P. S. O'Hegarty

“ CHAPTER IV THE SINN FEIN POLICY “The policy of Sinn Fein purposes to bring Ireland out of the corner and make her assert her existence to the world. I have spoken of an essential; but the basis of the policy is national self-reliance. No law and no series of laws can make a Nation out of a People which distrusts itself.”—Arthur Griffith (1906) .
While the immediate inspiration of the Sinn Fein policy may be held to be Mr. Griffith’s study of Hungary, it is no less undeniable that the roots of the policy are already in Nationalist writings and proceedings. ”

“ In the islands and bleak places of the bare West Coast the remnants of the Irish-speaking Nation still kept their language and their memory, and lived a life apart, but away towards the East there was only a people who were rapidly being assimilated by England, unconsciously but none the less certainly. One century of peaceful penetration had done more to blot out the Nation than five centuries of war and one century of incredible Penal Legislation. ”

“ They had had little cause to love the Dublin Parliament of the eighteenth century, in which they had neither representation nor franchise, but they had had no cause whatever to be hopefully conscious of the existence of the London Parliament. The Penal Legislation inevitably threw them back on themselves, preserved their language, culture, and traditions, preserved their national continuity. And as the century wore on the more conscious and strengthened Irish Nation swayed the Garrison into something which, in time, would have developed into complete nationalism and fusion. ”

“ Every sentence of his is as clean as a sword-cut, and as terrible in its effect as a battle-axe, and his genius for marshalling facts, like artillery, and concentrating them all at once in the direction he is working at is unequalled. His domestic policy for Ireland is the policy of Sinn Fein, and his foreign policy for Ireland is equally logical and equally inevitable. ”

“ Not even the Penal Laws could penetrate them, and behind the sure rampart of the language the Irish people, without leaders and notwithstanding the Penal Laws, re-knit their social order and peacefully penetrated the Garrison, so that at the end of the century they emerged from the ruins of the Penal Laws a Nation in bondage but still a Nation, with the language, culture, traditions and hopes of a Nation, and with the single will of a Nation. ”

“ Griffith is not alone the ablest Irishman now alive, but the ablest Irishman since John Mitchel, and the only political thinker since Mitchel who has displayed the statesman’s mind. He is the master of a style which is more nearly akin to that of Mitchel, and that of Swift, than to any modern style, and is certainly the greatest political writer now concerned with Ireland, and far and away the most potent political influence. ”

“ The nineteenth century, as I have pointed out, was a century wherein English civilisation attacked Irish civilisation at every possible point of contact: in the twentieth century the Sinn Fein policy reverses that process, and under its banner it is Irish civilisation which is the attacking party.
To regard the Sinn Fein policy as a mere political device is a grave mistake. It is more than politics: it is a national philosophy. ”

“ The only possible function which Irish representatives in London can fulfil is to record Irish opinion, to speak for it, negotiate for it, make it articulate; and that function can be performed much more effectively by representatives living and meeting in Ireland itself.
Sinn Fein thus scores two points against the Parliamentarian policy, that it is a betrayal of Ireland’s case, and that it is totally ineffective. But it is not content with that. It scores yet another point. Not alone is the Parliamentarian policy totally ineffective, but it is hurtful to the Nation. ”

“ There is no law to compel you to have resource to English law courts, establish voluntary courts of arbitration; there is no law compelling you to buy English manufactures, buy your own; there is no law compelling you to carry on your trade in English ships, establish your own mercantile marine. Stand together, the whole people as one unit, stand up for everything native and reject everything foreign, and freedom is yours. ”

“ Upon every Irish question, and every possible development in Ireland, Sinn Fein would operate on the same lines as those I have enumerated above. It would build up Ireland from within, strengthening everything Irish and attacking everything foreign, eliminating everything which would send Irish thoughts wandering in search of foreign aid and teaching the people by precept and example that a Nation’s salvation can only be worked out by itself and on its own soil. ”

“ In the history of the connexion between England and Ireland the vital dates are 1691, 1800, and 1893: in 1691 Ireland lay for the first time unarmed under the heel of the invader; in 1800 began the peaceful penetration of Irish civilisation by English civilisation; and in 1893 by the foundation of the Gaelic League Ireland turned once more to her own culture and her own past, alive to her separateness, her distinctiveness, alive also to her danger.
The defences of a nation against annihilation are two, physical and spiritual. ”

“ While Ireland, as the century wore on, grew more vocal about political freedom, all the essentials of its nationality—language, culture, memory—faded away into the highlands and islands of Kerry and Donegal and the bare West Coast. Assimilation proceeded apace, London was as near as Dublin, and the end of the century saw the popular Political Party merely the tail of an English Party. ”

“ And so the nineteenth century, which on the surface saw the development of an Ireland intensely conscious of its nationality, merely saw an Ireland intensely conscious of one manifestation of it, and that the least essential, and increasingly unconscious of the realities of nationality. ”

“ That work is the work of a mind perfectly assimilated to English civilisation, and it has no future save absorption. The Gaelic League leaven has driven it home to the people of Ireland that any similar work or effort in any sphere has no future save absorption, and it has sent them, in everything, in literature, politics, economics, back to their native culture and its traditions. ”

“ Once he has made up his mind on anything he never changes. In controversy he is like a bull-dog; he is always the last to let go, and by that time there isn’t much left of the other man’s case. As a controversialist he is able and totally unscrupulous, but he is nearly always right.
Until the recent strenuous period set in, his paper was like a huge magnet which attracted to itself from the length and breadth of Ireland all the poets and budding litterateurs. ”

“ He is naturally a believer in evolutionary methods in politics rather than in revolutionary methods, and, in a free Ireland, would I think be found on the side of what the “Times” would call “stability.” He is no great believer in the rights of man, and modern radical catch-cries leave him cold: his creed being rather the rights of nations and the duties of man, the rights of a nation being the right to freedom and [Pg 31] the right to the allegiance and service of all its children, and the duties of man being to fear God and serve his nation. ”

“ And they raised their battle-cry accordingly, and led their Nation out of the bog of Anglicisation, took the people’s eyes from the ends of the earth and turned them towards the West, where their language still lived and their national life kept its continuity. ”

“ The young men who founded the Gaelic League, and who did the desperate work of its early years, were men whose interests were intellectual rather than political, and who neither had, nor were likely to have, any intimate connexion with any political movement such as the then Parliamentarian Movement. The origin of the Gaelic League goes farther back, back to the early days of the century when the Nation began to lose the language. ”

“ Parnell, in his day, said that the Fenians were the backbone of Nationalism in Ireland, and that saying stands as true to-day as it was then. Political parties, and political movements, come and go, but the uncompromising Separatists, the Fenians, are always there, thrusting, it may be, from behind the mask of an open organisation, but always there directing and planning. Griffith can hardly be numbered amongst them. He has never believed in physical force, but has always believed that all Ireland standing together [Pg 29] could force an honourable settlement without physical force. ”

“ Gaelic League had turned men’s thoughts towards the old independent Ireland when the language and with it native culture were secure, and that spirit when it sought political expression naturally found it in Separatist form, and as naturally in literary form. So that there came a Separatist revival, largely in literary form, and Literary Societies were established in Dublin, Cork and Belfast which preached Separation and which fell back upon the propaganda methods of the Young Irelanders—ballad, lecture, history, with the significant addition of the language. ”

“ He will stand on a platform and, coolly and without the least trace of passion or emotion, will be more effective in the pungent deadliness of half-a-dozen sentences, without word painting or ornamentation of any kind, than the most flambuoyant orator. But his weapon is the pen, and one article in his best style is worth more than a dozen of his platform speeches. As leader-writer he is unequalled, and as a writer of obituary notices he is unsurpassable. ”

“ He believes in the State as against the individual, and when in 1913 the great Dublin strike was on foot he opposed it unflinchingly, unheeding the unpopularity of that course, because he believed that the strike was injurious to Ireland. Poverty and sweated labour and social problems generally he would remedy, not by strikes or sabotage, but by State action, and in such action he would have as little leaning towards employers as towards employées, his one guiding principle being the good of the nation. ”

“ And, had there never been a Hungary, yet the Sinn Fein policy would have come into being in or about the period at which it actually did. The Gaelic League had made it inevitable. Supporters of the Parliamentary Party have at various times accused the Gaelic League of being a political body, of being anti-Party, and have felt very sore over its alleged breaches of its non-political constitution. But the Gaelic League is actually non-political, and rigidly so. It and the [Pg 20] Parliamentarian people do not mix, and cannot mix, because they represent totally opposite views of Ireland. ”

“ He believes intensely in himself, and he has no real faith in anybody else, so that he is always more or less cold towards anybody who tries to do any political work on his own, in or about his own particular sphere. And this unfortunate tendency in him has been strengthened by the fact that his immediate friends and co-workers in Dublin are all far below his level in intellect and outlook, follow him blindly, and are equally suspicious of any other attempt to do similar work. ”

“ There were throughout the nineteenth century various short and ineffective attempts at a revival of Irish industries, but the first [Pg 8] evidence of a sense of spiritual loss was the successful attempt in the eighties at a revival and strengthening of Irish games and athletics, which resulted in the removal of English games and athletics from the dominant position and their gradual decline to their proper position as the games of a Garrison. But the turning point of all modern Irish development was the foundation of the Gaelic League in 1893. ”

“ But when events convinced the people that their Westminster voice had finally and definitely conquered the home voice, when they realised that what they had taken for a Nationalist in disguise was really an Imperialist, then they dropped the Parliamentarians as they will always drop any Party which compromises the fundamental right of the Irish Nation to independence. ”

“ Given a suitable open policy, that minority may become a majority at any time.
Now a Separatist Movement may have a choice of open policies, but it can have only one kind of secret policy, viz., a policy of arming and insurrection. And that is why insurrectionary movements which failed at an attempted insurrection and had no open policy to fall back upon have invariably been succeeded by moderate movements. Emmet was followed by O’Connell, Young Ireland by the Tenant Right Parliamentarian Movement, Fenianism by Parnell. ”

“ But, in the absence of that, or in the presence of a more workable or attractive moderate policy, the mass of the people are more liable to be deflected to the moderate policy and to leave Separatist principles to the minority who will not compromise and who will carry on a secret movement in default of an open one. ”

“ But with the establishment and arming of the Ulster Volunteers, with the connivance of England, it dawned upon many people that there was a sporting chance that, in order to keep up the semblance of impartiality, England would find herself unable to suppress an Irish Volunteer force, unless at any rate the Ulster force were at the same time suppressed. ”