The writings of Griffith’s Irish contemporaries were essentially characterised by a prevarication between the options of seeking funding for state or voluntary (church-centred) bodies. Horace Plunkett championed the state-centred approach in his book Ireland in the New Century. Monsignor O’Riordan of the Irish College in Rome wrote a popular antithesis Catholicity and Progress. Cultural nationalists like George Russell dedicated their writings to both quarters. All, however, generally ignored the Sinn Féin Policy, which was deemed impractical because it was proactive in a way that was too contrary to both the government’s plans and established practice.9
The fear of challenging the government encouraged most to remain silent or neutral in matters of policy, as if policy formation was inherently the sole prerogative of the imperial civil service as the Irish question in British politics unfolded. Reflecting this, most Irish writers focused almost exclusively on ethical considerations of modernist trends in education and their role in shaping a collective sense of values. No alterations of existing financial norms were either envisioned or proposed. For instance, in ‘sufficiency indicating the general spirit in which I would have Irish education recreated’, Patrick Pearse of An Claidheamh Solus (a supporter of voluntary education) was simply following a long-established trend in The Murder Machine, as in all his subsequent writings, by emphasising that ‘I say little of organisation, or mere machinery. That is the least important part of the subject.’10 To focus on ends and means, as Griffith had done and kept suggesting, would have entailed questioning the role of all existing financial institutions within Ireland, as well as the wealth of the Protestant and Catholic Churches, but nobody was prepared to do this. In this way, one might say that the dynamics of Irish party politics under the post-1886 consensus was as much a bastion of conservative inaction as Buckingham Palace and the Vatican.
The Catholic Church’s mission to combat state control of education was facilitated by the semi-independent status of Dublin Castle’s National Board of Education. This, in turn, formed the essential context for all the Gaelic League’s activities. The league’s status as a voluntary body reflected the bishops’ desire for comparatively weak and dependent Irish public representatives, as well as the nature of the Gaelic League’s relationship with the civil service. Indeed, its voluntary ethos (whatever influence notable league members had was supposed to be exercised only as individuals) was practically guaranteed by the fact that half the Gaelic League’s membership was junior civil servants. On this particular question, Griffith was the victim of a common form of myopia. He fantasised that the cultural nationalism of Gaelic League civil servants could prompt them to collectively decide to act against the British state, as well as counter the corrupting legacy of party-political brokerage in civil service appointments.11 However, their cultural nationalism was essentially a manifestation of their desire for promotion within this same British civil service, which had facilitated this particular trend.12
Griffith’s National Council could acquire no funding from the Gaelic League. At the league’s annual fund-raising events (usually held on St Patrick’s Day), Stephen Gwynn, a Tory supporter of Redmond,13 and Eoin MacNeill collected all the financial proceedings. Meanwhile, Griffith’s National Council associates and would be co-promoters of the Sinn Féin Policy (Aldermen Tom Kelly and Walter Cole, Seamus MacManus, Edward Martyn, James Connolly and Henry Dixon) were confined to representing only the league’s ‘Cumann na Leabharlann’ (Library Club) in an associated parade.14 As such, Griffith was still in a comparable position to what he occupied as the twenty-two year old chairman of John O’Leary’s Young Ireland League; an organisation then typified by many Irish Party supporters as a group for ‘harmless crazy bookworms’.15 Griffith’s conflict with the leadership of the Gaelic League was subtle but perpetual. It was illustrated best by his attempt to present a call by Douglas Hyde for the finances of the National Board of Education to be managed locally instead of by the Imperial Treasury as a Sinn Féin stance and the categorical refusal of Hyde (an ally of Archbishop Walsh on the National Board of Education) that this was case.16 The failure of the National Council to appeal to the Gaelic League ensured that the most critical determinant of the Sinn Féin Policy’s chances of success was the nature of the business community within Ireland.
The landslide Liberal Party victory in the 1906 British general election was a source of much enthusiasm to the Irish Party. Considering the Liberals as their allies, Redmond and his party would even hold a special Westminster banquet for Liberal Party leaders such as John Morley (Cabinet Secretary for India, formerly Gladstone’s Chief Secretary for Ireland), Lord Loseburn (Lord Chancellor of England), Winston Churchill (Colonial Under Secretary) and Augustine Birrell (Chief Secretary for Ireland) to celebrate their return to power.17 The business community in Ireland, however, continued to be primarily Tory in politics. This was reflected by the IDA’s fortunes in Munster and Belfast. Nevertheless, the Irish Party invariably celebrated the fact that Irish Tories ‘in the councils of the English Tory party are an ignored minority … wholly unable to deflect its policy to the advantage of Ireland.’18 This was the Irish Party’s justification for believing that the Liberal Party would ultimately ensure their material triumph over the Tories within Ireland and in the process defeat the ‘Protestant ascendancy’. In doing so, the Irish Party essentially downplayed the significance of the fact that the Tories had been the authors of the home rule policy even more so than the Liberals and the Liberals were the initiators of the constructive unionism policy in Ireland alongside the Tories.19 Strange to say, this reality did not hurt the Irish Party. A matter that did hurt the Irish Party after 1906, however, was that the Liberals were opposed to the Tory policy of the National Education Board supporting the Gaelic League. As a result, the controversy surrounding the English education act of 1902 would return with a vengeance after 1908 when a Liberal government took up the Tory policy of establishing a ‘national university of Ireland’. Griffith appreciated the extent to which this trend in the politics of education could work to the National Council’s advantage.20
The true significance of these trends in Irish Party circles for the Sinn Féin Policy stemmed from Griffith’s consequent need to deal with the Tory business community within Dublin. Although it puzzled some of Griffith’s friends, business figures in Dublin City Hall (associates of Crawford) actually helped Griffith in producing his economic-nationalist analyses.21 The Irish Party, having allied itself to the Catholic Church and its property interests, had neither influence with nor much interest in the fortunes of the Chambers of Commerce in Ireland, but the nature of the Sinn Féin Policy was such that these financial institutions were central to Griffith’s programme. This was demonstrated by the first effort made to promote the Sinn Féin Policy. This was to call for the nationalisation of Irish railways; an idea that Sweetman first championed, on Griffith’s behalf, at a meeting of the General Council of County Councils.22
In support of Sweetman’s Irish Financial Reform League, during the late 1890s William Field, formerly the independent parliamentary representative of Griffith’s YIL, had advocated the establishment of a new ‘commercial party’ in Irish politics that would make the nationalisation of the railways its first demand. Field noted that railway nationalisation had taken place throughout Europe, the Americas and the British colonies (indeed, everywhere except the United Kingdom) because ‘if the state does not manage the railways, the railways will soon manage the state’ due to their centrality to business. Both manufacturing and successful trading in manufactured goods required cheap transit. However, the current English directors of railway companies within Ireland were charging very high rates for transit within Ireland and offering very preferential rates to British merchant-shipping owners and importers, making ‘commercial success unattainable’ in Ireland except to British-based firms.23 Similarly, a contemporary French observer noted that ‘all the productive