A second reason why Griffith gambled in launching a Sinn Féin daily was that William O’Brien’s political supporters in Munster, who were independent of the UIL and had won the support of Terence MacSwiney’s Cork IDA, were making a direct appeal to Sinn Féin to amalgamate with their ranks. This raised the prospect of Cork and Dublin municipal politicians allying themselves to form a new political party.148 Griffith sensed a real political opportunity in the fact that O’Brien’s group were being equally critical of Redmond for failing to oppose a proposed Liberal government budget that, potentially, would increase existing levels of over-taxation in Ireland by as much as £2 million a year.149 A third reason for Griffith’s gamble in launching the daily edition of Sinn Féin was that the future of the National University of Ireland was still far from certain and both the general membership of the Gaelic League and much of the student population of the country were far from pleased about this fact. This was a readership that Griffith acquired through the burst of publicity surrounding the launch of the daily edition and which he managed to retain thereafter, more or less, for his weekly edition of Sinn Féin. While this weekly edition of Sinn Féin retained its propagandist tone, its contents changed slightly. In the manner of established commercial newspapers, it now contained more regular news items as well as popular features such as political cartoons and even photographs to broaden its appeal.
To a significant extent the stated editorial policy of the Sinn Féin daily, which identified itself as a national rather than a party organ,150 reflected Griffith’s temperamental unsuitability for party political journalism. It also betrayed a degree of naivety. To Griffith, witnessing individuals who were ‘admitting in private conversation that I am right whilst in public they are alleging the contrary’ was not an inevitable feature of the rat-race contest that is political life. Instead, it was a ‘kind of dishonesty I had thought was confined to a dying form of Irish politics’.151 The Sinn Féin daily collapsed at the time of the January 1910 general election. This occurred because the eleven independent Irish MPs led by William O’Brien, by joining with Redmond and the Irish Party, were able to hold the balance of powers in the House of Commons by opting to keep the Liberals in power in return for a promise to introduce another ‘home rule bill’. As a result, O’Brienite and, to a lesser extent,152 AOH interest in Sinn Féin virtually disappeared. Recently established small Sinn Féin branches in the provinces opted to join William O’Brien’s new All-for-Ireland League instead when that body was established in March 1910.153 Along with his sudden misfortune in being struck down with polio,154 this played a very significant part in decreasing Sean MacDermott’s interest in attempting to sustain a Sinn Féin party organisation.
After the plug was pulled on the Sinn Féin daily edition, Griffith was fortunate that some assistance was offered to help him deal with the resulting liabilities by both William O’Brien’s political supporters and appreciative Gaelic Leaguers. This assistance also had a personal dimension. In November 1910, a testimonial was collected for Griffith to enable him to buy a new home in Clontarf (costing £300) and to marry Maud Sheehan after a six-year engagement.155 Not all contemporaries appreciated this, however. Mary Kettle (wife of Tom, the finance spokesman of the Irish Party) claimed that many people (although not her own husband) felt that Griffith did not deserve a penny, as he had formerly written that ‘there is not a member of the Irish Party who would not sell his father’s bones or his mother’s honour for place or pelf’.156 Indeed, on the balance, Griffith’s caustic pen probably won him a lot more enemies than friends.
Griffith considered himself very fortunate to have been able to marry the woman he loved.157 It was evidently an appropriate match. Frequently referring to Arthur as ‘my boy’ with ‘the sweetest disposition’, Maud was a woman with a temperament that was as equally self-possessed and forthright, as well as difficult and unworldly, as her husband’s.158 They also had a mutual fondness for quiet and private, rather than gregarious or public, social habits, such as playing chess, listening to music, planting flowers and going for long walks.159 Their union would be blessed with the birth of two children. If Griffith had little personal reason to complain by the end of 1910, however, he had still much to do to find greater acceptance in the Irish political world.
Hitherto, Sinn Féin was essentially a stillborn party because its policy had been virtually impossible to implement and so existed only on the level of propaganda. Be that as it may, Griffith’s principal protest since 1904—that Irish politicians were being dangerously cavalier in ignoring the centrality of financial issues to the question of Irish self-government—became particularly relevant to political debate after 1910. This was because the demand for a new Government of Ireland Bill converged with a fiscal crisis. The framework of home rule was about to receive an unprecedented level of public exposure and definition. If there were any chance that Griffith would be able to make his voice heard in the resulting debate, it would undoubtedly rest in his capacity to highlight the devil in the details of Anglo-Irish relations and, in turn, win the appreciation of more established politicians for his arguments.
CHAPTER SIX
The Framework of Home Rule (1910–14)
The two principal British political parties—the Liberals and the Conservatives (Tories)—naturally espoused two different fiscal policies. This played a part in creating two different party-political attitudes regarding Ireland. In keeping with Gladstone’s ideal, the Liberals desired that Ireland would be governed strictly in the financial interests of the British mainland by creating a colonial administration akin to that in Jamaica or New Zealand.1 This was in keeping with treasury policy and so had virtually become an aspect of state that was necessarily accepted by all parties. At the request of Irish Tories, however, the Tories in Britain nominally espoused the greater investment of imperial funds in the government of Ireland to emphasise Ireland’s formal status as an equal part of the United Kingdom.2 Griffith considered the Tory policy as superior in principle but was also keen to point out that it was of no real benefit to Ireland because, on the whole, the Tories were regulated more by English than Irish considerations.3 Tom Kettle, the finance spokesman of the Irish Party, agreed. Hence he claimed that ‘there is one thing dazzlingly certain: in Irish finance, salvation is not of the Tories’.4 The Irish Party’s inability to shape a fiscal policy for Ireland was becoming a greater problem, however. As Griffith emphasised every week during the first half of 1910, the party’s recent achievement of the balance of power in the House of Commons only served to highlight this fact. To keep the Liberals in power, the Irish Party accepted a budget that increased existing levels of over-taxation in Ireland (approximately £3 million a year) by a further two million pounds. This led to political condemnation not only from the (Tory) Dublin Chamber of Commerce but also from various potential Irish Party support bases such as all the commercial Irish farmer, licensed trader and hotelier associations in the country.5 As a result, the exploitative elements to the fiscal management of Ireland could no longer be ignored by Irish politicians.
In reaction to this situation, some Ulster unionists pointed to the status of Tom Kettle as ‘a marionette’ of the Catholic hierarchy as proof that ‘our Catholic countrymen do not really understand patriotism—that, in fact, the Catholic Irishman’s idea of patriotism is simply the apotheosis not of his country but his Church’.6 The status of the Catholic Church as an institution that was inherently independent from all states naturally made it completely indifferent to all economic matters except in so far as how it affected itself and, in particular, its independent communal responsibilities, such as the financial management of schools and hospitals. William O’Brien’s willingness to give voice to the business community’s criticisms of Redmond for refusing to acknowledge