When hope and history rhyme

The ideas of Sinn Féin founder Arthur Griffith had been mooted before, but it was a sequence of unforeseen events at home and abroad that led to their realisation

MICHAEL LAFFAN

THE MEETING of the first Dáil in January 1919 marked the logical conclusion and implementation of a policy Arthur Griffith had first outlined 15 years earlier. It also implemented an aim of the Easter rebels, whose proclamation envisaged “the establishment of a permanent National Government” elected by all Irish men and women.

The idea that Irish MPs should abstain from Westminster had been floated from time to time in the course of the 19th century. In the early years of the 20th century, Griffith moulded it into a coherent programme.

He began by advocating a ‘Council of Three Hundred’ (including county councillors and other public representatives) that would legislate for the country. He later demanded that Irish MPs should withdraw from London, repudiate the Act of Union and function as a parliament in Dublin. They should behave as if British rule in Ireland no longer existed.

He drew an elaborate historical parallel: the refusal in the 1860s of Hungarian members to take their seats in the imperial parliament in Vienna until their own country had acquired equal status with Austria. He held out the Dual Monarchy of 1867, which was the successful result of this campaign, as a model for Irish nationalists. Franz Joseph enjoyed a different identity in two separate countries, acting as emperor of Austria and king of Hungary. In a similar fashion Ireland and Great Britain, too, might form distinct states with their own parliaments and governments, joined only by a common king.

In some respects Griffith’s parallels were misleading. He over-simplified the vastly complex structure of the Habsburg Empire; he underestimated the extent to which military defeats by France in 1859 and Prussia in 1866 weakened the Austrians and made them ready to compromise; and he underestimated the links that persisted between Vienna and Budapest.

Nonetheless his ideas attracted public attention in Ireland and provoked a lively debate. They also made important converts; two Home Rule MPs were won over by his arguments and resigned their seats in parliament. One of these, Charles Dolan of North Leitrim, ran for re-election on the abstentionist programme, but his Home Rule opponent defeated him by a margin of almost three to one.

Then, as now, many Irish electors saw their representatives as no more than lobbyists who might secure favours from above. It needed a political upheaval to make them vote for candidates who would (at least in the immediate future) have no power or patronage at their disposal.

Ideally, Griffith would have preferred to convert the Home Rule party and its MPs to his views, but this was impossible at a time when it seemed a subordinate Dublin parliament could be secured by parliamentary methods in London. A long war developed between him and the Home Rule party. On the other hand, his aims and methods were rejected as unacceptably moderate by many in the Irish Republican Brotherhood. They had no faith in politics, little trust in the mass of the Irish people and they believed the British government would yield only to violence.

For the next decade, in good times and bad, Griffith battled against the first of these opponents and ignored the second. He argued consistently that Irish MPs should abandon Westminster and form their own legislature in Dublin. Yet he was aware his policy did not enjoy widespread support and he took care not to contest any seats in further by-elections or in either of the general elections that took place in 1910. He needed time to convert public opinion and he needed favourable opportunities. To the surprise of many, these favourable opportunities occurred.

From 1912 onwards, several developments undermined Irish nationalists’ faith in the Home Rule party. The Ulster unionists defied parliamentary government by forming a paramilitary force and threatening rebellion. The Home Rule Bill was passed eventually, in September 1914, but its implementation was postponed until the end of the first World War and until some form of partition would be enforced. The Easter rebels provided an alternative and – for many – more glamorous model of Irish nationalism. The British response to the Rising was widely seen as excessively harsh and negotiations in its aftermath further weakened the Home Rule party.

With the undermining of constitutional nationalism and the retrospective glorification of rebellion, Griffith’s ideas were at last able to flourish. Count Plunkett, the father of rebel leader Joseph Mary Plunkett, ran as an independent anti-Home Rule candidate in North Roscommon, although it was only after his election that he announced he would abstain from parliament.

Griffith’s Sinn Féin, which had long been inactive, revived and was transformed into a mass political party. In speeches and pamphlets, Sinn Féin devoted much effort to advocating what many voters saw as a disconcerting, even self-destructive, policy. In the next few months, three more abstentionist candidates were elected: Joe McGuinness in South Longford, Eamon de Valera in East Clare, and WT Cosgrave in Kilkenny city.

Early in the following year, “abstentionism” scored another – and paradoxical – victory. When conscription had been imposed on Britain in January 1916, Ireland was exempted; this was one of many illustrations of how mild and moderate British rule had been before the Rising.

But in March 1918 the Germans launched a massive offensive, breaking through the Allied lines and ending the stalemate on the Western Front that had continued since September 1914. In these circumstances, Lloyd George’s government decided to impose conscription on Ireland, bringing it into line with the rest of the UK. All Irish nationalist MPs voted against the measure and, when they were defeated by the combined votes of most British members, they abandoned Westminster and returned to Ireland. There they continued their opposition by different means.

Griffith saw this as the ultimate vindication of his arguments. For years he had forecast that the Irish nationalists’ ability to hold the parliamentary balance of power was illusory and that, when basic interests were at stake, British MPs would vote along national rather than party lines. This had now happened, he argued, and Irish Home Rule MPs had become reluctant, death-bed converts to the abstentionist policy he had advocated for so long. Sinn Féin and the Irish Volunteers seemed the most appropriate leaders of the anti-conscription campaign, and it was their “non-parliamentary” methods which triumphed.

The Home Rule cause was discredited long before the general election that followed the end of the war. The government made it clear there could be no question of implementing the 1914 Act in the near future and many voters found it easy to forget the gains Irish nationalist MPs had secured over the decades. On the other hand, the demand for a sovereign Irish parliament seemed to be in tune with the spirit of the times. It was argued independent republics had been established in hitherto “vanquished” countries such as Poland and Lithuania and that if the Pope had blessed the new Republic of Finland, why should he not also bless a Republic of Ireland?

Of course, Britain was one of the victorious powers at the end of the first World War, while 50 years earlier, Griffith’s Hungarian models had been able to exploit the successive military defeats of their Habsburg enemy. In December 1918, Lord Curzon (soon to become foreign secretary) declared: “The British flag has never flown over a more powerful or a more united empire.” That flag would not be easily dislodged and Griffith’s belief that full independence could be achieved peacefully seemed improbable. Nonetheless, prospects for a separate Irish parliament and government seemed more favourable than ever before.

The Home Rulers were so demoralised that they did not bother contesting 25 seats they had held already. The result of the election was a landslide, in which Sinn Féin won 73 of 105 Irish seats, losing only two to its Home Rule opponents. It gained a mere 47 per cent of the votes cast, but because so many of its strongholds were uncontested, this figure underestimated its real strength and support. As was pointed out at the time and subsequently, Sinn Féiners indulged in personation and intimidation, but these were traditional Irish electoral practices which Home Rulers had often employed in the past.

Despite the understandable self-confidence which the British government and people experienced after their victory in the Great War, Irish nationalist voters remained defiant.

In December 1918 they voted for the establishment of a fully independent Irish parliament and government. They voted to join the large community of newly sovereign European states and, 118 years after it had come into existence, to end the Act of Union.

Michael Laffan is an associate professor in the School of History and Archives in UCD. His publications include The Resurrection of Ireland: the Sinn Féin Party, 1916-1923.