History of Sinn Féin
is the name of an Irish political party founded in 1905 by Arthur Griffith. It became a focus for various forms of Irish nationalism, especially Irish republicanism. After the Easter Rising in 1916, it grew in membership, with a reorganisation at its Ard Fheis in 1917. It split in 1922 in response to the Anglo-Irish Treaty which led to the Irish Civil War and saw the origins of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, the two parties which have since dominated Irish politics. Another split in the remaining Sinn Féin organisation in the early years of the Troubles in 1970 led to the Sinn Féin of today, which is a republican, left-wing nationalist and socialist party.
Early years
The ideas that led to Sinn Féin were first propounded by the United Irishman newspaper and its editor, Arthur Griffith. An article by Griffith in that paper in March 1900 called for the creation of an association to bring together the disparate Irish nationalist groups of the time, and as a result Cumann na nGaedheal was formed at the end of 1900. Griffith first put forward his proposal for the abstention of Irish members of parliament from the Westminster parliament at the 1902 Cumann na nGaedheal convention. A second organisation, the National Council, was formed in 1903 by Maud Gonne and others, including Griffith, on the occasion of the visit of King Edward VII to Dublin. Its purpose was to lobby Dublin Corporation to refrain from presenting an address to the king. The motion to present an address was duly defeated, but the National Council remained in existence as a pressure group to increase nationalist representation on local councils.Griffith elaborated his policy in a series of articles in the United Irishman in 1904, which outlined how the policy of withdrawing from the imperial parliament and passive resistance had been successfully followed in Hungary, leading to the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 and the creation of a dual monarchy, and proposed that Irish MPs should follow the same course. These were published later that year in a booklet entitled The Resurrection of Hungary. Also in 1904, a friend of Griffith, Mary Ellen Butler, remarked in a conversation that his ideas were "the policy of Sinn Féin, in fact" and Griffith enthusiastically adopted the term. The phrase Sinn Féin had been in use since the 1880s as an expression of separatist thinking, and was used as a slogan by the Gaelic League in the 1890s.
The first annual convention of the National Council on 28 November 1905 was notable for two things: the decision, by a majority vote, to open branches and organise on a national basis; and the presentation by Griffith of his 'Hungarian' policy, which was now called the Sinn Féin policy. This meeting is usually taken as the date of the foundation of the Sinn Féin party. In the meantime, a third organisation, the Dungannon Clubs, named after the Dungannon Convention of 1782, had been formed in Belfast by Bulmer Hobson, and it also considered itself to be part of 'the Sinn Féin movement'.
By 1907, there was pressure on the three organisations to unite—especially from the US, where John Devoy offered funding, but only to a unified party. The pressure increased when C. J. Dolan, the Irish Parliamentary Party MP for North Leitrim, announced his intention to resign his seat and contest it on a Sinn Féin platform. In April 1907, Cumann na nGaedheal and the Dungannon Clubs merged as the 'Sinn Féin League'. Negotiations continued until August when, at the National Council annual convention, the League and the National Council merged on terms favourable to Griffith. The resulting party was named Sinn Féin, and its foundation was backdated to the National Council convention of November 1905.
In the 1908 North Leitrim by-election, Sinn Féin secured 27% of the vote. Thereafter, both support and membership fell. Attendance was poor at the 1910 Ard Fheis, and there was difficulty finding members willing to take seats on the executive. While some local councillors were elected running under the party banner in the 1911 local elections, by 1915 the party was, in the words of one of Griffith's colleagues, "on the rocks", and so insolvent financially that it could not pay the rent on its headquarters in Harcourt Street in Dublin.
1917–1922
Aftermath of the Easter Rising
Although it was blamed for it by the British government, Sinn Féin was not involved in the Easter Rising. The leaders of the Rising were looking for more than the Sinn Féin proposal of a separation stronger than Home Rule under a dual monarchy. Any group that disagreed with mainstream constitutional politics was branded 'Sinn Féin' by British commentators.In January 1917, George Noble Plunkett, father of the executed 1916 leader Joseph Plunkett, stood for election as an independent in the North Roscommon by-election, in a campaign led by Fr. Michael O'Flanagan, a Sinn Féin organiser, on a policy of appealing for Irish independence at the post-war peace conference. Polling took place in heavy snow on 3 February 1917. Plunkett took the seat by a large majority, and surprised his audience by announcing he intended to abstain from Westminster.
Plunkett summoned a convention in the Mansion House, Dublin in April 1917, where his supporters and those of Griffith failed to reach consensus. When a split seemed imminent, O'Flanagan mediated an agreement between Griffith and Plunkett, and a group known as the Mansion House Committee was formed, tasked with organising forthcoming by-elections and sending an envoy to the Paris peace conference. Plunkett joined the Sinn Féin party. Sinn Féin contested the 1917 South Longford by-election, where Joseph McGuinness, imprisoned in Lewes jail for his part in the Rising, was elected on the slogan "Put him in to get him out". Over the summer of 1917, surviving members of the Rising were freed from prison by Lloyd George, wary of public opinion as he attempted to get America to join the war. Éamon de Valera overcame his reluctance to enter electoral politics, when he was elected in East Clare on 10 July 1917. A fourth by-election was won by W. T. Cosgrave in Kilkenny City.
The Mansion House Committee organised an Ard Fheis in October 1917, where again the party nearly split between its monarchist and republican wings. De Valera was elected president, with Griffith and O'Flanagan as vice-presidents. A compromise motion was passed, which read:
This kept the party's options open on the question of the constitutional form of an independent Ireland, although in practice it became increasingly republican in nature.
The Irish Parliamentary Party under John Redmond—and later under John Dillon—won three by-elections in early 1918. Sinn Féin came back with victories for Patrick McCartan in Tullamore in April, and Arthur Griffith in East Cavan in June.
When the British prime minister David Lloyd George called the Irish Convention in July 1917, in an attempt to reach agreement on introducing all-Ireland Home Rule, Sinn Féin declined its allocated five seats on the grounds that the Convention did not allow debate on the full independence of Ireland. After the First World War German spring offensive in March 1918, when Britain threatened to impose conscription on Ireland to bring its decimated divisions up to strength, the ensuing Conscription Crisis decisively swung support behind Sinn Féin. The British Government responded by arresting and interning the leading members of Sinn Féin and hundreds of others not involved in the organisation, accused of complicity in a fictitious German Plot.
1918 electoral victory
Sinn Féin won 73 of Ireland's 105 seats in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom at the December 1918 general election, twenty-five of them uncontested. The IPP, the largest party in Ireland for forty years, had not fought a general election since 1910; in many parts of Ireland its organisation had decayed and was no longer capable of mounting an electoral challenge. Many other seats were uncontested owing to Sinn Féin's mass support, with other parties deciding that there was no point in challenging Sinn Féin given that it was certain to win.Contemporary documents also suggest a degree of intimidation of opponents. Piaras Béaslaí gave an account from the 1917 South Longford by-election where a Sinn Féin activist put a gun against the head of a returning officer and forced him to announce the election of Joseph McGuinness, the Sinn Féin candidate, even though the IPP candidate had more votes. Potential candidates who were thought of as serious challengers to Sinn Féin candidates were warned against seeking election in some Ulster constituencies and in Munster. In County Cork all the All-for-Ireland League MPs stood down voluntarily in favour of Sinn Féin candidates.
In Ulster, unionists won 23 seats, Sinn Féin 10 and the Irish Parliamentary Party won five. In the thirty-two counties of Ireland, twenty-four returned only Sinn Féin candidates. In the nine counties of Ulster, unionists polled a majority in four.
Because twenty-five seats were uncontested under dubious circumstances, it has been difficult to determine what the actual support for the party was in the country. Various accounts range from 45% to 80%. Academic analysts at the Northern Ireland demographic institute estimate a figure of 53%. Another estimate suggests Sinn Féin had the support of approximately 65% of the electorate. Lastly, emigration was difficult during the war, which meant that tens of thousands of young people were in Ireland who would not have been there under normal circumstances.
On 21 January 1919, twenty-seven Sinn Féin MPs assembled in Dublin's Mansion House and proclaimed themselves the parliament of Ireland, the First Dáil. They elected the Ministry of Dáil Éireann as the executive government of the Irish Republic, headed by the President of Dáil Éireann. From August 1921, de Valera used the title of President of the Irish Republic.
In the 1920 city council elections, Sinn Féin gained control of ten of the twelve city councils in Ireland. Only Belfast and Derry remained under unionist and IPP control. In the local elections of the same year, Sinn Féin won control of 25 of the 33 county councils. Antrim, Down, Londonderry and Armagh were controlled by Unionists, Fermanagh and Tyrone by the Nationalist Party, and in Galway and Waterford no party had a majority.