The Truth about Walmsley R.M

the birth rate on the Nationalist side | did not always have such an exagNext week 8 P.D. members will appeal against a total of 57 months in jail sentences arising out of a peaceful Cement Strike protest in Ardglass. These savage sentences caused outrage but no great surprise at the time. The lack of surprise was due to the fact that the Magistrate was Albert James Walmsley R.M.

Of all the Unionist hacks on the Magistrates Bench Walmsley is perhaps the most cordially detested. A mean-minded authoritarian he is notorious for his constant threats to jail for contempt of court anyone who coughs, splutters or glances at a newspaper: During the Ardglass cases he reached new heights of petty tyranny. Informed by the police that someone had -scribbled 'corrupt courts' at the back of the court Walmsley went into a near frenzy and declared that this....''shows the type of people we are dealing with...itis.. ...at least as significant as any of the other evidence which had been produced against the defendants." In fact it was not evidence against the defendants and Walmsley had no idea who did the scribbling. He had just prejudiced the case however.

Not that Walmsley always behaves with the same severity in court. Sometimes he can be positively benevolent. Trying 12 Apprentice Boys for breaking the ban on parades at Kilkeel on August 12th he declared that the Magistrates were taking into account the fact that it was "a token defiance of the law" and that the defendants were men of standing in the community. They were given a one month suspended West, saying ''The Parliamentary Secretary (West) was merely telling the people in Co. Fermanagh that was increasing and that if they were not to be left behind they would have to do something about it by getting married and having larger families". In 1961 he declared that people not loyal to the Crown should not be given public employment. "If the person who is taking up employment which is paid for out of the public purse refuses or is not prepared to give allegiance to the Crown then it is quite clear that that person should be in public employment."

Occasionally - and quite unconsciously - he has his funny side as when he declared that any money spent in connection with senile bigot Brookeborough must be for the public good. “Our Prime Minister, as everyone of all creeds and classes in this country knows, has been one of the greatest Ambassadors for N. Ireland that we have ever had. He has stirred the hearts of Ulstermen from the North of Canada to the sunny shores of New Zealand and any money that is spent on his Department or on sending him on any mis-sion, no matter what it may be, can only be of the very greatest benefit to all sections of the community in N.Ireland.'' February 25th 1958. Perhaps his most absurd statement was ''we are among the highest earning people in the world today... No matter where we look throughout N. Ireland we prosperity on every hand. 9th February 1961.

19 PUBLIC NOTICES 19 PUBLIC NOTICES Walmsley normally adopts an attitude of outraged indignation towards | those charged before him. But he gerated concern for the public good. In November 1959 his firm of solicitors acted to secure a lease of building land at Knockagoney for a totally inactive speculative building firm called Ulster Housing Ltd. Walmsley's partner F. Tughan, Mayor of Bangor, was a shareholder and former director of this company, and an employee of Tughan and Walmsley was a current director. The land was leased from W.M.. -__ May, the Minister for Education who had just bought it. The whole transaction was completed just in time to prevent Belfast Corporation buying the land for Council housing. There is no record of Walmsley trying to persuade his colleagues to drop this shoddy speculative manoeuvre.

Albert Walmsley is a typical product of a system which elevates second-rate Unionist hacks - and the odd Nationalist as well - to the Magistrates bench and gives them inordinate power over the liberty of the working class people whom their party and associates have robbed and plundered.

This petty court-room bully has now been transferred from Co. Down to Belfast where he can jail yet more members of the working class who are not as impressed as he is with the "prosperity on every hand" in N.Ireland and who revolt against it.

19 PUBLIC NOTICES Pottiagh, S mrparkin, Kill Cordoolagh, Mu) mshancorick, Drun heanlish, Derry EEaignnamby ie iC {