ARTHUR GRIFFITH
ARTHUR GRIFFITH
OWEN McGEE
First published in 2015 by Irish Academic Press
8 Chapel Lane
Sallins
Co. Kildare
Ireland
© 2015 Owen McGee
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
An entry can be found on request
978-1-78537-009-0 (cloth)
978-1-78537-010-6 (PDF)
978-1-78537-012-0 (Epub)
978-1-78537-011-3 (Mobi)
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
An entry can be found on request
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved alone, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Contents
1.The Dubliner and Independent Nationalist (1871–96)
2.The Pro-Boer Republican (1897–1902)
4.The Resurrection of Hungary and the Birth of Sinn Féin (1904–5)
5.The Stillborn Party: Sinn Féin (1906–10)
6.The Framework of Home Rule (1910–14)
7.The First World War and the Reinvention of Sinn Féin (1914–18)
8.The Launch of Dáil Eireann (1918–19)
9.Dáil Eireann as an Underground Organisation (1919–20)
10.The Search for a Negotiable Settlement (1921)
11.Securing an Anglo-Irish Agreement? (1922)
12.The Survival of Dáil Eireann (1922)
Acknowledgements
This book is dedicated to the memory of my late father Donard McGee, a musician and bank official who first stimulated my interest in history. Shortly before he died, he encouraged me to complete this book while he also left to me his histories of the banking and transport industries. This book was written over a three-year period. It was not possible for me to find academic support specifically for the idea of researching and writing a biography of Griffith but during 2008 a fellowship held at the National Library of Ireland gave me an opportunity to work with records that related directly to Griffith’s later career and thus an interest in pursuing the idea, first entertained during 2006, was possible to sustain. I wish to thank Lisa Hyde of Merrion Press, who suggested the idea of a Griffith biography to me many years ago, as well as her publisher Conor Graham, for being willing to publish my book and for producing such a handsome volume. Thanks are also due to the Director of the National Archives of Ireland, UCD Archives and the UCD–OFM Partnership, the Parliamentary Archives (UK), Churchill Archives Centre, Westminster Diocesan Archives and the manuscripts department of the National Library of Ireland for permission to quote from manuscripts in their possession. Thanks are also due to the National Library for permission to reproduce several of the illustrations that feature in this book.
List of Plates
1.Griffith’s birthplace at 61 Upper Dominick Street, photographed before its demolition by Dublin Corporation. (National Library of Ireland, O’Luing papers)
2.The earliest known portrait of Griffith (aged twenty-six).
3.Maud Sheehan (1876–1963) as a young woman. Griffith’s future wife was a daughter of middle-class and Catholic parents whose two siblings entered religious orders and she may also have been so intended (note the crucifix belt). (National Library of Ireland, Griffith papers)
4.William Rooney (1872–1901), Griffith’s assistant in the Young Ireland League. Like Arthur’s sister Marcella (1866–1900), Rooney died as a result of a disease contracted in a Dublin slum tenement. He was the first literary editor of the United Irishman (1899–1901).
5.Griffith on a day-trip to Tara, Co. Meath, a few months before launching the Sinn Féin Policy to coincide with the creation of the Industrial Development Association (November 1905). The photo-shy man to the left of Fr. Forde is James Casey, the first secretary of the Gaelic League. On the far right is the Healyite Dublin city councillor Walter Cole, who arranged the release of Griffith’s father Arthur C. Griffith (1838–1904) from the workhouse and became a long-term political ally. The Leader (1944)
6.Máire Butler (1874–1920), a wealthy Catholic writer and mutual friend of Griffith and Patrick Pearse. She gave the United Irishman and Sinn Féin a puritan tone through her work as their literary editor. A very frequent contributor to An Claidheamh Solus, she later died on a pilgrimage to Rome.
7.Jennie Wyse Power (1858–1941), a suffragette and treasurer to the Sinn Féin Party. The IRB’s infamous republican proclamation of 24 April 1916 was written and signed in her home because of her husband’s long-term association with Tom Clarke’s political friends.
8.Arthur and Maud Griffith as newly weds sitting in the back garden of their home in Clontarf (1911). Note Griffith’s orthopaedic boots. The couple had not been able to afford to marry during their previous six-year engagement. This house was a wedding gift to them from William O’Brien’s political supporters within the Gaelic League. By 1912, however, the home was already partly mortgaged due to financial pressures. (National Library of Ireland, Griffith papers)