Campaign is launched at Ballygrainey meeting (1941)
A suggestion that there should be formed in each constituency a consultative committee of farmers to confer with their parliamentary representative and advise him on matters affecting the agricultural industry, was put forward by alderman Thomas Bailie, JP, the unofficial Unionist candidate for North Down, at a meeting in the Orange Hall, Ballygrainey, during this week in 1941.
Alderman Bailie said: “I am afraid that at the present time farming problems are dealt with largely by laymen who know nothing about the farmers’ difficulties.
“We have a multiplicity of marketing boards – so many, indeed, that we might expect to have a farmers' marketing board, because the farmers will be on the market as well as their products.”
He claimed: “The policy of parliament ought to be to cater for agriculture in such a way that in time of peace the industry would be healthy and prosperous and that in time of war there would not be a hurried scramble to secure production.
“There ought to be continuity of policy in agriculture in the interests not only of the farmer and the agricultural worker, but to safeguard the welfare of the community at large.”
He continued: “If there was ever a time when the people of this country had a right to express their views with regard to the government, that time is now.
“The government, in my judgment, has signally failed. In so far as they have followed the step by step policy with Great Britain they have done well enough, but it is difficult to point to any legislation that had resulted from our own initiative that has been a success.”
He said that the Transport Act, “as an instance”, had resulted in an unnecessary upheaval and had greatly increased the rates of transport.
He concluded: “If Major Workman, my opponent, as a Unionist, could be considered a Loyalist, surely myself, as a Unionist and for over 15 years a member of the Orange Order, is entitled to call myself a Loyalist, but I refuse to surrender my freedom of action to vote according to my convictions and the desire of my constituents in matters of administration and economic reform.”