The Hungarian Policy of calling upon Irish MPs to abstain from attending the imperial parliament was justified as part of the new Sinn Féin Policy economically. Griffith claimed that as trading figures showed that Britain was claiming almost all of the yearly profits from Irish trading, it would be of infinitely greater value to Ireland than sending representatives to the imperial parliament to attempt to establish the identity of Ireland as a distinct economic and trading entity internationally by seeking to break the British boycott on direct Irish trade with the international community.113 Tory opinion, represented by Craig and Samuels, was not so sure about Griffith’s claim about the possibilities of international trade. For example, Samuels lamented that ‘since 1825 there has been no records kept of Irish imports and exports’ owing to the abolishment of separate customs boards for Ireland. Although Plunkett’s Department of Agriculture would begin publishing during 1906 ‘for the first time a report on the trade in imports and exports at Irish ports’, the reliability, as well as the source, of this information and what it actually meant for the economy of Ireland was totally unascertainable. This was because
There is at present no means of accurately distinguishing from the colonial and foreign trade of Great Britain, the indirect colonial and foreign trade of Ireland which passes to and from Irish ports through those of Great Britain, especially Liverpool and London … The consequence is that the total trade of Ireland with countries outside of Great Britain cannot be at present definitely ascertained.
This very uncertainty was Craig and Samuels’ motive for continuing to uphold the Union. This mentality was reflected by Samuels’ decision to accept on faith that the overall figures for British imperial trade were so positive that ‘Irishmen, too often prone to pessimism’, should think optimistically about ‘the opening markets of today and of the years to come’. Furthermore, as ‘by far the greatest part of our commerce is, and always will be, with Great Britain and care must be taken that this shall be developed and not diminished’, it was not necessarily opportune ‘to be looking on their country as an impoverished island’ or to be considering the necessity of opening wider markets.114
Britain was the only country in Europe that could neither feed its own population nor provide the raw material for its manufacturing industries without imports. This was why Griffith was correct in pointing out that every European economy except Britain’s (and, by default, Ireland’s) encouraged the greatest possible degree of international trade without depriving their country’s industries from protective tariffs. Protective tariffs were also the lever of negotiation in all contemporary international relations. In this way, ever since 1892, the French and Germans were eclipsing the British in economic power, forcing Britain to rely more on trade with its own colonies than trade within Europe (although this trend was also being emulated to a lesser extent by most other European nations). It was for this very reason, however, that Griffith’s idea of developing an extensive Irish trade with the European continent—something that the British could not manage—could appear quite absurd. In addition, no matter how much tariff barriers to trade were erected or dismantled within Europe, the economies of all small independent European nations remained virtually co-dependent with the economies of their larger and stronger neighbours.115 Partly for this reason, Irish unionists considered that an independent Ireland was not inherently necessary and an idea that was actually best dismissed altogether. In effect, alongside with the Irish Party, it was considered that Griffith’s politics could not be profitable. As a result, Griffith’s politics were not adopted and his personal profits remained slim.
Being an Irish nationalist, Griffith deemed Ireland to be politically backward due to its failure to grasp that every country’s political and economic development was inherently rooted in resistance to any centralisation of power that was not in its own self-interest.116 In making such arguments, Griffith was fully aware of the ‘propagandist nature’ of what he wrote.117 An ideological bent existed within all aspects of (supposedly impartial) contemporary writings on political economy,118 and it was Griffith’s ideological nationalism which inspired his claim that he made the arguments which he did only because ‘I could induce nobody else to say what I believed if left unsaid would cause the nation to rot.’ Another reflection of Griffith’s ideological nationalism, or indeed republican frame of mind, was his argument that ‘the truisms of life elsewhere’ had become ‘novel doctrines in a country where the elemental rights of the citizen had ceased to be understood’.119 To some extent, in keeping with the Young Ireland tradition of the 1840s, Griffith’s patriotism was also essentially a matter of seeking to claim for Ireland a right to a national self-determination as strong as Young Englander Tories within England had once claimed for their own country. However, the dynamics to Irish party politics and, in particular, their material foundation, made it virtually impossible to advance such ideals beyond their first, or purely propagandist, base. The first five years of Sinn Féin’s existence provided clear indications of why this would remain the case.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Stillborn Party: Sinn Féin (1906–10)
T.W. Rolleston, an Irish Tory patron of Horace Plunkett’s cooperative movement, wrote to Lady Aberdeen regarding Griffith’s Sinn Féin Policy that he believed ‘unless the parliamentary movement can offer on its side a programme equally clear, honest and self-consistent, it must inevitably go down before its antagonist’.1 This perspective reflected an appreciation for Griffith’s capacity to engage constructively with Tory politics. As was being demonstrated by the career of William O’Brien MP, however, this was also a recipe for political ineffectiveness in Ireland. Griffith would promote his programme by arguing that ‘the Unionist or the Parliamentarian need not be exceeded in patriotism by the Sinn Féiner. Of the nation they are equally units with equal duties and rights’.2 This was practically an admission, however, that the ‘unionist’ and the ‘parliamentarian’ had no real need for a ‘Sinn Féiner’.
The intended status of the National Council as a platform for defectors from all other parties necessitated that Griffith targeted all corners. Frequently, however, he ended up winning none because of the absence of a credible political leadership, or party base, for the National Council. Its chairman Edward Martyn (one of the 40 per cent of the Irish landed gentry who were of the Catholic religion) was an enthusiastic member of the landed gentry’s Kildare Street Club.3 He was widely considered to be a mere eccentric, with a greater enthusiasm for Our Lady’s Choral Society and the Abbey Theatre than for politics. John Sweetman was a very wealthy and thereby influential individual, but he had little prospect of escaping from his semi-retired political standing. This was because the Irish Party and the United Irish League was irrevocably committed to ostracising him from public life. Party politics was definitely not Sweetman’s forte. There was also the problem that the two planks in Griffith’s platform—the Gaelic League and the Industrial Development Association (IDA)—not only represented myriad interests but their leaders also tended to dismiss Griffith as a man who was attempting to hijack these organisations for his own purposes.4 This resistance prevented Cumann na nGaedhael from ever becoming a vibrant political movement.5
The Cork nationalists who initiated the IDA, Terence McSwiney and Liam de Roiste, read and occasionally contributed to Griffith’s journal but politically they worked with Irish Party activists. These included J.J. Horgan (vice-president of the Cork Gaelic League) and J.P. Boland MP. These two men were responsible for persuading the Imperial Board of Trade in London to register the official trademark of the IDA (Deánta i hÉireann), thereby putting it on some solid political footing.6 William O’Brien and T.M. Healy, each of whom had political connections with some small to medium-sized business owners, as well as Tory (‘liberal unionist’) landlords such as Lord Dunraven and Captain J.S. Taylor, gave the IDA some footing in Munster, while it also had the sympathy, if not the active support, of both the Ulster loyalistBelfast