Sinn Féin

“ European history moves on, but Ireland’s hymn of hate is still unaltered, and to its accompaniment Sinn Féin adapts the incidents, great and trivial, which mark the progress of a conflict that is changing the world. ”

“ To the denial and obscuration of that enduring truth centuries of English policy have gone, and in Ireland everything has been sacrificed to its assertion and reiteration. It lies at the back of the whole Anglo-Irish controversy, and sums up the essence of innumerable volumes which have attempted to state the case for Irish freedom. Until the fact of Irish Nationality is accepted by England, and acted upon, it will be the task of Sinn Féin to proclaim the sacred egoism of a nation that will not die. ”

“ They did not know how many Irishmen regarded the action of Ulster not as a menace to the dignity of the Parliament in which the Party sat but as the harbinger of national independence. They underrated (as who then did not?) the influence of Sinn Fein; they regarded the foundation of the Irish Volunteers as the work of “irresponsible young men,” though the “young men” were nearer the heart of Young Ireland: like O’Connell, they “stood for Old Ireland and had some notion that Old Ireland would stand by them.” ”

“ To most Irishmen the panegyric of German disinterestedness was an idle tale, and Sinn Fein had been proclaiming (not without success) for nearly a score of years that the development of Ireland must not be expected from outsiders but from Irishmen themselves. But there were those who thought that the power to raise the heavy hand of England must be found, not in the slow efforts of a painful and hampered self-reliance, but in a hand heavier still: and it was assumed that German aid once given to free and re-establish Ireland would be withdrawn before it became tutelage and exploitation. ”

“ Editors of military age, who are too proud of their verbiage to fight, may lament the shame of a people incapable of the noble altruism which fights for the Sacred Treaties. Even if a miracle of democracy in the Allied ranks had not come to give us those shreds of the truth behind the war, Ireland would still remain unconscious of her shameless soullessness. Strong in the sacred egoism of Sinn Féin, the Irish nation is convinced that only in his own country can an Irishman usefully engage in the struggle for freedom. ”

“ The modern Labour movement is based on self-reliance, on the power and cohesion of large numbers, on the slowly built-up economic strength of great unions. Sinn Fein is merely the transfer of this faith from Labour to Nationality. That is what we are aiming at in Ireland: the formation of One Big Union, which will ask nothing from England until it is ready to strike. That is the task which lies before us: the organisation of the Irish People into a National Union. We must put ourselves into the position of taking over the whole national business of Ireland. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Official Sinn Fein still found the independence of Ireland in the Constitution of 1782: the Republicans would have nothing but a “true Republican Freedom.” The Citizen Army was Republican in its teaching but it was openly hostile to both sections of the Volunteers. To it Sinn Fein and many of the Republicans seemed a bourgeois party, from which the workers need expect nothing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Sinn Fein was the opposite of all this. It appealed alike from force and from fact to an ideal justice. Unable to win independence from a power both strong enough to coerce it and [Pg 282] interested for economic and military reasons in retaining its hold upon Ireland, it refused to ask for “pledges” which it felt sure would be broken, even if given, it refused to plead its case before a court whose interests were engaged against it in advance. It preferred to appeal to its rights, though there was no tribunal before which its plea could come. ”

“ The means at the disposal of Sinn Fein at present hardly seem adequate to accomplish its object. It may bring about the moral and intellectual independence of Ireland: it may secure a certain measure of economic independence: but to secure political independence, in face of the forces ranged against it, seems impossible. But what it cannot do for itself may in the future be done for it by the moral forces of which it is a manifestation. It may in the future be recognized by the conscience of mankind that no nation ought to exercise political domination over another nation. ”

“ It will be noticed that the status of an [Pg 242] independent Republic is claimed not because Republicanism is the ideal polity, but because such a status will leave Ireland free to choose either that or any other form of government; further that the new movement expressly links itself to the Sinn Fein of pre-war days by a formal recognition of its identity with it and by the express adoption of its methods; and lastly that the means by which independence is to be achieved are defined as “any and every means available,” the party being pledged neither to nor against any particular method. ”

“ The proposals of Sinn Féin include a boycott of all English institutions in Ireland, educational and of other kinds, the abandonment of the attendance of Irish members in the Imperial Parliament at Westminster, elections to which Sinn Féin candidates are, if necessary, to contest on the undertaking that if elected they will not take the oath at Westminster, but will attend a self-constituted National Council in Dublin, under the control of which a system of National education and of National arbitration courts, in addition to a National Stock Exchange, will be established. ”

“ Sinn Fein decided in the circumstances to put the real opinion of Ireland on the question of independence to a definite test before the Convention should have time to report in favour of something attractive to moderate men, if offered, but falling short of independence. ”

“ If such is the power of a minority, how irresistible would be an entire nation. Secure even only one million determined adherents of Sinn Fein, and in six months English government will be at an end. That is our belief, and it is based on solid facts of history—Hungarian Independence. English suffrage struggle, Irish victory over conscription. There are limits to the possibilities of brute force. At this stage of the world it is impossible to slaughter a nation, it is impossible to cope with a nation of passive resistors. ”

“ When the Party pointed to what it had done and to what it was about to do Sinn Fein reminded the country that the very existence of a Parliamentary Party was an acknowledgment of the Act of Union. When the Liberal Government was engaged in an embittered and apparently final struggle for supremacy with the Tory Party in the interests of Ireland, Sinn Fein professed entire disbelief in its sincerity; it asserted that the Liberals really loved the Tories very much better than they loved the Irish. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Sinn Fein is in no way built exclusively on the hopes of the Peace Conference; the movement was founded by Arthur Griffith years before the war, if indeed it is not coeval with the Irish age-long struggle for freedom. Nor are we such sentimental fools as to rely merely on gush. We do indeed hope for the triumph of moral principles in international affairs, and especially we hope that democracy is coming into its rightful inheritance. But meantime we rely primarily on ourselves and our own determination. ”

“ It is hardly too much to say that Ireland would have been [Pg 273] ungovernable but for the influence of the Church. It raised its voice against outrage and murder in language beside which the denunciations of politicians sound tame and flaccid. If it has meddled in politics (as it has) it has done no more than the Protestant Churches in Ireland, every one of which is “in politics” up to the neck.
And the co-operation of Labour and Sinn Fein in the opposition to Conscription by no means meant either that Labour had become Sinn Fein or that Sinn Fein had adopted the Labour programme. ”

“ Sinn Fein promised that Unionist Ulster would in its coming struggle with the English Parliament “receive the sympathy and support of Nationalist [Pg 132] Ireland.” From the Republican Party the action of the Volunteers received unstinted and enthusiastic commendation. “Ulster has done one thing,” wrote Irish Freedom, “which commands the respect and admiration of all genuine Nationalists—she has stood up for what she believes to be right and will be cajoled neither by English threats nor English bayonets. ”

“ The attempt which the Sinn Féin organisation has consistently, if unsuccessfully, made to arrogate to itself all credit for the progress of the Gaelic League and of the Industrial Revival, is singularly disingenuous in view of the assistance which both those movements have received and are receiving from the Parliamentary Party and its allies. ”

“ This was the alternative which Sinn Fein put in vehement and passionate language before the country and the reply of Nationalist Ireland was practically unanimous. Nearly every Nationalist in Ireland took the anti-Conscription pledge “Denying the right [Pg 264] of the British Government to enforce compulsory service in this country, we pledge ourselves solemnly to one another to resist Conscription by the most effective means at our disposal.” ”

“ This renunciation of force was however very different from O’Connell’s famous declaration of his intention not to fight. While Sinn Fern held that the most practical way to establish Irish freedom in the twentieth century was not the way of force it never concealed its opinion that force was a legitimate method of securing national rights. In fact no responsible national leader has ever held any other opinion in any country.
Nor was the Sinn Fein Party in its inception a Republican Party. ”

“ The instinct for freedom, the feeling that the existing Government of Ireland had not for a hundred years fulfilled the primary functions of government, became a reasoned and rooted conviction that something more was needed to mend it than mere Home Rule. The price that Ireland had been asked to pay for Home Rule, that it was still pertinaciously pressed to agree to, the partition of Ireland, seemed an unforgivable treachery beside the fair prospect of an Ireland one and indivisible, in which Orange and Green, Protestant and Catholic were united in the love and service of a common country. ”

“ Among the Sinn Fein papers, New Ireland, while faithful to the resolution of the Convention, saw most [Pg 276] clearly the reasons which explained the Labour attitude and, while expressing the hope that a severance from the English Unions would eventually occur, pleaded for toleration and for, in the meantime, a free hand for Labour.
But the Sinn Fein difficulty in regard to Labour lay deeper than any mere question of tactics. The leaders of Irish Labour might be Republicans, but they were also largely Socialists, and where Socialism is suspected the Church has to be reckoned with. ”

“ The leaders of the national party, bearing the scars of many political contests and familiar with all the tricks of their trade, regard the Sinn Fein advocates as enthusiastic schoolboys and play with them as a mastiff plays with a puppy. ”

“ Finally Sinn Fein, which, literally translated, means "Ourselves," was formally inaugurated at a meeting held in Dublin on 28th November 1905, under the chairmanship of Mr Edward Martyn and was defined as: "National self-development through the recognition of the rights and duties of citizenship on the part of the individual and by the aid and support of all movements originating from within Ireland, instinct with national tradition and not looking outside Ireland for the accomplishment of their aims." ”

“ Ireland would have no moral right to resist. The Party began to shift its ground: it could no longer, in view of Irish feeling, remain advocates of a settlement which made Conscription possible: it would not go the whole way with Sinn Fein and declare that no settlement would be satisfactory which did not acknowledge the right of Ireland to independent nationhood, to self-determination and the right to choose its own form of government. ”