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Searc's Web Guide to 20th Century Ireland - Arthur Griffith (1872-1922)
Arthur Griffith was born and educated in Dublin. In 1896 he emigrated to the Transvaal where he worked as a journalist and fought in the Boer War before returning to Ireland in 1899. In that year he joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood, co-founded the Celtic Literary Society and became editor of the influential republican journal United Irishman at the behest of its proprietor Maud Gonne. In 1900 Griffith founded Cumann na nGeadheal and was imprisoned for two weeks for horsewhipping the editor of Figaro because he claimed that Maud Gonne was a British spy.
Griffith wrote articles condemning the visit of King Edward VII to Dublin in 1903 and a year later he published a pamphlet on the 1848 Hungarian Revolution entitled The Resurrection of Hungary or a Parallel for Ireland (1904). Griffith founded the Sinn Féin Party at the Rotunda, Dublin in November, 1905. The following year he began publishing Sinn Féin in which he urged passive resistance to British rule in Ireland. Griffith became President of Sinn Féin in 1910 but resigned from the IRB when the Rising became imminent. He was interned in Reading Gaol prior to the Rising and several more times before his election as Sinn Féin candidate for East Cavan and North-West Tyrone in 1918. Griffith was imprisoned during the War of Independence and on his release he lead the Irish Treaty Delegation to London in December, 1921.
Griffith was elected President of the Irish Free State shortly before his death in 1922. Griffith was a prolific poet and wrote under various pseudonyms. Griffith's Songs, Ballads and Recitations were published posthumously in 1923.©
Arthur Griffith (1872-1922)