Timothy Quill Quotes

Work, but use your head as well as your hands, trust in God and He will never let you down.

I noticed that Mr. Quill, T.D, stated the people who advocated the abolition of the bonus were the people who were getting 200 p.c. more for their produce than they were before the war. I presume he was referring to the farmers' produce. I wonder why the Farmers' Deputies let such a misleading statement pass unchallenged. I do not know Mr. Quill, but I gather from his statement that he must be a person who knows nothing about farmers' markets or fairs, or that he wants to create a wrong impression in the minds of the public who are not interested in farming or know nothing, or very little about their present impoverished means... I wonder has Mr. Quill read the report from last week's Dublin beef and mutton market, published in the 'Irish Independent' of Friday; if not, I would advise him to buy that back number, for I consider it would be a penny well spent. It would teach him the truth of how fast the prices of our produce are coming back to pre-war level.

The Corporation is going to spend a fortune on putting people safely underground, but no money could be found to give them proper housing overground.

Mr. Quill was also a facile and authoritative writer on agricultural matters.

The attitude of the Farmers’ Party does not always stand for the views or opinions of the average farmer in the country. They elected representatives on the (Cork) County Council whose election cry was “economy and efficiency”. What is their first experience in economy? They cut down the wages of the workers and the amount of money allocated for the roads in such a manner that the men were left idle for a considerable period. That is a species of economy that anybody could carry out, but the Labour representatives do not regard it as an economy and we look upon it as an extravagance, because apart from the human aspect of the thing, the deterioration in which the roads are bound to suffer in the meantime could not be made good except at a cost out of all proportion to the money alleged to have been economised.

His role in the expulsion of Michael O’Riordan (who founded the Communist Party of Ireland) from the Labour Party served to underline his assertion that ‘the working men of Ireland...have neither room nor scope for fascism or communism’.

Labour has many critics and the workers are too much given to the catch cries of different political parties, and by doing so weakens the power of the Labour Party, whose policy is that every man is entitled to a living wage in his own country.

Whenever the Labour Party is mentioned in a historical context as far as North Cork is concerned, the name of Tim Quill surfaces. Quill was an eloquent public speaker and an unusually intelligent man. He was Labour Deputy for the old North Cork constituency in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Later, he became manager of the Co-op retail shops in Cork City and then purchased a farm at Blarney where he made an internationally respected name as a breeder of Pedigree Friesian livestock.

I regret very much the reverse that has been sustained, where we have lost men like Mr. (Tom) Johnson, who, because of his industry and ability, would receive a place of honour in any Parliament in the world, and young men of the ability and honesty of Mr. Quill, who had been defeated in North Cork by a mere handful of votes, after making a marvellous fight against a combination of influences.

We will not discuss the question as to whether the measure of freedom we have obtained is sufficient or otherwise. That is a question on which many people differ. Our complaint in the Labour Movement is that the liberty obtained is not being utilised for the development of the country as it should be, for even at tonight, to a considerable extent, 50,000 to 60,000 people in the Free State are unemployed and many hungry. The one democratic bank we had, the National Land Bank, has been handed over to the Bank of Ireland. We stand for decent wages and conditions. If the workers of the country have decent wages, business in the country will improve, as the shopkeepers and the farmers who want a market for their products will benefit. They will not eliminate unemployment by exporting the best workers of the country to America and by compelling those who have to remain at home to live on out-door relief. We seek a decent, contented and independent working class in the country - not a state of affairs that made despised and degraded paupers of the people.

I came back to four years of internment. Following my release from the Curragh Camp and my return to Cork in 1943, I was among those who founded the Liam Mellows Branch of the Labour Party in the hope that it might become the political voice of Irish anti-fascism in this city. I was named secretary of that branch but unfortunately the chairman we were given by the Party leadership was a Cork City Councillor who would debase the name of Labour in 1944 by a vitriolic attack on what he called "the Jew boys" of Cork. It was in opposition to such anti-Semitism that I insisted on giving a public lecture under the auspices of the Liam Mellows Branch on the subject of the Jewish question. A number of prominent members of Cork's Jewish community attended that public meeting and the future Lord Mayor of Cork, Gerald Goldberg, said from the floor: "I came here to defend my people, but when I heard the lecturer I saw there was no need". But the anti-Semitic Labour Councillor did not give up. When Gerald Goldberg subsequently made a donation to branch funds I was accused of attempting to 'subvert the Party with Jewish money'. An investigating committee was established, presided over by a Labour TD. The complaint against me was sustained and I was expelled from a Party that was not prepared to support my continuing anti-fascist stand in 1944.

I am pleased that Mr. Quill has stressed the historical side of our problems. I also agree that until the money question is dealt with by the government, our many problems cannot be tackled satisfactorily. If we consider the destruction of France and Germany during the Great War and what she has done since to repair the damage, is there any reason why an Irish Government should not have dealt with the slums during the past eighteen years? I suggest that this be published in pamphlet form.

It is now becoming recognised in all parts of the world that there can be no healthy Christian State, in any country, where poverty exists amongst the masses of the people.

Many people fail to realise that with the enormous productive capacity of our industrial system today, it is no longer necessary to work so hard or so long as in former times. In fact, most of the goods required, particularly food and clothing, can now be produced in abundance with less personal toil. Yet there exists poverty in most countries. The real trouble is that money and money power now exceed their rightful use, to serve as a medium of exchange. In reality, money which should simply act like a river to carry the ships containing food from one town down to the next is now more important than the goods it carries. The river refuses to carry the goods down to the next town and the people are poverty stricken. The boots and shoes are in the warehouse in the principal streets. Money prevents them being taken down the side streets or out the country to the shabby and bootless children. The river called 'money,' does not flow sufficiently strong, or enough of it to those places, to help them get the goods. Naturally, one might say, why then does not the Government go in for a proper drainage system to enable the goods to be taken where wanted: It is mainly due to the fact that the people and even the Government have not in the first place got away from the false notion that money is a commodity of intrinsic value. This view continues from the time when it was so and the false notion is fostered by the suggestion that money is inseparable from gold. In the second place, there still exists the false notion that banks do not create money, but only safeguard the deposits of their clients. There also exists a failure to realise the growing rate at which machinery, electricity and steam are replacing man-power and making so much of this physical work superfluous, and the possibility of providing sufficient for all, as a result of the immense possibilities in modern production. To meet the ever present problems of unemployment and poverty, which are causing physical and moral crimes, it is clear that the Government must govern its people and take on its rightful function of supreme control of the issue of credit and control of the money system, seeing that the real security for credit is the goods produced and services rendered by the people themselves.

The rising prices and scarcity of some articles of food shows that there is no control of profits.