Speech to the United Nations Special Assembly by Frederick H. Boland

Our delegation is glad to have this opportunity of explaining to the Assembly the reasons why, and the feeling with which, we voted for the resolution about the situation in Hungry which the Assembly adopted last Sunday, 4 November, on the proposal of the representative of the United States.¹

One of our principal reasons for voting for the resolution was that we wanted to bear testimony, by so doing, to the deep indignation and the intense grief which we in Ireland feel at the violent repression of the rights and liberties of the Hungarian people by the Armed forces of the Soviet Union. What has happened in Hungary in the last five or six days is surely one of the blackest chapters in the history of our times. That the world should be forced to witness such a spectacle at this stage in the history of human progress is a reproach to our civilization and a challenge to all the values which this Organisation exists to preserve.

Even as late as last Saturday, 3 November, the picture of events in Hungary was still confused. Even then, there seemed to some to be still a slight possibility that the Soviet Union would agree to withdraw its troops from Hungary and that the Hungarian people might be free again to have a government of its own choice. We now know that that was merely wishful thinking. Whatever doubts we may have had in interpreting the previous developments, however, none of us can be under the slightest misapprehension or illusion now as to the significance of what has taken place since Sunday. The Soviet Union has claimed that it intervened in Hungary in response to the desire of the workers of that country to defeat a counter-revolution of landlords and capitalists. By what right or title does the Soviet Union claim to speak or act for the workers of Hungary or, indeed, for any other section of the Hungarian nation? Surely there must be few people in the world so gullible as to be deceived by so hollow and cynical a pretext.

The conclusions to be drawn from recent events in Hungary are quite unmistakable, and it is well, I think, that we in this Assembly should state them plainly so that the people of Hungary may know that we do not misjudge or misunderstand them but that, on the contrary, we honour them and sympathise with them, and feel for them deeply in all the horror and tragedy of their plight. The conclusions we draw – and they are all either stated or implied in the Assembly’s resolution – are that the domination of Hungary by the Soviet Union is an outrage to the national pride of the Hungarian people and utterly abhorrent to their sense of national dignity and their spirit of independence; that the totalitarian régime imposed on Hungary by the Soviet Union had become so hateful to the people, so repugnant to their love of liberty and their religious and political traditions that a widespread popular revolt embracing all sections of the community, and prepared to face any sacrifice rather than continue to suffer an intolerable tyranny, arose to put an end to it; and that the Soviet Union has now used its armed forces on Hungarian soil to overthrow the government set up by this popular movement and to set up a puppet régime of its own, contrary to the wishes of the Hungarian people and in violation of the rights of self-determination and political independence guaranteed to Hungary by the Charter.

As, for the moment, we are merely explaining our votes on the resolution of 4 November, it would scarcely be in order, I expect, to suggest any new step at this stage. I hope, however, that we shall not simply lie back and leave the resolution of 4 November where it is, but that we shall continue to use the moral authority of the United Nations, which during the past week has proved itself a potent and constructive factor in another context, to assert the indefeasible rights of the Hungarian nation and to safeguard the principles of the Charter.

Whatever it may be possible to do, however, let us not yield to a feeling of despair. As we in Ireland know, the sense of nationhood, the urge to national self-determination, never dies. It is handed on from generation to generation, fortified by the example of its heroes and inspired by the memory of its martyrs.

In our times, we have seen historic nations lose their freedom and independence only to regain them triumphantly. We are profoundly confident that the gallant Hungarian nation, which has won the admiration of the world by its heroism, will rise again to enjoy the national freedom and independence which are its natural right.

But if the ideals of freedom and self-determination are to retain their moral force and continue to inspire free men and freedom-loving peoples throughout the world, they must be preserved from the advocacy of false and treacherous friends. As the representative of China recalled in his speech this morning, among the Members of the United Nations which have in the past held themselves out as champions of the right of national self-determination is the Soviet Union. It has been diligent in asserting the right of subject peoples to political independence and in dispensing its benedictions to nations struggling to be free.

I speak of the professions of the Soviet Union in the past. I cannot say what its professions on this matter will be in future, or what effect they are likely to have on those to whom they are addressed. I know that for us in Ireland – and I venture to think that for the peoples of many other of the smaller nations represented here – any mention in the future of national independence or anti-colonialism or the right of self-determination by any spokesman of the Soviet Union will always evoke in our minds a single name, a name on which the courage and endurance of a very gallant people have shed a great and undying glory, the name of Hungary.