Andrew Kettle, a former Land League treasurer, to credit Griffith with being the only Irishman since Parnell’s very brief flirtation with economic nationalist ideas during the early 1880s to have ever bothered making a rational effort to examine whether or not the idea of an independent Irish state could possibly make the slightest political sense.151 This would do little, however, to reverse the firmly established trend of debate on Irish nationalism being confined largely to the non-political sphere—a supposedly purely cultural ‘separatism’—as if it could inherently have no practical, economic connotation.
During the winter of 1896, Griffith took part in some Celtic Literary Society activities and an event occurred that must have been cheering.152 On 29 December 1896, just before he was due to leave the country, a surprise party was held in his honour and a testimonial was presented to him.153 No testimonial was collected for fellow immigrant John Whelan (until recently, the secretary of the Celtic Literary Society), which probably indicates that Griffith’s poverty was better known than he wished.154 Some public figures attended to wish Griffith well. These included John Clarke, the curator of the Linen Hall Library in Belfast and editor of the Northern Patriot, James Casey, the secretary of the Gaelic League, as well as sub editors with the Daily and Weekly Independent (J.W. O’Beirne and John Murphy) who had recently joined the IRB. Murphy, Patrick Lavelle B.L. and Edward Whelan spoke in Griffith’s honour before Rooney concluded with a speech, noting ‘how much the existence of many national organisations have owed to your support’ and that ‘associated with you as most of us have been for years in national work, we cannot but feel grieved that your counsel and your assistance, valuable and ever ready, are about to be withdrawn.’ The Celtic Literary Society expressed a hope that they would be able to welcome Griffith home again one day.155 Maud Sheehan was evidently impressed by this little event as she recalled, by way of comparison, that when MacBride left for South Africa nobody was there to say goodbye to him.156
Although still completely unknown to the Irish public at large, by the age of twenty-five Griffith had acquired a few notable contacts in the worlds of politics and journalism. He was also sufficiently well informed of intricate dynamics of political developments in recent times to be able to later draw upon this knowledge for various critiques.157 He had not, however, acquired a livelihood or any degree of personal security. The combination of poverty and his individuality, as well as his refusal to abide by Archbishop Walsh’s Christian-democratic shibboleths, may explain his failure to find a career, or a niche in politics, through existing patronage networks. This brought him closer to the revolutionary underground. Like many IRB men, Griffith was both a product of British imperialism, as would be demonstrated by his South African adventure, as well as a declared opponent of British imperialism, as would be demonstrated by his continued intellectual attraction towards nationalist ideologies. His self-definition at this time was that of a rebel but he was very much a rebel without a cause. The outbreak of the Anglo-Boer War would change this situation, however. It would allow Griffith to find patronage from both revolutionary and political circles that would, in time, enable him to embark on a definite career path as a journalist.
CHAPTER TWO
The Pro-Boer Republican (1897–1902)
Erskine Childers, a leading theorist of Gladstonian fiscal doctrine for the British Empire, claimed that ‘the whole history of South Africa bears a close resemblance to the history of Ireland’.1 This idea was only justifiable according to the British Empire’s plan after 1886 to turn Ireland into a similar colonial, financial entity. As Gladstone himself explained, the only motive of his Irish policy lay in imperial ‘finance devices … too subtle and refined’ to be announced to the general public. For security reasons, however, it was ‘of great consequence that in Ireland, with a view to holding in the people’, these realities remained ones to which Irish public attention should never be drawn.2 Some historians have claimed falsely that the provenance of Gladstone’s Irish policy ‘must be explained in terms of parliamentary combinations’ arising from electoral results,3 as if T.P. O’Connor’s return for Liverpool in 1885 necessitated a dramatic alteration of government policy. However, the reality was quite different. ‘Ireland’s future had now become more unionist and imperial’4 precisely because ‘the position of the landlord in Ireland has been directly associated with [the formation of] State Policy all along’ and it had now been simply arranged that the Irish Party would serve as a ‘body of moderate men’ suited ‘to take their place’ in forestalling any possibility of an opposition to British rule arising in Ireland. This was to be done not least by deliberately not acknowledging publicly in Ireland what the British government’s policy for Ireland was in reality.5 The perpetuation of a permanent secret service within Ireland was a reflection of this intent.
This trend in British governmental policy regarding Ireland was essentially why deep paradoxes arose in Irish party-political nomenclatures after 1886 and continued long thereafter. For instance, in Dublin, the independent nationalist MP William Field found his material support from Tory (‘unionist’) businessmen in demanding greater Irish fiscal autonomy and independence from Britain. By contrast, the chief ‘home rule’ parliamentary representative,William Martin Murphy, who was a ‘nationalist’ wholly committed, with the Jesuits’ enthusiastic support, to overthrowing the historic legacy of the Protestant ascendancy, was one of three Irish Party figures who not only supported those British raids for South African gold that led to the Anglo-Boer War but also made and developed his fortune from the related British colonial (‘gold coast’) railway schemes in West Africa.6 In this way, the general impact upon Irish society of the Anglo-Boer War might be typified as having been an illustration of the maxim that ‘the bond of Empire was at all times stronger than that of [the] Union’. This was because ‘the Empire … offered career opportunities—male and female, clerical and lay, that were simply not available in Ireland’, making the Empire seem like a more sensible guide to political and economic developments than the old (eighteenth-century) Irish nationalist adage of ‘perish the empire and live the [Irish] constitution’.7 Griffith would take a contrary view. In the short term, however, such considerations evidently mattered very little to him compared to the purely personal issue that he was receiving a working holiday. Indeed, as Griffith could never afford from his own wages to take a holiday longer than a few hours in the Dublin countryside,8 his time in South Africa was undoubtedly one of the most colourful episodes of his life.
During his travels Griffith met people of various nationalities for the first time: native Africans, Indians, Dutch ‘Boers’, Portuguese, Germans, Egyptians, Japanese and even the English. Having travelled across England to Southampton, he boarded a steamship bound, via the Mediterranean and Suez Canal, for Portuguese East Africa (Mozambique). The ship stopped first at the tropical island of Zanzibar, a territory recently acquired by the British off the coast of German East Africa (Tanzania). Here he went on a British guided tour of the capital city, which brought to life for him ‘a beloved storybook of our childhood’:
One cannot thoroughly appreciate or understand the Arabian Nights until he has visited an Arab city—until he has wandered through the narrow, tortuous streets with palaces towering to the sky … Sometimes we went into the courtyards of the princely merchants … and cooled ourselves under his palm-tree; sometimes we mingled with the whirling stream of Arabs, Swahilis, Singhalese, Egyptians, Japanese, Banyans and Parsees in the bazaar, and sometimes we explored the narrow dirty back streets, scarcely three-feet wide, lit by occasional lanterns … [observing] the fish-market and the slave-market and a mosque or two.9
In Mozambique, Griffith spent most of the time ‘lying all the morning round the deck, revelling in delicious laziness’. He learnt some phrases in a Hindu dialect and repeatedly defeated a German traveller in chess (‘I comforted him with large beer and the assurance that I was the champion chess-player of the Celtic race’).10 At night, however, he invariably envied his fellow travellers for their female companionship. This prompted him to rely even more than usual on the traditional refuge of loveless young men: his pipe, which he christened as his
