APPENDIX VIII Extracts from the speech delivered by His Excellency Sir Harcourt Butler at a meeting of the United Provinces Legislative Council

28th March 1921

Mr. President and Members of the Legislative Council,

"The recent disorder in Rae Bareli has necessitated a further reconsideration of the question. Whereas the former disorders in Rae Bareli were largely agrarian in origin the recent disorders were mainly political in origin and wholly revolutionary".

"The result of the disorders has been an unfortunate loss of life, for which the agitators are directly responsible, and a feeling of insecurity which if unchecked may spread with untoward results, affecting innocent and guilty alike. Confronted with an elemental question as to the maintenance of order, my Government came unanimously to the conclusion that it was necessary to stop the campaign of unconstitutional agitation and lying, propaganda which has been carried on the four south-eastern districts of Outh—Rae Bareli, Partabgarh, Sultanpur and Fyzabad. We therefore applied to the Government of India to extend the Seditious Meetings Act to those four districts. This has been done".

"I believe that this action will have the support of this Council and of responsible people generally in this province. With the non-co-operators we can have nothing to do beyond meeting their mischievous activities. Their movement is a revolutionary movement playing on passion and pandering to ignorance but the mass of people are loyal and all their interests are bound up with the maintenance of order."