The Evolution of Sinn Fein

by Robert Mitchell Henry

SINN FEIN.

Of the origin of this name as the title of a political party a pleasant tale is told. It is said that some people, convinced that (in the words of Davis) “the freeman’s friend is Self-Reliance,” and wishing to make it the basis of a national movement, being anxious for a suitable Irish name for such an idea, applied to a famous Irish scholar to furnish it. He told them a story of a country servant in Munster sent with a horse to the fair. The horse was sold and the servant after some days appeared in his master’s kitchen, worn out but happy, and seated himself on the floor. To the enquiries of some neighbours who happened to be there, as to where he had been and what he had done, he would give no answer but “Sinn fein sinn fein.” The prodigal servant’s witty reply eludes the translator. To his hearers it conveyed that family matters were matters for the family: but it was no mere evasion of a temporary or personal difficulty. It was the expression of a universal truth. Society is divided into groups, large or small, which have their own problems and their own interests. Their problems they can best solve themselves, and of their interests they are themselves the best judges. The solutions and the judgments will not always commend themselves to outsiders; but though outsiders cannot be denied the right to hold and to express their opinions they have no rights of veto or of interference. This right of independence, however, is subject in practice to serious limitations, and the history of human society is largely the history of the reconciliation of the competing interests and claims of social groups, each claiming to be in the last resort rightfully independent. One of such groups is the nation, and it is generally recognized that nations as such have rights analogous to those exercised by other social groups. They may be forcibly deprived by another and stronger group of rights the exercise of which seems to the stronger to be inimical to its own interests; or rights may be surrendered in return for what may be judged to be a fair equivalent. But it is not held that rights can be extinguished by force or that, if a suitable opportunity should occur, they may not be regained either by force or by agreement. These things are generally acknowledged in the abstract; but in concrete instances there is seldom an equal unanimity: and a nation whose rights are in abeyance (especially if it be in the interest of a stronger neighbour to prevent their exercise) is in a position which seldom admits of a simple or harmonious solution. Ideally it has a right to complete independence: practically it has to be content with as much independence as it can make good; and the methods which it may employ are various, always open to challenge and compassed by uncertainty.

A nation may maintain its moral and spiritual, long after it has forfeited its material and political, independence. To such a nation the more valuable part of its independence has been preserved. But it is hardly possible in the long run for a nation which has become materially and politically dependent upon another to retain its moral and spiritual independence unimpaired. The loss of the latter is the final stage in national decline.

To the founders of Sinn Fein, a national condition was presented to which no other remedy than their own seemed to offer the prospect of relief. All previous efforts to recover the political independence lost by the Act of Union had ended in disaster and disappointment. Force had been tried and proved unavailing: the experiences of ’48 and ’67 had left little doubt upon the minds of reasonable men that the attempt to regain Irish independence by force of arms was (however heroic) an impossible and foolish attempt. “We believe” (wrote the chief exponent of Sinn Fein) “with the editor of the Irish World that the four-and-a-quarter millions of unarmed people in Ireland would be no match in the field for the British Empire. If we did not believe so, as firmly as we believe the eighty Irishmen in the British House of Commons are no match for the six hundred Britishers opposed to them, our proper residence would be a padded cell.” But if force of arms had proved useless, so had constitutional agitation. There was no argument of public justice, public expediency or public generosity which had not been urged without effect upon Parliament. Irish members had been arguing against the Union for a hundred years: there was no point of view from which the case could be presented that had been overlooked. When Parliament seemed to listen and to be prepared to act it was found not to have heard the arguments for independence but arguments for a different kind of a Union. The belief that nothing was to be expected from Parliamentary action received later a striking confirmation: for when the Irish demand was whittled down to a bare minimum and all claim to independence expressly renounced, a pretext was found in the exigencies of English political relationships for refusing even that.

Not only had political independence gone beyond the chance of recovery by either force or argument but material independence had followed it. The trade, commerce and industries of Ireland which had flourished during its brief period of independence had dwindled since the Union and from causes for which the Union was directly responsible. The “equitable proportion” of Imperial taxation to which the taxes of Ireland had been restricted by the terms of the Act of Union had proved to be inequitable, so that Ireland was overtaxed to the extent of two-and-three-quarter millions of pounds per annum: new taxes in defiance of the Act had been imposed: Ireland, again in defiance of the Act, had been made jointly responsible for a debt which was not her own: Irish banks and Irish railways were managed not with reference to Irish interests but in the interests of English finance and English trade: the Irish mercantile marine was no more: the mineral resources of the country in coal and iron remained undeveloped lest their development might act unfavourably upon vested interests in Great Britain. The population had declined at a rate without parallel in Europe: even Ulster, proclaimed to be prosperous because Protestant and Unionist, had seen the population of its most “loyal” counties almost halved in the space of seventy years. Nothing but the removal of the cause could arrest this spreading decay, and the cause was declared to be irremovable: to tamper with it was to lay an impious hand upon the Ark of a grim Covenant.

But the last refuge of independence was still safe—resolve was still strong—no weakness of acquiescence, no dimness of spirit, no decay of the soul was as yet to be discerned. An answer to these questions might be found in the history of the language and of what the possession of a native language implied. Up to the time of the Union the Gaelic language had preserved intact, in spite of Penal Laws and the instruments of repression, all that was most vital in the national spirit. Tales of warriors and heroes, of the long wars of the Gael with the stranger, the sighs of love and the aspirations of devotion, satire and encomium, all the literature and song of a people were enshrined in the native tongue. Behind it, as behind an unassailable rampart, the national culture was preserved, in misery and degradation, it is true, the mere shadow of what it was and might be, but still its existence was secure. The Irish language was understood all over Ireland, and was the familiar tongue of three-quarters of its inhabitants. It was not a necessary consequence of the Union itself that this should be destroyed, but it was a necessary consequence of the measures which the Act of Union made it possible to take. The English Government decided to embark upon the task of “civilizing” the inhabitants of Ireland by a comprehensive system of practical education. In 1831 the “National” Education system was founded and before the century was old its work was done: it had “educated” Ireland out of its traditional civilization and culture. The authors and administrators of this system were sincere and well-intentioned men: they believed that they were removing a disability and conferring a benefit. They regarded ignorance as barbarous and disgraceful; and what was ignorance if it was not inability to write, read, and speak the English tongue? A love of learning had always distinguished the Irish people; and here was the learning, for which so many vain sacrifices had been made in the past, brought in full measure to their very doors. Everything that might induce suspicion of the Danai, dona ferentes, was carefully avoided. The Catholic Archbishop of Dublin held a seat on the Board and no book was sanctioned by the Board without his unreserved acquiescence. The Catholic clergy were encouraged to take a share in the administration of the schools and to supervise or impart the religious instruction of the pupils. It was the avowed policy of the Board to avoid anything that might savour of proselytism on the one hand and of the perpetuation of sectarian discord on the other. Pupils of the two creeds were to meet together on equal terms and in friendly rivalry in the classroom, while their particular religious interests were entrusted to their respective clergy. But this paternal care for the susceptibilities of Irish children, this careful abhorrence of sectarian animosities, went hand in hand with an elaborate disregard of every distinctive national feeling and characteristic. English was the language of the school, while Irish was the language of the fireside and of the street. Irish history was ignored: references to national and patriotic sentiments were carefully excluded, as a possible disturbing influence, from the approved text books: while the privilege of being “British,” and the duty of feeling it to be a privilege, were carefully inculcated.

It may seem extraordinary that such a system should have been accepted, even if the attempt to impose it were made. But in fact the bribe of knowledge is a great bribe; and in this case the consequence of taking it was in obscurity. To learn English was to possess the only key to the knowledge that was offered, and when English was learnt, the language of “progress” crushed the language of tradition. A few far-seeing Irishmen, like Archbishop MacHale, saw the inevitable tendency and endeavoured to correct it; but in general no one noticed that the Irish language was going until everyone noticed that it had gone. Men’s minds were set upon other things. The struggle for political independence and political and social equality absorbed energy and attention, and the political struggle had to be carried on by men who understood English. O’Connell’s election for the county of Clare struck a deadly blow at the preservation of the language and at all that the preservation of the language implied: he himself, with a miserable servility, refused to speak any tongue but the tongue of Parliament. The National Board of Education did not, it is true, escape criticism: but the criticism was directed not to its educational shortcomings or to its anti-national bias, but to its policy of “religious indifference.” The Presbyterian ministers were up in arms against a system by which “the Gospel” was excluded from the schools. They claimed the right to conduct the schools supported by the Board in defiance of the terms upon which the Board had promised to support them. They contended for the principle of a programme in which the reading of the Bible might at any moment without notice be substituted by a Presbyterian teacher for any item on the programme for the day, any Catholic children who happened to be in attendance being allowed to withdraw, the responsibility for the child’s spiritual loss being solemnly laid upon the shoulders of the parents. The Protestant clergy, who were supposed as part of their duty to keep schools in their parishes, though they had neglected the duty for generations, followed with similar claims. They stirred up their congregations until mobs took to wrecking the National Schools in counties like Antrim and Down, and rifle clubs were formed under the patronage of the local aristocracy for the defence of their threatened Bibles. Under the Ultramontane leadership of Cardinal Cullen the Catholic clergy adopted a similar attitude. They alleged that the National system was hostile to their faith. Whatever danger to the faith had been contained in it had at any rate escaped the vigilance of Archbishop Murray and the authorities whom he had consulted. But the spirit of religious animosity once let loose could not be chained; and the system which began by promoting the co-education of the two creeds, ended by a segregating of the population from infancy into hostile camps. This accomplished the end which was designed by nobody but reached by everybody, that of breaking down the feeling of national unity and perpetuating feelings which it had been the aim of patriots to obliterate.

But though the closing decade of the nineteenth century presented a spectacle of national disunion and apathy, of failing vigour and vanishing ideals, it saw the beginning of a movement destined to arrest the decline of one department of the national life. The foundation of the Gaelic League in 1893 may be regarded as the turning point in the history of the language. When it was on the verge of extinction its decline was stayed by the enthusiastic patriotism of Dr. Douglas Hyde. Non-political and non-sectarian, the League worked for the restoration, preservation and diffusion of the Irish language, Irish music and Irish industries. In its councils Catholic priests and laymen worked side by side with Protestant laymen and ministers. It not only revived the language (its first and main object) but it proved incidentally, as if in answer to a frequent but foolish criticism, that Irishmen of different creeds and political opinions could sink their differences in the common interests of patriotism. It kept rigidly and sternly aloof from all connection with professedly political parties. It had no more to do with official Nationalism than it had to do with Ulster Unionism. It resisted with success the attempts of some of the clergy to interfere with its programme: in the case of the parish priest of Portarlington who objected to mixed classes on the specious ground of public morals it asserted its rights to control its own activities and established once for all, so far as it was concerned, the principle that the sphere of the clergy’s activities is not co-extensive with human life. It criticized the Hierarchy with as much independence as it would have criticized a local Board of Guardians; and in the end it won and held the enthusiastic support of the best elements in Irish life. Looking from things temporal and devoting itself to things of the mind, it widened the horizon and cleared the outlook of many districts through all Ireland. P. H. Pearse said with truth “The Gaelic League will be recognized in history as the most revolutionary influence that ever came into Ireland.” The revolution which it wrought was moral, intellectual and spiritual and its influence in strengthening and developing the national character can hardly be over-estimated. Blamed alike for doing too much and for not doing enough, it adhered with undeviating consistency to its own programme and has been fully justified by its work. It stimulated activities in spheres far remote from its own. It enriched Anglo-Irish literature through the works of writers to whom it opened a new field and for whom it provided a fresh stimulus. There is hardly a writer in Ireland to-day of any promise in either prose or verse who does not owe a heavy debt to the work of the Gaelic League.

The Gaelic League proceeded upon the assumption that Irishmen possessed and ought to possess an interest in the language of their own country. It did not argue the point or indulge in academic discussions upon the utility of Gaelic as a medium of communication or upon the psychology of language. Its simple appeal to a natural human feeling found a response wider than could have been evoked by a learned controversy or effected as the fruit of a dialectical victory. But language is only a part of nationality and the attachment of a human being to the language of his country is only a special case of his attachment to the nation. This, though the Gaelic League held aloof from all politics (in the narrow sense of the word), is what gave to the work of the Gaelic League a real political importance. The stimulation of national sentiment in one department gave a stimulus to the same sentiment in other departments, and the new and vigorous national sense which it fostered was bound to lead sooner or later to expression in political action. But even after this political activity began to be manifest, the League confined itself to its original work, and held as much aloof from politics infused by its own spirit as from the forms of political action which held the field when its work began.

Sinn Fein is an expression in political theory and action of the claim of Ireland to be a nation, with all the practical consequences which such a claim involves. It differs from previous national movements principally in the policy which it outlines for the attainment of its ultimate end, the independence of Ireland: though it should be understood that nearly every point in the Sinn Fein political programme had been at least suggested by some previous Irish Nationalist thinker. In opposition to the Parliamentary Party it held that for Ireland to send representatives to Westminster was to acknowledge the validity of the Act of Union and virtually to deny the Irish claim to an independent legislature. In contrast with the National movements of ’48 and ’67 it disclaimed the use of physical force for the attainment of its ends. While it held as a matter of abstract political ethics that a nation subjugated against its will by another nation is justified in regaining its independence, if it can do so, by any means at its disposal, including force, yet as a matter of practical Irish politics it renounced the use of force unequivocally. “It is because Ireland is to-day unable to overcome England on the battlefield we preach the Sinn Fein policy,” wrote the principal exponent of the policy in 1906. The remnants of the Fenian Brotherhood had no sympathy with a policy such as this: and though representatives of the “physical force party” were allowed to express their opinions in the Sinn Fein papers, their views were not officially adopted and never became part of the Sinn Fein policy. At least one prominent member of the old Fenian Party saw reason to adopt the Sinn Fein policy in preference to that of armed force. “I would not,” wrote John Devoy from New York in 1911, “incite the unorganized, undisciplined and unarmed people of Ireland to a hopeless military struggle with England.” 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.