Confidential report from Frederick H. Boland to Seán Nunan (Dublin)¹
(Confidential)

As you will have seen from the newspapers, the British Government have decided not to renew the Prevention of Violence Act which was passed in 1939 to give the British Government the powers to deal with the IRA bombing campaign initiated in this country at the beginning of that year.

2. As the Minister will be aware, the decision not to renew the Act (which was an annual one) was not taken without due reflection by the British authorities. It may seem curious that they should decide to abandon these legislative powers at a time when incidents in the Six County area point to a recrudescence of IRA activity. The principal factor which led to the decision was probably, however, the consideration that, since the abandonment of the travel permit requirement in respect of people coming to this country from Ireland, the British authorities have really had no means of ensuring the effectiveness in practice of the expulsion and exclusion Orders made under the Act. The Home Secretary was no doubt also influenced by the fact that when the Prevention of Violence Act was discussed by the House of Commons in 1953, the general sense of the House, expressed by the former Home Secretary, Mr. Chuter Ede, and others, was in favour of allowing the Act to lapse.