Sinn Fein: An Illumination

by P. S. O'Hegarty

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. Swift, and the 1782 Volunteers, and Davis, and Mitchel, and Lalor, all had some one or other of the points which make up the modern Sinn Fein policy. 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 Parliamentarian people do not mix, and cannot mix, because they represent totally opposite views of Ireland. It is an impossibility for a supporter of the Parliamentarian policy to be at the same time a sincere believer in Gaelic League policy. He will find that his Parliamentarian convictions will vanish, not because of any propaganda within the Gaelic League, but because the Gaelic League philosophy, its aggressive self-reliance, its faith in itself, and in Ireland, these create an outlook and a conviction which, without being political, are fatal to the Parliamentarian atmosphere and show it for the helpless, foolish thing it is. In the “Shan Van Vocht” for March, 1897, Dr. Douglas Hyde, who will not be accused by anybody of being a politician, has a poem in Irish, “Waiting for Help,” of which the last verse is—

(It is time for every fool to recognise that there is only one watchword which is worth anything—Ourselves alone.) This contains the essence of the Sinn Fein policy.

Sinn Fein means ourselves, and the Sinn Fein policy is founded on the faith that the Irish people have the strength to free themselves without any outside aid of any description, if they will only use their strength. To the policy of building up the Nation from without it opposes the policy of building it from within, and against Freedom by Legislation it puts Freedom by National Self-Development. It takes the motto of Davis, “Educate, that you may be free,” and it applies it to every Irish problem; it takes the Gaelic League principle of developing Irish distinctive features, and it declares war on everything imported, resurrecting Swift’s dictum to “burn everything English save their coals.” 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. Its purely political side has been most prominent because it attacked the existing dominant political party, and because before it can be generally effective it must establish dominance over every other political policy. Nationalists of all shades of opinion would subscribe to a great deal of its constructive programme, and these have often asked why does Sinn Fein not confine itself to those points upon which general agreement can be reached. The answer is that the political policy of Sinn Fein is an integral portion of its general national policy, and that its adoption by the majority of the Irish people is essential to the effective operation of its non-political constructive policy.

The case for the policy of Parliamentarianism, the policy of acquiescing in the Act of Union and sending Irish Nationalist representatives to sit in the English Parliament, must rest upon one thing, and one alone, upon its effectiveness. It has already against it the damning fact that the sending of Irish representatives to the English Parliament is a giving away of Ireland’s whole case, is an acceptance of the Act of Union, and is a recognition of the authority of the English Parliament to legislate for Ireland. Of itself, argues Sinn Fein, that fact discredits the Parliamentarian policy, even if it were effective, but it is not, and it never has been effective. The “remedial legislation” which the English Parliament has passed for Ireland has been passed in response to agitation in Ireland, and not in response to agitation in Parliament. The only way to set the legislative machine working is to hamper the machine of government in Ireland, and the more effectively that machine is hampered the more drastic the resultant legislation. Instead of London being the lever to work Ireland, Ireland is the lever to work London. No measure of remedial legislation can be pointed to which was passed as the result, directly or indirectly, of parliamentary action. The Catholic Associations of O’Connell, culminating in the Clare election and the ferment it set up, passed the Catholic Emancipation Act; Carrickshock and similar acts of resistance to the collection of tithes passed the Tithes Act; Fenianism disestablished the “Irish” Church and passed the Land Acts; and the Local Government Act was passed by a Unionist Government which had a clear majority over all parties, avowedly as a sop to try and pacify Ireland, and not in response to any pressure of any kind in Parliament, or any Parliamentarian manœuvres. In none of these things had action in the Parliament of England the least share. It is the agitation at home, and not the agitation in Westminster, that is effective. 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. It has turned the imagination of the people away from Ireland towards parliamentary happenings in a foreign Parliament: it has kept their minds on the one phase of activity, the oratorical phase, while language, traditions, and industries vanished from the land, while at every national artery English civilisation entered: it has gradually whittled down the national demand, as the Party gradually became less Irish and more English, until it was ready to accept any shameful settlement as a just settlement: it has been a force, unconscious perhaps but powerful, towards making London the capital of Ireland: under its sway in Ireland the population of Ireland has steadily decreased and the taxation of Ireland has as steadily increased.

That is the Sinn Fein case against the policy of Parliamentarianism, and it is an overwhelming case.