Sinn Fein, broke nearly twenty years of immunity from Fenian outrages which London had enjoyed since the Clerkenwell explosion of 1867. On that occasion six .persons were killed outright, six died later of wounds, and a hundred others were injured in a desperate attempt to enable two Fenians to escape from Clerkenwell gaol by blowing down a 60-yard section of the prison wall. The police had been warned, but they took no real precautions, and, indeed, appear to have suspected a hoax. Against desperate men willing to giVe their own lives for the satisfaction of causing destruction to life and property, no complete precautions are, of course, possible. But there is all the difference in the world between taking reasonable precautions and taking none, and our police to-day are not in the least likely to err on the side of laxity. But London is such a huge warehouse of objects human and inanimate that are certain to offer irresistible temptation to the sinister of conspirators against whom the authorities are not warring, that adequate protection for all is practically an impossibility. In a sense London is at present in greater peril than she was during the war, for the enemy is within her gates and can select his objectives and his own time for attacking them, whereas the aerial raider could only indulge in “pot-shots” when climatic conditions and other factors were in his favor.