Sinn Fein: An IlluminationO'Hegarty, P. S. (Patrick Sarsfield)
History
Sinn Fein: An Illumination
O'Hegarty, P. S. (Patrick Sarsfield)
Griffith, Arthur, 1872-1922; Sinn Fein
When the Volunteers expelled Mr. Redmond's nominees it was considered good
tactics by the Parliamentarian press to dub the original Irish Volunteers
the "Sinn Fein" Volunteers, the Party having judged that Sinn Fein as a
policy was beyond the possibility of resurrection: and in course of time
the name "Sinn Feiner" came to be used where up to that time "Factionist"
had been the favourite term. When the insurrection occurred it was
promptly labelled a "Sinn Fein" insurrection, and the papers were full of
stories about the "Sinn Fein" colours, stamps, commandoes, and
desperadoes. All this with the object of discrediting the insurrection,
the name "Sinn Fein" not being in good odour in the country. Thus Sinn
Fein, from being politics, and discredited politics, suddenly became
history. And at the same time the Unionists made their contribution to its
rehabilitation.
The "Irish Times" is the organ of the governing classes in Ireland and the
organ in Ireland of the Unionist Party of England. On the 1st May, 1916,
its first appearance after the insurrection, it wrote: "All the elements
of disaffection have shown their hand. The State has struck, but its work
is not yet finished. The surgeon's knife has been put to the corruption in
the body of Ireland, and its course must not be stayed until the whole
malignant growth has been removed. In the verdict of history weakness
to-day would be even more criminal than the indifference of the last few
months. Sedition must be rooted out of Ireland once for all. The rapine
and bloodshed of the past week must be finished with a severity which will
make any repetition of them impossible for many generations to come." How
strangely fatuous that reads now! And on May 2 the Dublin correspondent of
"The Times," who is the editor of the "Irish Times," wrote: "There are a
few persons, not now prisoners of the law, about whose fate the public is
beginning to be curious. They are men who until the moment of the
insurrection were closely identified with the extreme propaganda of Sinn
Fein, who encouraged the movement, made violent speeches, wrote violently
in newspapers, but at the last moment did not come out with uniforms and
guns. At least half a dozen such men are notorious." The men referred to
were Mr. Arthur Griffith and other leaders of the old Sinn Fein Movement.
These counsels of the "Irish Times" and of the London "Times" were adopted
by the Government, the first executions taking place on May 3rd, and being
followed by the arrest and deportation of everybody who had ever been
connected either with the Volunteers or the old Sinn Fein Movement, so
that many moribund branches of Sinn Fein found themselves together
again--in Richmond Barracks, or in a deportation prison.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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