Everything about Arthur Griffith totally explained
Arthur Griffith (;
31 March 1872 –
12 August 1922) was the founder and third leader of
Sinn Féin. He served as
President of Dáil Éireann from January to August 1922, and was head of the Irish delegation at the negotiations that produced the
Anglo-Irish Treaty of
1921.Griffith College Dublin in South Circular Road, Dublin, Griffith Avenue in North Dublin and Griffith Park in
Lucan, County Dublin are named after him.
Early life
Arthur Griffith was born at 61 Upper Dominick Street,
Dublin, Ireland on
31 March 1872, of distant
Welsh lineage, and was educated by the Irish
Christian Brothers.
He worked for a time as a printer before joining the
Gaelic League, which was aimed at promoting the restoration of the
Irish language. His father had been a printer on
The Nation newspaper — Griffith was one of several employees locked out in the early 1890s due to a dispute with a new owner of the paper. The young Griffith was a member of the
Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). He visited
South Africa from 1897–1898, after the defeat and death of
Charles Stewart Parnell whose more moderate views he'd initially supported, while he (Griffith) convalesced from
tuberculosis; there he supported the
Boers against British expansionism and was a strong admirer of
Paul Kruger.
In 1899, on returning to
Dublin, he co-founded the weekly
United Irishman newspaper with his associate William Rooney, who died in 1901. On
24 November 1910, Griffith married his fiancée, Maud Sheehan, after a fifteen-year engagement; they'd a son and a daughter.
Griffith's fierce criticism of the
Irish Parliamentary Party's alliance with
British Liberalism was heavily influenced by the anti-liberal rhetoric of
Young Irelander
John Mitchel, the
County Londonderry-born son of a
Presbyterian minister; Griffith combined fierce hostility to snobbery and deference, as well as a sort of "
producerist" attitude based on skilled craft
trade unionism, with some strongly illiberal attitudes. He defended
anti-semitic rioters in
Limerick, denounced
socialists and
pacifists as conscious tools of the
British Empire, and successively praised
Tsarist Russia and
Wilhelm II as morally superior to
Great Britain.
In September 1900, he established an organization called
Cumann na nGaedhael to unite advanced nationalist/
separatist groups and clubs. In 1903 He set up the National Council to campaign against the visit to
Ireland of
King Edward VII his consort
Alexandra of Denmark.
In 1907, this organization merged with Sinn Féin and a number of others movements to form the
Sinn Féin League (Irish for "Ourselves"). In 1906, after the
United Irishman journal collapsed because of a libel suit, Griffith refounded it under the title
Sinn Féin; it briefly became a daily in 1909 and survived until its suppression by the British government in 1914, after which it was sporadically revived as the ultranationalist journal,
Nationality.
Foundation of Sinn Féin
Most historians opt for
28 November 1905, as a founding date because it was on this date that Griffith first presented his 'Sinn Féin Policy'. In his writings, Griffith declared that the
Act of Union of Great Britain and Ireland in 1800 was illegal and that, consequently, the Anglo-Irish dual monarchy which existed under
Grattan's Parliament, and the so-called
Constitution of 1782 was still in effect. Its first president was
Edward Martyn.
The fundamental principles on which Sinn Féin was founded were outlined in an article published in 1904 by Griffith called the
Resurrection of Hungary, in which, noting how in 1867 Hungary went from being
part of the
Austrian Empire to a separate co-equal kingdom in
Austria-Hungary. Though not a
monarchist himself, Griffith advocated such an approach for the
Anglo-Irish relationship, namely that Ireland should become a separate kingdom alongside Great Britain, the two forming a
dual monarchy with a shared monarch but separate governments, as it was thought this solution would be more palatable to the British. This was similar to the policy of
Henry Grattan a century earlier. However, this idea was never really embraced by later separatist leaders, especially
Michael Collins, and never came to anything, although
Kevin O'Higgins toyed with the idea as a means of ending
partition, shortly before his assassination.
Griffith sought to combine elements of
Parnellism with the traditional separatist approach; he saw himself not as a leader but as providing a strategy which a new leader might follow. Central to his strategy was parliamentary
abstention: the belief that Irish
MPs should refuse to attend the
Parliament of the United Kingdom at
Westminster, but should instead establish a separate Irish parliament (with an administrative system based on local government) in Dublin.
In 1907 Sinn Féin unsuccessfully contested a by-election in North Leitrim, where the sitting MP, one Charles Dolan of
Manorhamilton,
County Leitrim, had defected to Sinn Féin. At this time Sinn Féin was being infiltrated by the
Irish Republican Brotherhood, who saw it as a vehicle for their aims; it had several local councillors (mostly in Dublin, including
W. T. Cosgrave) and contained a dissident wing grouped from 1910 around the monthly periodical called
Irish Freedom. The IRB members argued that the aim of dual monarchism should be replaced by republicanism, and that Griffith was excessively inclined to compromise with conservative elements (notably in his pro-employer position during the 1913 – 1914
Dublin Lockout, when he saw the syndicalism of
James Larkin as aimed at crippling Irish industry for Great Britain's benefit).
1916 Rising
In 1916 rebels seized and took over a number of key locations in Dublin, in what became known as the
Easter Rising. After its defeat, it was widely described both by British politicians and the Irish and British media as the "Sinn Féin rebellion", even though Sinn Féin had no involvement. When in 1917, surviving leaders of the rebellion were released from gaol (or escaped) they joined Sinn Féin
en masse, using it as a vehicle for the advancement of the republic. The result was a bitter clash between those original members who backed Griffith's concept of an Anglo-Irish dual monarchy and the new members, under
Éamon de Valera, who wanted to achieve a republic. Matters almost led to a split at the party's Ard Fheis (conference) in October, 1917.
In a compromise, it was decided to seek to establish a republic initially, then allow the people to decide if they wanted a republic or a monarchy, subject to the condition that no member of Britain's royal house could sit on any prospective Irish throne. Griffith resigned the party leadership and presidency at that Ard Fheis, and was replaced by de Valera. The leaders of the
Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) sought a rapprochement with Griffith over the British threat of
conscription, which both parties condemned, but Griffith refused unless the IPP embraced his more radical and subversive ideals, a suggestion which
John Dillon, a leader of the IPP rubbished as unrealistic, although it would ultimately mean the defeat and dissolution of the IPP after the election in December 1918.
War of Independence
Griffith was elected a Sinn Féin MP in the
Cavan East by-election of mid-1918, and held the seat when Sinn Féin subsequently routed the
Irish Parliamentary Party at the
1918 general election. In that election he was also returned for the seat of
Tyrone North West.
Sinn Féin's MPs decided not to take their seats in the
British House of Commons but instead set up an Irish parliament,
Dáil Éireann; the
Irish War of Independence followed almost immediately. The dominant leaders in the new
unilaterally declared Irish Republic were figures like Éamon de Valera,
President of Dáil Éireann (1919-21),
President of the Republic (1921-1922), and
Michael Collins, Minister for Finance, head of the IRB and the
Irish Republican Army's Director of Intelligence.
During de Valera's absence in the
United States (1919-21) Griffith served as Acting President and gave regular press interviews. He was imprisoned in December 1920 but was subsequently released on
30 June 1921.
Treaty negotiations and death
Griffith became central to the Republic again when, in October 1921, President de Valera asked him to head the delegation of Irish plenipotentiaries to negotiate with the British government. The delegates set up Headquarters in
Hans Place, London. After nearly 2 months of negotiations it was there, in private conversations, that the delegates finally decided to recommend the Treaty to the Dáil Éireann on
5 December 1921; negotiations closed at 2.20am on
6 December 1921. Griffith was the member of the treaty delegation most supportive of its eventual outcome, a compromise based on
dominion status, rather than a republic. After the ratification by 64 votes to 57 of the
Anglo-Irish Treaty by the Second Dáil on
7 January 1922, he replaced de Valera, who stepped down in protest as President of the soon-to-be abolished
Irish Republic. A vote was held on 9 January to choose between Griffith or De Valera, which De Valera lost by 58 to 60. A second ratification of the Treaty by the
House of Commons of Southern Ireland followed shortly afterwards. Griffith was, however, to a great extent merely a figurehead as President of the
second Dáil Éireann and his relations with Michael Collins, head of the new
Provisional Government were somewhat tense.
Under increasing strain because of quarrels with many old friends, and faced with a nation sliding into chaos, Griffith's health deteriorated and he died of a
brain haemorrhage on
12 August 1922, at the age of 50, ten days before
Michael Collins' assassination in
County Cork. He was buried in
Glasnevin Cemetery four days later.
Posthumous reputation
The historian
Diarmaid Ferriter considers that, though he'd founded Sinn Féin, Griffith was 'quickly airbrushed' from Irish history. His widow had to beg his former colleagues for a pension, saying that he 'had made them all'. She considered that his grave plot was too modest and threatened to exhume his body. Only in 1968 was a plaque fixed on his former home.
Anti-Semitism
The charge of anti-semitism has often been levelled at Griffith. He published articles signed by 'The Home Secretary' in his
United Irishman during the Dreyfus Affair which displayed clear hatred for Jews. Even after Alfred Dreyfus had been pardoned Griffith remained virulently Anti-Dreyfusard. He also published Anti-Semitic material by his friends Oliver St John Gogarty and William Bulfin in both the
United Irishman and
Sinn Féin . In Bulfin's
Rambles in Eirinn, serialised by Griffith, the author encounters a Jewish peddlar on a bridge and interrogates him about his origins:
He smiled an oily, cross-eyed, subtle smile of self-apology and insinuating humility as he met my glance, and said in the best Hamburg English :
‘That vos a warm day, sar.’
‘Do you find this country hotter than your part of Germany?’ I asked.
‘I vos from Dhublin, sar mineself, und not from Germany.’
‘You are Irish, then.’
‘Irish yes, from Dublin.’
‘God help us! And were you born in Dublin?’
‘Witt der help of Gott, sar.’
‘Of Jewish parents, I suppose?’
‘No sar, Irish’
Griffith's editotial support for the
Limerick Pogrom (a boycott of Jewish businesses in Limerick organised by the Redemptorist Father Creagh in 1904) has also been criticsed. His claim that it was a boycott of usurers is weakened by the fact that the vast majority of the people affected by the boycott were tradesmen:
When Catholics - as Catholics - are boycotted, it consitutes undoubtedly an outrageous injustice, and similarly if Jews - as Jews - were boycotted, it would be outrageously injust. But the jew in Limerick hasn't been boycotted because he's a Jew, but because he's a userer. And we deny that we offend against ethics by most hertily advocating the boycott of usurers, whether they be Jew, Pagan or Christian.
As his biographer Brian Maye has pointed out, Griffith clearly had a "wildly exaggerated notion of the extent of Jewish involvement in money-lending and devious business practices" and his language was dangerously provocative.
Quotations
- "In Arthur Griffith there's a mighty force in Ireland. He has none of the wildness of some I could name. Instead there's an abundance of wisdom and an awareness of things which are Ireland." - Michael Collins.
"A braver man than Arthur Griffith, I never met" - The Earl of Birkenhead, British negotiator in the Treaty, quoted from Tim Pat Coogan's "Michael Collins"
Sources
Patrick Maume, The Long Gestation (Gill & Macmillan, 1999).
There is a 2003 reprint of The Resurrection of Hungary with an introduction by Patrick Murray (University College Dublin Press).
The Treaty Debates on-line (Dec 1921-Jan 1922)
Further Information
Get more info on 'Arthur Griffith'.
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