Teachers’ congress hears of ‘despicable plunder’ of Irish pensions by British treasury
Dublin, 21 April 1922 – The issue of pensions has dominated the proceedings of the annual congress of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) which took place in Dublin this week.
On 19 April, Edmund Mansfield, Secretary General of the INTO, moved a resolution to demand the immediate enactment of a proper pension scheme for Irish teachers. He said that the story of the pensions movement in this country had been one of ‘promises unredeemed, of actuarial blunders and of hopes that did not come to fruition.’
Mr Mansfield recalled a meeting in 1910 with the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, in which the teachers were given a promise that their pension concerns would be addressed. While English and Scottish teachers got new pension schemes before the war, Mr Mansfield claims that the Irish scheme was delayed by the British treasury which he accuses of ‘despicable plunder’.
Mansfield told the congress that Irish teachers had been promised in 1918-19 that they would receive similar pensions to those paid to their English and Scottish counterparts.
The conference also heard the views of a number of Scottish delegates, among them a Mr Guthrie who said that the problems that confronted Irish teachers were much the same as in Scotland. To laughter, Mr Guthrie declared that the congress was a ‘highly disreputable body’ with some of the Irish membership having done time ‘in the clink’. He added that he looked to the Irish national teachers to be the ‘banner bearers of progressive ideas in Ireland by demanding an educational ladder that would not simply lead to higher education, but an educational system that would be a broad highway that would give to every child the heritage it deserved.’
Mr Guthrie said that teachers should ‘look upon every little child as a little nobleman or little noble woman, and if they did that they would see the regeneration of the land they all loved so well.’
The final session of the congress will take place today.
[Editor's note: This is an article from Century Ireland, a fortnightly online newspaper, written from the perspective of a journalist 100 years ago, based on news reports of the time.]
