Fein principles. Debates were organized with members of the other
Nationalist organizations, reading rooms were established and lectures
given. In Belfast, the Dungannon Club, a separatist organization which had
for some time published a small and ably conducted paper called the
_Republic_, as well as a series of pamphlets, now amalgamated with the
West Belfast Branch of the National Council. Every care was taken to
prevent the movement assuming a sectional as distinct from a national
tendency. Every instance of intolerance towards a fellow-Irishman
committed by members of any political party was faithfully pilloried in
the columns of _Sinn Fein_. When the Westport Guardians (for example)
demanded the dismissal of Canon Hannay from his chaplaincy for being the
author of _The Seething Pot_, which offended the political sensibilities
of the worthy Guardians, he found no more strenuous advocate, and the
Guardians no more unsparing critic, than _Sinn Fein_. In Dublin the
movement was particularly strong, and even succeeded in securing the
return of some of its candidates at the elections to the City Council.
When the Liberal Government in 1906 offered Mr. Redmond, in place of a
Home Rule Bill, what was known as the Devolution Bill, the sincerity of
English parties in their dealings with Ireland began to be widely
questioned and Sinn Fein received an additional impetus. An official Sinn
Fein handbook, "Leabhar na hEireann the Irish Year Book," was published
containing, in addition to articles on the Sinn Fein policy, a number of
valuable statistics with reference to Irish resources, enterprises,
movements and parties, both political and religious. At last in 1908 the
time seemed to have come for contesting a parliamentary election. Mr. C.
J. Dolan, the sitting member for North Leitrim, declared himself a convert
to the new movement. He resigned his seat and offered himself for
re-election as a Sinn Fein candidate. He polled less than a third of the
votes, and Sinn Fein received a serious setback. In fact the ground had
not been sufficiently prepared. A weekly paper, supplemented by a few
pamphlets, with no great circulation outside Dublin, was an insufficient
instrument with which to achieve the success of a new policy within two
years. It was proposed and attempted to repair the error by the
establishment of a daily edition of _Sinn Fein_. But the movement had made
no progress among the more prosperous classes. The paper was in
difficulties from the start and an attempt to make it more popular by
increasing it from four pages to eight committed it beyond recall to
failure. Meanwhile a Sinn Fein Co-operative Bank had been established,
and, pushing ahead, the party issued a programme to which candidates for
election to all elected bodies in Ireland were to be asked to subscribe.
They were asked to pledge themselves to support the independence of
Ireland, a system of protection for Irish industries, the establishment of
an Irish Consular Service and an Irish Mercantile Marine, a general
survey and development of the mineral resources of Ireland, an Irish
National Bank, National Stock Exchange and National Civil Service,
National Courts of Arbitration, a National System of Insurance, National
Control of Transit and Fisheries, a reform of the educational system, the
abolition of the poorhouses, the gradual introduction of the Irish
language as the official language of public boards. In addition they were
to agree to refuse to recognize the British Parliament, and to discourage
the consumption of articles paying duty to the British Treasury and the
enlistment of Irishmen in the British Army.
This ambitious programme met with little or no response, and with the
collapse of the daily paper the apathy of the general public became more
marked. On the mass of Unionist Ireland, especially in Ulster, Sinn Fein
had practically no influence. The movement for the reform of the financial
relations between England and Ireland which had followed the publication
of the Report of the Financial Relations Committee in 1896 had been the
last All-Ireland movement in which Unionist Ulster had taken part. But
after a brief period of enthusiasm the movement had come to nothing.
Though the Report showed that Ireland had been since the Union, and partly
in contravention of the express terms of that Act, the victim of grave
financial injustice, being over-taxed to the amount of
two-and-three-quarter millions of pounds per annum, nothing was done to
remedy the grievance. The English Government was obdurate: the landlords
gradually ceased to take any prominent part in the movement for fear of
prejudicing their class interests. Unionist Ireland, especially in Ulster,
allowed its morbid suspicion of everything in which the rest of the
country was interested to overbear (as usual) its patriotism and its
common sense, and Nationalist Ireland lost interest in the matter in
pursuit of other objects. The Financial Reform Association had been
dissolved in 1899 and the country settled down again to the old political
struggle. The Nationalist Party fought shy of the raising of all
fundamental questions. Its policy was to "wrest from whatever Government
was in power the full measure of a nation's rights," that is to say, to
gain as full a measure of Home Rule from either Liberals or Conservatives
as the exigencies of English politics and the opinion of the English
public might make possible. Their aim was not to educate Irish public
opinion or to convince Irish opposition. It was taken for granted that the
Liberal Party would some day bring in a Home Rule Bill and carry it
against the Conservative Party, and that that would end the matter: that
the Conservatives (according to the English party system of government)
would accept "the verdict of the people," yielding to the inevitable, and
that the Irish Unionists would have to follow suit. To discuss the
fundamentals of the problem, to endeavour to unite Irishmen (so far as
argument and a generally understood common interest could unite them) was
tiresome, irrelevant and tending to the subversion of party discipline.
For the policy now adopted by the Parliamentarians "a united party" was
above all things essential; and the unity desired meant not merely a
common aim but an agreement upon all details: the great offence was
"faction," and under faction was comprised all independent criticism
either of policy or of principle. A party thus constituted was, if things
went well and it was wisely led, an invaluable instrument of parliamentary
warfare at Westminster; but if things went wrong or a mistake was made, or
if Westminster should cease at any time to be the centre of interest,
disaster was sure to follow. And this conception of the duty of an Irish
National Party overlooked the possibilities latent in Ulster Unionism. To
an extent, not at the time fully grasped by anyone in Ireland, it stood
not for the Unionist Party, as that party was understood in England, but
for itself alone. The exigencies of party warfare required that it, like
the Nationalist Party, should attach itself to an English party; that it
should adopt the parlance of English parties; that it should declare its
unbending loyalty to Imperial interests and the British Constitution. But
it was not inclined to admit in practice that the British Constitution
could override its own particular interests. It could not be ignored or
flouted with impunity; it was the rock upon which all schemes based upon
the peaceful possibilities of English parliamentary situations were
destined in the end to make shipwreck.
But the rock was not yet in sight and its existence was unsuspected. It
was common ground to the two Irish parties that the arena was Parliament
and that the prize should go to the party which won the game according to
Westminster rules. It is easy now for those who kept their eyes shut to
say that they would have opened them if everybody else had not been born
blind, and it would be more dignified to say nothing. But the fact remains
that the mistake was made.
During the lean years for its policy that followed 1908, _Sinn Fein_
continued persistently to preach its doctrines: that to obtain "the full
measure of a nation's rights" Ireland must rely not upon outside aid but
upon her own efforts: that all Irishmen had a common interest, and that
interest not the interest of England: that all Irishmen, whether called
Nationalist or Unionist, were brothers in a common country impoverished
and weakened by the loss of independence resulting from the Act of Union,
and that to recognize their common interests and understand one another
was their immediate object. It published articles on the destruction of
Irish industries in the interests of those of England, a destruction
arrested by the Constitution of 1782, and acting without restraint since
the loss of that Constitution by the Act of Union. It welcomed literary
contributions by the most eminent Irish men of letters, without
distinction of politics or religion: it preached unceasingly the
doctrines of toleration and goodwill amongst Irishmen. But as the prospect
of the triumph of parliamentarianism through its alliance with the Liberal
Party grew brighter, interest centred more and more upon the doings of
Parliament and the vicissitudes of parliamentary fortunes. Now at last the
dream of a century was to take shape in something resembling a substance,
and the time for discussion, arrangement and accommodation was over. In
April, 1910, _Sinn Fein_ announced on behalf of its party that Mr. John
Redmond, having now the chance of a lifetime to obtain Home Rule, will be
given a free hand, without a word said to embarrass him. But it was
difficult not to speak sometimes. When the Liberal Budget left the House
of Commons that month, before the veto of the House of Lords had been
abolished, Mr. Redmond's acquiescence in these tactics was freely
censured. When in the autumn of the same year Mr. Redmond committed
himself to the declaration: "We do not want to discontinue our
representation in the House of Commons when Home Rule comes; we desire to
have Irish members sitting at Westminster not only to form a nucleus of
the ultimate Federal Parliament of the Empire, but also to assist in
legislation concerning Great Britain and Ireland collectively," the
declaration was quoted with disgust. The Home Rule of the Liberal Party
was indeed far removed from the Constitution of 1782.
Sinn Fein took no official part in the elections of 1910, preferring, as
it said in its official organ, to remain "wholly free from any moral
responsibility" for the legislation offered by the Liberals to the
Parliamentary Party, while retaining the right to examine, criticise and
warn. This was not purely an act of self-sacrifice. In fact Sinn Fein was
never at so low an ebb. While the country was drifting farther and farther
in the direction of Home Rule, Sinn Fein was insisting more and more upon
first principles. Its official attitude of warm approval of the work of
the Gaelic League was exchanged for one of insistence upon the urgency of
making Irish the national language. "We must begin again," said _Sinn
Fein_, "to be an Irish-speaking people, or there can be no future of
national independence before us." With England on the one hand and America
on the other, 120,000,000 people speaking English, the danger to the
language was imminent. "We freely admit," it proceeded, "that this
conclusion is not one we sought nor one we desired. The conviction has
forced itself upon us and has been with some reluctance accepted by us."
And it continued to speak plain language about the Home Rule which now
seemed inevitable: "No scheme which the English Parliament may pass in the
near future will satisfy Sinn Fein--no legislature created in Ireland
which is not supreme and absolute will offer a basis for concluding a
final settlement with the foreigners who usurp the government of this
country. But any measure which gives genuine, if even partial, control of
their own affairs to Irishmen shall meet with no opposition from us and
should meet with no opposition from any section of Irishmen." So far was
Sinn Fein at this time from any desire to do more than infuse a new spirit
into Irishmen, favourable to the eventual future development of the policy
outlined by the National Council, that it expressly disclaimed the title
of a party. "It is not our business," was the conclusion of a pamphlet
issued by the Belfast Branch of Sinn Fein, "to make one more party among
the political parties of Ireland, nor to carry on a party propaganda nor
to waste time quarrelling with any political party. Above the cries of
contending parties we raise the cry of Ireland and Irish independence--an
independence in the gaining of which Catholic and Protestant will be
shoulder comrades as they were a century ago, and in the advantages of
which they will be equal sharers. Not an Ireland for a class or a creed,
but an Ireland for the Irish, and the whole of the Irish, not an Ireland
fettered and trammelled by England, but mistress of her own destinies,
evolving her own national life and building for herself an ever-increasing
prosperity. We can leave the past with its bitter memories, its bigotries
and its feuds to those whose property it is, the reactionaries who here,
as in every country, would stem the tide of national advancement. We have
to recognise the nation, rather than parties within the nation; for it is
greater than any party, and in the service of the nation all men have an
equal right as well as an equal duty."
SINN FEIN AND THE REPUBLICANS.
From 1910 to 1913 the Sinn Fein movement was practically moribund.
Political attention in Ireland was largely centred on the fate of Home
Rule and the tactics of the Irish Party at Westminster or the struggles of
the Party at home with Mr. William O'Brien and the All-for-Ireland League.
The Constitution which Ireland might enjoy in 1914 was of more pressing
interest than the merits of the Constitution of 1782.
But there were other forces at work in Ireland in opposition to the two
official parties of Unionists and Nationalists. There were in the first
place the survivors of the Fenians, the Irish Republican Brotherhood,
whose ideal was an Irish Republic, independent of any connection with
England or indeed with any other country. Fenianism had become to all
outward appearance practically dead in Ireland. It had suffered, in the
opinion of some at least of its members, from the fact that it had put
revolutionary action first and the preaching of republicanism second. As
one of them wrote afterwards, "The Fenian propagandist work in the sixties
was entirely separatist with practically no reference to Republicanism.
Rightly or wrongly I have always held the view that the absence of the
deeper Republican thought amongst our people accounted for a considerable
amount of the falling away after '67." The people whose republican
sentiments were weak "dropped back into the easier path leading only to a
much modified national independence." Accordingly after 1867 the Fenians
attempted to make republicanism an essential part of their propaganda.
There had been a large number of Protestant Irishmen among the Fenians,
and, as Republican sentiment had been traditional in Ulster since the days
of the United Irishmen, it seemed that a movement aiming at an Irish
Republic might have more chance of success among Ulster Protestants than
any form of "Home Rule." Besides, the "New Departure," the alliance of
Fenianism with Parnell in the Land War, had weakened the movement still
more. "It was disastrous," says the same authority, "to the Fenian
movement as such, but it drove the Land League through to a degree that no
really constitutional movement could ever have reached." In allying itself
to some extent with Parnell, in abandoning for the time in his interests
its revolutionary propaganda, it seemed to have weakened its own moral
force, while it did not succeed in winning even Home Rule. And the fact of
its being of necessity a secret society brought it under the ban of the
Church. Fear of ecclesiastical censure most often kept young Irishmen out
of Fenianism. It was not enough for the Fenians to say, as they did, that
to the existence of a secret society whose aims were lawful there was no
moral or theological objection. The experts in morals and theology said
that there was, and their word, and not that of the Fenians, was accepted
on the whole as final. And the actions of the Invincibles during the
Parnellite struggle had gravely compromised not Parnell only but the
Fenian Party, to which they were supposed to belong. As a matter of fact
the Irish Republican Brotherhood had nothing to do with them. It had no
sympathy with, nor reliance on, their policy of political assassination. A
member of the Brotherhood who joined the Invincibles was regarded as
having broken his oath to its members and its constitution. But this was
not generally believed, any more than Parnell's statement that he had been
no party to the brutal murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish; and the
prestige of Fenianism was lowered. Still, the Irish Republican Brotherhood
was in existence as a centre of separatist and republican thought and the
imminence of Home Rule could not but stimulate its interest. Its members
must either decide to lend their support to Mr. Redmond as it had once
been lent to Parnell, or to come out, whether openly or in private, as his
opponents.
The Irish Republican Brotherhood was not the only centre of republican
thought in Ireland. In 1896 the Irish Socialist Republican Party had been
founded in Dublin by James Connolly, the ablest organizer and writer which
Irish Labour has yet produced. Under his editorship _The Workers'
Republic_ became an organ of Socialism and Republicanism in their
application to Irish conditions. The new party took its part in Irish
political activities. It joined the movement to commemorate the Rebellion
of 1798, the work of the United Irishmen whose political creed had been
republican. Along with other Irish Nationalists it joined in the work of
the Irish Transvaal Committee and helped to organize and equip the Irish
Brigade which fought on the side of the South African Republics. But till
after the General Election of 1910 it made no attempt to enter Irish
politics as an independent party. It remained in its constitution a purely
trade union party though sympathetic with, and ready to lend its aid in,
the Irish national movement. In 1911 the proposal to found a combined
political and industrial movement was defeated by only three votes at the
Congress held at Galway, and in the following year the Clonmel Congress
decided to found "an Irish Labour Party independent of all other parties
in the country, in order that the organized workers might be able to enter
the proposed Irish Parliament as an organized Labour Party upon the
political field." Though the Irish Labour Party was not professedly
republican, and though its political activities were confined for the time
to the enforcement of the political interests of Irish Labour, yet the
leaders and a considerable number of the rank and file were undoubtedly
republican in their aims and sympathies.
The Irish Labour Party had need, in truth, to be independent of all
existing political parties in Ireland. The Ulster Unionist Party was
definitely and irrevocably committed to the Conservative and capitalist
programme. It would as soon have admitted to its ranks a professed
dynamitard as a professed socialist (whatever his views might have been on
the subject of the Legislative Union). On Socialism the Church could not
be expected to smile (and did not smile) and its attitude determined that
of the Irish Parliamentary Party. The Party was in a delicate position: it
could not say a word against Socialism for fear of offending the English
Labour Party, whose votes were required in the parliamentary struggle: it
could not say a word in favour of it for fear of offending the Church. It
was sitting upon a razor's edge and a word too much in either direction
might easily disturb its balance. So it voted steadily, manfully and
silently for Labour measures in England and left its action to the
country. In the frame-work of the Sinn Fein programme there was no place
for Labour. Among all its plans for the relief of Ireland from the evils
of the English connection there was none for the relief of the evils of
which the workers complained. Its official organ was against strikes, and
even considered that the connection of Irish with English Labour was an
act of treachery to the country. Some of the most pungent criticism to
which the party was subjected came from the paper founded in 1911 by James
Larkin, _The Irish Worker and People's Advocate_. In its first number, the
editor defined his attitude to the O'Brienites, the Irish Parliamentary
Party and Sinn Fein. He described the last as a "party or rump which,
while pretending to be Irish of the Irish, insults the nation by trying
to foist on it not only imported economics based on false principles, but
which had the temerity to advocate the introduction of foreign capitalists
into this sorely exploited country." "Their chief appeal" (he goes on) "to
the foreign capitalists was that they (the imported capitalists) would
have freedom to employ cheap Irish labour.... For eleven years these
self-appointed prophets and seers have led their army up the hill and led
them down again, and would continue to so lead them, if allowed, until the
leader was appointed King of Ireland under the Constitution of 1782."
The definitely Republican movement found an organ of expression in the
autumn of 1910 by the establishment of _Saoirseacht na h-Eireann, Irish
Freedom_, a fortnightly paper of eight pages, under the management of
Seaghan MacDiarmada. Its motto was a quotation from Wolfe Tone: "To
subvert the tyranny of our execrable Government, to break the connection
with England, the never-failing source of all our political evils and to
assert the independence of my country--these were my objects." Its policy
was explained at length in its editorial: "We believe that free political
institutions are an absolute essential for the future security and
development of the Irish people and, therefore, we seek to establish free
political institutions in this country; and in this we wish not to be the
organ of any party, but the organ of an uncompromising Nationalism. We
stand not for an Irish party but for National tradition--the tradition of
Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet, of John Mitchel and John O'Leary. Like them
we believe in and would work for the independence of Ireland--and we use
the term with no reservation stated or implied; we stand for the complete
and total separation of Ireland from England and the establishment of an
Irish Government, untrammelled and uncontrolled by any other Government in
the world. Like them we stand for an Irish Republic--for, as Thomas Devin
Reilly said in 1848, 'Freedom can take but one shape amongst us--a
Republic.'"
The attitude of this new republican movement to that of the previous Sinn
Fein movement is clearly defined in a subsequent leader. "The temporary
suspension of the Sinn Fein movement is often cited as a throwback but it
is nothing of the kind. Under whatever name we propagate our ideas the
Irish Nation must be built on Sinn Fein principles, or non-recognition of
British authority, law, justice or legislature: that is our basis and the
principles of the Sinn Fein policy are as sound to-day as ever they were.
The movement is temporarily suspended because some of its leaders directed
it into an '82 movement, thinking they could collar the middle-classes and
drop the separatists; but when the separatists were dropped there was no
movement left."
The new movement was in fact an attempt to rehabilitate and re-establish
the Sinn Fein movement by making it definitely republican while adhering
to the main lines of the policy by which Sinn Fein hoped to succeed. But
the original Sinn Fein continued on its way. Its paper continued to be
published and to find readers. It was unrepentant with regard to its
political aims: "We do not care a fig for republicanism as republicanism,"
said _Sinn Fein_ two years later; but from the winter of 1910 dates the
movement which eventually drove out of Sinn Fein the idea of the
re-establishment of the King, Lords and Commons of Ireland under the
Constitution of 1782 and replaced it by that of an Irish Republic.
The new movement was the direct outcome of the Wolfe Tone Clubs. It was
they who carried out all the work entailed by the publication of _Irish
Freedom_. These clubs had just been founded "to propagate the principles
and disseminate the teachings of Theobald Wolfe Tone and the other true
Irishmen who in 1798, 1803, 1848 and 1867 strove for the complete
independence of Ireland; to encourage the union of Irishmen of all creeds
and sections in working for the freedom of their country; to promote the
advancement of national thought and inculcate the spirit of self-sacrifice
and self-reliance by which alone true liberty can be attained." The
members pledged themselves to substitute the common name of Irishman for
that of Catholic or Protestant; no person serving in the armed forces of
England was eligible for membership.