One of Griffith’s earliest memories was no doubt his father’s involvement in the printers’ union strike during the industrial recession of the late 1870s. A journal published by one of the union’s members, The Citizen and Irish Artisan (Dublin), reflected the political outlook of the Griffith family as well as attitudes towards both labour disputes and municipal politics that Griffith would express frequently in adulthood. Adopting the slogan ‘the wealth of a nation lies in the intelligence and handicraft of its sons’, it maintained that ‘socialism is the natural desire of men to improve their lot in life’ and valued contemporary Irish nationalism, including its more radical varieties, only in so far as it was rooted in an understanding of socio-economic realities. It opposed any effort made by churches to introduce religious segregations into workers’ unions or benevolent societies and, in doing so, professed to speak exclusively on behalf of the material interests of the ‘working class’.10 In keeping with the norms of contemporary labour politics, however, it did not include unskilled labourers within that definition.11 Having no intrinsic sympathy with unskilled labourers, it was prepared to defend the lockout of striking labourers if the firms in question were deemed to be trustworthy and genuinely promoting the welfare of the city’s inhabitants. Indeed, The Citizen perpetually distinguished between ‘fair’ and ‘unfair’ employers. The latter were compared occasionally to ‘mercenary London Jews’ who speculated on London Stock Exchange markets on the shares of all the (predominantly British) companies in Ireland and cared nothing for the economic welfare of the citizens of Dublin. Their principal sin was considered to be the importation of cheap labour, which was reducing the city’s skilled artisans to pauperdom.12 City landlords were denounced for charging exorbitant rents for unsanitary tenement flats, while municipal authorities were demonised for failing to address the problem that Dublin had double the mortality rate of any other British city.13
Griffith would repeat these arguments forcibly in early-twentieth-century Dublin. He inherited from both Victorian labour politics and his own family a purely materialistic nationalism. From this premise, Griffith considered that ‘the poor have been left to rot in slum tenements because vested interests of both green and orange do benefit thereby’.14 He was at odds with the manner by which the British imperial economy was defining both political allegiances and economic norms within Ireland.15 As he was indifferent to Ireland’s politico-religious divide, he refused to judge the validity of political arguments from that vantage point. He would draw extensively from the arguments of economists at Trinity College Dublin who, at various times, called for a radical overhaul of the existing financial basis of the Union. The fact that these arguments were made by men who held sympathies with an Anglican-biased Tory party did not matter to Griffith: if their points seemed to him reasonable and patriotic in their defence of Irish interests he would readily adapt them to his own perspective.16
Like his father, Griffith grew up to be a bookish young man. Though he liked to exercise, poor vision and a slightly deformed leg, which necessitated that he wear high-heeled orthopaedic boots throughout his life, militated against strenuous athletic pursuits.17 By his mid-teens he was a voracious reader and accustomed to smoking tobacco and drinking spirits.18 He had very little formal schooling. At the age of thirteen, after attending three different primary schools, his father arranged for him a seven-year apprenticeship with a mercantile printing firm that was run by a Protestant family who were enthusiastic about the history of Irish literature.19 The printing trade, in common with the contemporary Irish revolutionary underground, had a very mixed religious composition in terms of its members’ social background. This factor combined with the Griffiths’ ancestry (a Catholic family offshoot from an established Ulster Presbyterian farming family) encouraged his anti-sectarian attitudes.20 Through the patronage of his father’s employer, Griffith was allowed the chance to prepare for an intermediate (secondary school) examination as an extramural student but he did not take this opportunity.21 Instead, his apprenticeship prompted him to revel in a social world consisting of youths of similar backgrounds whose favoured medium for self-development was participating in literary and debating societies.
At the tender age of fourteen, Griffith was made the secretary of the ‘junior branch’ of the Young Ireland Society after winning an Irish history competition. Founded in Dublin in March 1881, this society was notable for encouraging serious political debate. Past members had included John Dillon (the future Irish Party leader), Thomas Brennan (chief organiser of the Land League), John Wyse Power (a future leading journalist) and Fred J. Allan (a future newspaper manager, secretary of City Hall and revolutionary activist). During the mid-1880s, its membership included C.H. Oldham and T.W. Rolleston, the founders of the Dublin University Review, as well as significant literary figures such as George Sigerson and W.B. Yeats.22 At an event hosted by the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Griffith received as his prize from John O’Leary, an old Tory turned Fenian, books by John Mitchel, Charles Gavan Duffy and Thomas Davis; the editors of the original Nation newspaper of the 1840s.23 In these books, the teenage Griffith believed that he had found a revelatory explanation for the world that he inhabited. These Trinity-educated authors styled themselves as all that was left of an Irish intelligentsia. They protested that ever since the economic reforms of the 1820s, British state centralisation was causing Irish leaders to abandon any sense of duty towards their own people.24 The motive for Griffith’s future Irish nationalism would be the belief that reversing this process of British state centralisation was essential to the survival of specifically Irish economic interests and, in turn, an Irish intelligentsia that was capable of sound political judgment. Reading these Young Ireland authors also convinced the young Griffith that being an adult was entirely a matter of ‘having convictions’.25
Griffith’s formative convictions were both individualist and antisocial. He believed that personal virtue was not something that could ever be learnt at school or from the example of political and religious leaders. Rather, it was something that could only be developed within. Distrust of all communal leaders and vigilant self-reliance was necessary to counter the reality that the exercise of powers of dominance in society was never based upon moral justice. To illustrate this point, Griffith drew up precepts such as ‘do not scorn the beggar in the street … he is nobler than your masters’; ‘do not believe that a man who wears a tall hat and trousers is necessarily civilised’; and ‘do not talk about “the dignity of labour” [a favoured subject of contemporary religious epistles]. Look up from the mud and behold the poorhouses [the fate of many rural migrants to the city].’ As ‘the only unforgivable sin is the sin of hypocrisy’, Griffith believed that it would be better to be associated with ‘honest scoundrels’ than ‘mix with dishonest swindlers’. Expressing negative emotions such as pity, anger and scorn should never be avoided if they were justified. Above all, it was essential ‘to be frank’.26 The political savvy adage that was favoured by John O’Leary—that the world is his who knows when to hold his tongue—was not part of Griffith’s mindset. As a result, Griffith was often considered to be a cantankerous man who was incapable of doing anything to either to his own advantage or that of anyone else. According to the social norms of politics, such a man was quite simply best left alone.
Griffith did not view his youthful convictions to be a matter of inherently rooting for the underdog or the oppressed. Rather they reflected a belief that society was fundamentally dishonest and, therefore, the honest man would inevitably suffer and be punished by his peers.27 Not surprisingly, he would grow up to recognise that he too had the capacity to offend ‘honest as well as dishonest quarters’.28 Nevertheless, his almost misanthropic belief that it was possible to counter dishonesty in