Foreign News: The Ghosts

A paunchy, substantial ghost walked in the House of Commons last week. Another, not so large but equally substantial, flitted about the entrance. Fermanagh and Tyrone’s two M.P.s, Anthony J. Mulvey and Patrick Cunningham, had come to take their seats at last.

Ten years ago voters of the two counties, who passionately prefer union with Eire to partition with Northern Ireland, elected Editor Mulvey and Farmer Cunningham to seats in the British Parliament on an abstentionist platform. They promptly refused to take their seats. Thus the two M.P.s at once protested partition, forfeited aggregate salaries of £5,600 ($23,800) each, became Westminster’s most modern ghosts.

Last week, in the hope that the Labor victory somewhat betokened a British change of heart toward Ireland, Messrs. Mulvey and Cunningham decided to go to London at last. From a Government back bench silver-haired Mulvey raised his voice in a luscious Irish brogue: “Now that Britain has elected a more enlightened Government, my people have released me. . . . Before peace can be established justice must be done to Ireland.”

Farmer Cunningham was not present to say “Hear, hear.” He was still outside, wondering whether to come in.