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Introduction

I first became interested in the subject of Arthur Griffith when researching an undergraduate, social history dissertation on crime in Dublin during the mid-to-late Victorian period. Whether due to the phenomenon of unreported crime or inadequacies of contemporary statisticians, I found that records actually indicated that there was little or no crime in Dublin city during the 1870s (if that can be believed). Therefore, my initial immature vision of analysing Victorian Dublin life with a Charles Dickens’ style social consciousness could not be pursued much further. What I did find, however, were cartons of Dublin police reports about nationalist protest demonstrations and the like. These records excited my historical imagination into addressing the subject of the Fenian movement, as they presented a very different and much more interesting picture of its world to what I had already acquired from the standard historical textbooks. In among these decaying police records, covering the period 1872–92, were reports of the movements of a teenage Arthur Griffith, while he was still in proverbial short pants or not long beyond that stage of personal development. He was engaged in debates relating to the Land League and a nascent British socialist movement. This was the world of Michael Davitt and William Morris, not that of Eamon DeValera or Winston Churchill, yet this was evidently Griffith’s proverbial world at the outset of his political career.

The subject of the undergraduate dissertation was later expanded into a postgraduate thesis and this became a basis for a study entitled The IRB: The Irish Republican Brotherhood From the Land League to Sinn Féin (Dublin, 2005), which I wrote to get my PhD thesis out of my system, hopefully for good. However, it was then suggested to me that I should examine a later time period, from the beginnings of Sinn Féin up to the early years of the Irish state and, again, make the IRB the focus; in other words, start examining the world of Michael Collins and company. I was still hankering for the idea of pursuing more studies of the Victorian period, especially debates on church-state relations and how this impacted on the diverse political careers of men such as George Henry Moore, Thomas D’Arcy McGee (within the Irish diaspora) and the young John Dillon. It then occurred to me, however, that I had already found an interesting and little known link between these two time periods in history. That link was the life of Arthur Griffith. A specialist on the nineteenth century could also potentially tackle that subject in a manner that many historians of the twentieth-century Irish state may have been a little less equipped to address. I was already familiar with the history of Dublin in 1871, into which Arthur Griffith was born, and thus I felt had a good grounding for analysing the subject. In addition, I had much experience studying debates within the nationalist community in Dublin up until the formation of Sinn Féin by this same Mr Griffith in 1905. A logical progression from my past research, therefore, would be to examine the evolution of that Victorian world in the light of Griffith’s career up until 1922. This seemed like a worthwhile exercise, even if my conception of international relations in history was still rooted more in examining the worlds of Napoleon and Gladstone than that of the various statesmen of what twentieth-century historians not inaccurately refer to as ‘the interwar years’.

It may be a cliché but it is also true to note that Europe was generally perceived to be a very different, as well as more ‘democratic’, place after the First World War than it had been before. If one abiding lesson was learnt from my past research on the Parnell era it was the reality that one cannot speak of concepts such as ‘democracy’, ‘liberalism’, ‘nationalism’, ‘republicanism’ or ‘socialism’ during the nineteenth century as having the same meaning, or currency, as they may be said to have had ever since the First World War. That is partly why the political history of the nineteenth century is so interesting. Aldous Huxley may have coined the catchphrase ‘brave new world’ in 1932 but people a century earlier—when the very concept of modernity was in the process of being born—felt themselves to be living in precisely such a world without the aid of hallucinatory drugs. This may explain why historians of the nineteenth or twentieth centuries frequently seem to be speaking a different language: the period of the First World War stands between them as a bridge that remains uncertain how to cross. When applied to Ireland, this historical conundrum can have peculiar results.

A common perception of Arthur Griffith has been voiced by the premier historian of the post-1917 Sinn Féin Party, when he suggested that ‘among Irish nationalists who fought against British rule he was unusual, if not unique, in one respect: by the time of his death he had achieved most of his objectives.’1 Griffith probably remains best known to the reading public for signing an Anglo-Irish agreement in December 1921. However, he did not live to see the actual implementation of that agreement, a year later, with the establishment in December 1922 of the Irish Free State; the precursor to the current Irish state known as Éire. Within many accounts of Irish nationalism during the twentieth century is the idea that Griffith ‘achieved most of his objectives’ precisely because a ‘long revolution’ began in Ireland during the First World War, but Griffith actually represented a compromise upon the ideals of that ‘revolution’ because he accepted the terms of the Anglo-Irish agreement of December 1921. Supposedly, this not only made Griffith an unusual man but also a ‘counter-revolutionary’ figure.2 A revolution is inherently a dubious historical concept, however, because it implies the complete destruction of a past and the invention of a new future; in other words, a complete end to a sense of chronological time. When in human history can such a development be said to have truly come about?

The sense was certainly alive among Griffith’s own contemporaries that his career fell between two stools—namely, those who are acknowledged leaders of society and those who do not merit that recognition—and so he was likely to be soon forgotten. Indeed, the colleague that paid the greatest possible tribute to Griffith’s leadership skills also fully acknowledged that he ‘did not possess the romantic personality which moves crowds’, such as that of a ‘spell-binding orator’, and so he was both temperamentally inclined as well as encouraged by others ‘to stay in the background’.3 This book does not represent an effort to push the figure of Arthur Griffith into a historical foreground—a proverbial ‘resurrection’ of a forgotten man—but rather to readdress his life and times more fully according to the reality that his life began in 1871, not in 1917. I believe that there is much value to those interested in the history of twentieth-century Irish society to fully ground their perception in a deeper awareness of the realities of what is often termed ‘the long nineteenth century’ (1789–1914). As an introductory preface to the text that follows I would like to offer a few brief reflections on precisely this theme.

The history of nationalism in twentieth-century Europe is a deeply controversial subject. Two world wars have made a preoccupation with the concept of a nation-state anathema to many Europeans, not just to Vatican theoreticians of social justice, and quite understandably so. A deeper familiarity with the debates of the great age of nationalisms in Europe, during the proverbial long nineteenth century (1789–1914), can be illuminating in explaining the potential pitfalls for scholars who dare to explore that theme, however. Prior to the First World War and also, to some extent, during the inter war years, Europe experienced what many historians have typified as a cultural mania for building monuments to alleged national icons, including aristocrats and soldiers. To more contemporary eyes, these figures generally seem like ‘romantic and often ridiculous national heroes’, ‘who seem to want to leap from their plinths into some titanic struggle’:

The obvious intensity of their desire to liberate, or resist, is in heroic though doomed contrast to the pigeons perched on the sabre they brandish or the foxing that spots their fading image. They are like the essence of the longings of another age, frozen in time.4

One need only pay a passing visit to the environs of Westminster to see numerous Victorian monuments that sought to encapsulate a nation’s history in stone: from the conscious and symbolical juxtaposition of the Cromwell monument near the Royal Arch within the parliamentary grounds, to the larger-than-life monuments to various prime ministers of Britain’s most imperial days in the facing square. Warlike or not, they fit within this Europe-wide tradition of creating national icons in stone.

Ireland experienced monument building phases of its own, while the most imposing such monument encompassed a debate in itself.5 During 1875, the erection in Dublin of a monument to Daniel O’Connell consciously championed a conception of political liberation that was rooted not in the right granted to Catholics of political representation at the Westminster imperial parliament during 1829. Rather, it was rooted in O’Connell’s election during 1840 as the mayor of a city that was then—in so far as one could still claim the existence of one—the financial capital of the island of Ireland. Simultaneous with O’Connell’s election in Dublin, a foundation stone was laid in Armagh for the building of St Patrick’s Cathedral for the Catholic Primate of All Ireland, while young Trinity College students, soon represented by the Young Ireland circle behind the Nation, began an enthusiastic and pioneering debate upon Irish nationalism. This was a world of great debate and enthusiasm that was very familiar to the young Arthur Griffith and it shaped his world and imagination.

Today, near the O’Connell monument stands two twentieth-century monuments to express a very different sense of Irish identity. In addition to a sense of identity, these monuments express a deep sense of conflict. Nevertheless, one of these figures appears equally as triumphant as O’Connell. This is a monument to the international labour activist James Larkin, who represented the ideal of promoting labour political activism without consideration of national political boundaries and a consequent complete detestation and rejection of the nationalist idea of Irish self-government espoused by Arthur Griffith. Nearby, the seemingly heroic and eternal figure of Larkin is a monument to a self-consciously Irish nationalist, yet very small, rebellion that was organised by friends of Griffith during 1916. This is a monument with very noticeably defeatist or fatalistic overtones. It takes the form of a pre-historic Fenian who is seemingly dying a slow and agonising death for all eternity. It stands barely visible through the window of a post office, like an embarrassment that should be forgotten, as the general public passes by with understandable indifference or even repulsion at such a grotesque sight: it seems to represent a life-denying death wish.

These two monuments, erected almost a century after the initial O’Connell monument, may perhaps be said to be an Irish reflection of a broader international trend. The schoolboy histories of nationalist battles and iconic soldiers that were sold to a century of European youths stand indicted today as a cultural phenomenon similar to that which once absurdly sent hundreds of thousands of young men charging into machine-gun fire during two world wars. Between the age of O’Connell and the two world wars, however, stands the lifetime of Arthur Griffith. If the European tradition of monument building reflects anything in terms of the culture of Irish society then it must surely be that Griffith’s lifetime represents a culture that is now alien to the historical imagination to such an extent that the employment of sympathetic analyses— such as is first required to develop understanding of any historical subject matter—is one that is likely to be in relatively short supply whenever it is applied to Griffith or his contemporaries. This is an understandable but also relatively debilitating trend in historical studies.

The history of Europe during the long nineteenth century (1789–1914) was not a story of unrelenting warfare—although it certainly experienced its fair share of horrific wars—but of ‘revolutions in science, technology, transport, communications and commerce’, moving ‘colossal quantities of people, raw materials, crafted and manufactured goods from one corner of the globe to another at unprecedented speeds’. This was the essence of modernisation. Meanwhile, in politics, ‘dynamic new forces’ stood together ‘in uneasy balance’: ‘if liberalism was a characteristic response to these currents, so too was its cousin, revolutionary nationalism’.6 All the conventional vocabulary of political journalists during the post-1918 age of universal suffrage—speaking of concepts such as ‘democracy’, ‘liberalism’, ‘nationalism’, ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’— were a century earlier, or at least up until the 1848 rebellions in Europe (when the franchise was less than one per cent of adult males in most countries), almost exclusively the language of strange secret societies, or conspiracy brotherhoods, who were imagining brave new worlds.7 By the time of Griffith’s youth, with the formation of the Third Republic in France, these terminologies had slowly but surely begun to enter into the discourse of British university students as well as a new world of political journalism, with national circulations and aimed at a skilled working-class readership. This was the world of letters into which Griffith emerged. With this development also came the rise of a preoccupation with the hitherto revolutionary notion of establishing balanced state constitutions.

Historically, most European countries were based upon legal systems that employed precepts that were rooted not least in church traditions that emphasised the importance of placing the spirit of the law above the letter of the law. This was also a basis of the common law tradition. However, this consensus was challenged to its core in the wake of a Napoleonic Empire that introduced a strict civil code as a legal basis for national governments and administrations in the conquered territories. Would-be revolutionaries—generally typifying themselves as ‘republicans’ (then a catch-all phrase for ‘nationalists’, ‘liberals’, ‘democrats’ and ‘socialists’)—imagined during the post-Napoleonic era that the revival and maintenance of this tradition of civil codes was essentially to the process of modernisation and the creation of progressive constitutions; a concept then generally associated with that of the nation-state. In modern times, Ireland had always been a common law country. During the nineteenth century, as part of the United Kingdom, it remained one. The rise of nationalism did, however, stimulate debate in Ireland on the meaning of constitutions that mirrored developments throughout Europe in the wake of the French revolution. In this world of debate, in a manner comparable to the twentieth-century phenomenon of Marxism, the foreign offices of each of the European powers (perhaps most notably that of Britain) frequently sought to influence the tenor of debate within all potential rival countries for their own purposes. As a result, contemporaries throughout Europe were frequently divided on the question of whether all this revolutionary talk of republicanism truly represented a progressive development or else was simply a ruse of the foreign offices in an attempt to weaken whatever states could potentially prove to be an enemy on the international stage. In effect, with the rise of a debate on modernity came the birth of the fantasy world of the disingenuous ideologue in politics.

Youths who, like Griffith, spoke of republicanism echoed the example of the would-be constitutional revolts in Europe during 1848. However, the combination of the common law traditions of other English-speaking countries, such as the British colonies and the federal republic of the United States, reinforced the perception in Ireland and Britain that such radicalisms were best equated (at least outside of the American republic) with the potentially anarchical concept of democracy. For instance, in an act of defence against the European liberal or republican tradition of thought, the United Kingdom referred to itself as a ‘liberal constitutional monarchy’. This was done to indicate that a common law country, with a monarchy, could be both ‘constitutional’ and ‘liberal’ without necessarily having to be ‘a republic’ with its own definitive written constitution or civil code. What did this ‘liberal constitutional monarchy’ idea mean in Ireland? Although some spoke in Ireland about republicanism, it was generally perceived that the common law tradition, to which the churches held very dearly, was too deeply rooted and popular in Ireland to ever become uprooted. For this very reason, Griffith’s moderation of his republican views by espousing during 1904 the idea of an Anglo-Irish dual monarchy, akin to the situation in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was understood by many to be both a practicable and a progressive idea. This legalistic issue of common law traditions versus republican civil codes has remained a constant feature of European political life ever since Napoleon, including the current-day relationship between the constitutions (written or unwritten) of various modern nation-states and the European Union.

In terms of national governance, alongside the issue of constitutions lay the question of finance. An issue that became of paramount concern to Irish contemporaries during Griffith’s lifetime, even more so than during the lifetime of O’Connell, related to the financing of social services, particularly education and health. These issues greatly preoccupied the churches, especially a rapidly growing Catholic Church that was only in the process of re-establishing its authority in Ireland. The former question of education had certainly acquired greater connotations, however, as the traditional role of aristocrats in politics, business and government began to crumble upon the expansions of the civil service, local government and the electorate in the United Kingdom during the 1880s. The focus of education had now changed to facilitate a greater professionalisation of society.8 Reflecting this, the prospect of an imperial civil service career now became as enticing to many in Ireland as in the rest of the United Kingdom. This development encouraged a greater Irish acceptance of British state centralisation ever since the 1820s in terms of the management of Irish finances and resistance to this development was actually limited. Nevertheless, Griffith would make this goal his abiding preoccupation in political debate. This is precisely what ultimately made him, as well as the issue of an Irish nationalism, a subject of great controversy.

What is now termed as ‘globalisation’ essentially refers to the development of a situation ever since the 1950s whereby many financial institutions and, in turn, major businesses have ceased to be based exclusively within specific nation-states. In virtually all countries, few banks or major businesses are not partly owned by banks or businesses in other countries. States now compete with each other by regulating competing taxation systems for business far more so than by the creation of international trade walls, while stock exchanges operate far more on the basis of the exchange rate for each international currency than specifically the exchange rate for a national currency. Matters were very different in Griffith’s day. What might be termed as an economic nationalism was at the root of each state’s self-interest, while each state also invariably had its own national bank. Griffith applied these concepts to Ireland and as a leader of Dáil Eireann between 1919 and 1922 he sought to win greater public acceptance of them in the wake of the introduction of American investment in Europe during 1918. This same trend of American investment in Europe may be said to have ultimately caused the ‘globalisation’ phenomenon born during the 1950s, although in Griffith’s day it was a process that was only just beginning and it was not seen to have quite the same significant political connotations as it is supposed to have had in recent decades.9

Griffith and his colleagues were a people who protested that the small nations of Europe had the potential to make distinct contributions to European life and become viable political entities (‘nation states’) in their own right; principles that would ultimately become widely accepted internationally. This was done at a time when English debates on the proverbial British constitution (an unwritten and, therefore, not a republican constitution) essentially fell into the realm of a different field of analysis or debate. However, if Griffith was a great dissenter from accepted British norms even those in Ireland who favoured a continued connection with the United Kingdom held very dissenting opinions from the English majority and this, in turn, formed the context for a specifically Irish debate. Beyond that debate, Griffith’s life cannot essentially be understood. The challenge for Griffith’s biographer, therefore, is to address the fact that the precepts upon which the study of the political history of modern Ireland is based not only require a combination of a localised and a British imperial focus but also an analysis of the debates upon the concept of the nation-state that existed internationally throughout his lifetime.

If the birth of an Irish government during the twentieth century represented a new beginning it will be suggested in this book that it also reflected a deeper continuity in Irish life. Like many of his colleagues, or contemporaries, Griffith represented a particularly Irish response to the debates of the long nineteenth century. The answers they came up with provide a fascinating window into how the history of Ireland before and after the First World War not only met but also represented a greater continuity in modern history as a whole. Along with the remarkable social history connotations of Griffith’s life—he was a quintessentially working-class figure who nevertheless died while virtually a head of government—this is what makes Griffith’s life both a fascinating story in its own right and perhaps the greatest window available into the dynamics of what has, rightly or wrongly, been termed as an Irish revolution. The dynamics of Griffith’s career also represented a longstanding debate within Ireland regarding the respective merits of state-centered or Christian-democratic solutions to the problems that modern political societies face within the context of common law traditions. In itself, this debate became the touchstone of both modern Irish nationalism and constitutional thought.