Arthur Griffith

Arthur Griffith (1871-1922) was an Irish political journalist and former president of Dáil Éireann. Born on 31 March 1871 at Upper Dominick Street Dublin, Griffith was the second son of Arthur Griffith, a printer, and his wife, Mary Phelan. He was educated in Christian Brothers’ schools in Dublin before becoming apprenticed as a compositor. Like many Christian Brothers’ pupils he became committed to Irish nationalism in his youth: he was a follower of Charles Stewart Parnell during his ill-fated 1891 campaign and read the fiery writings of the Young Irelander John Mitchel. He joined several nationalist societies, including the Irish Republican Brotherhood, as well as co-founding the Celtic Literary Society. In the 1890s he emigrated to South Africa where he originally worked at a diamond mine. He then co-established a small newspaper in Transvaal, where he began to hone his literary skills which would be later put to use in pre-revolutionary Ireland. After the outbreak of the Boer Wars he befriended Major John MacBride, the leader of an Irish Brigade enlisted to fight the British.

Griffith returned to Ireland in 1898, joining the pro-Boer opposition in Ireland which was having an energising effect on the nationalist movement there. He demonstrated alongside Mac Bride’s future wife, Maud Gonne and organised protests against Queen Victorias last visit to Ireland, in 1900. In 1899 he created the radical separatist journal, the United Irishman. This journal declared the old Irish revolutions of 1798, 1848 and 1867 as momentous representations of Irelands ‘true nationalism’. Somewhat contradictorily, it also romanticised the parliamentarian Henry Grattan. The journal strongly criticised Parnell’s successors in the Irish parliamentary Party as well as participation in Westminster. Griffiths sustained polemic and satire played its role in that parties decline in the next two decades.

See Also

• First Sinn Fein party
• The Anglo Irish Treaty