Later, at a key turning point in the history of early-twentieth-century Ireland, Griffith would cite the former example of Parnell as a means of criticising the contemporary leadership of the Irish Party.46 From this premise, future historians of twentieth-century Ireland mistakenly assumed that Griffith had idolised Parnell in his youth.47 The reality, however, was quite different. Although, like most Dubliners (including Tories), he denounced those who were prepared to ‘betray the country by voting against Mr. Parnell’ at the request of the British Liberal Party, he insisted that his society’s minute book would record that ‘Mr. Griffith spoke as one who never was a supporter of Mr. Parnell but was an independent nationalist.’48 This was also the stance taken by the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) during this controversy.
Griffith was drawn into the controversy through the National Club Literary Society. This met in the same venue and under the same management as a new Parnell Leadership Committee; namely, John Clancy, a city councillor, the electoral registrar of Dublin and an old republican.49 When Parnell announced his intention to pit his own candidate against that of the Irish Party at a Kilkenny by-election, virtually all contemporaries expected that the outcome would be decisive in settling the controversy. Parnell’s candidate lacked any organisational support, however, except for that provided by P.N. Fitzgerald, the chief travelling organiser of the IRB and a personal friend of William O’Brien MP who was then wavering in his support of Parnell.50 Griffith’s society published an ‘address to the men of north Kilkenny’ in support of the Parnellite candidate (Vincent Scully) that was sent to various newspapers, politicians and a workingmen’s club in Kilkenny City that was run by P.J. O’Keefe, the local IRB leader. James J. O’Kelly, a former IRB leader who became a founder of the Irish Party during 1880, was the only politician to take notice of Griffith’s address, however. This was signed by Griffith using the pseudonym ‘J.P. Ruhart’; ‘Ruhart’ being an anagram of Arthur, and J.P. standing for Justice of the Peace.51
Why Griffith, an unknown youth, chose to use this false name is unclear. He may have been aware that the police were watching his Leinster Literary Society’s meeting place on Marlborough Street.52 It is more likely, however, that he understood that his father’s fortunate current status as the foreman-printer with the stridently anti-Parnell Nation meant that any public address in which ‘Arthur Griffith of Dublin’ denounced all opponents of Parnell could have led to the only bread-winner in the Griffith family losing his job. Griffith’s willingness to support Parnell was partly motivated by the Catholic hierarchy’s statement that no Catholic could support him any longer. Prior to the outbreak of the controversy, Griffith had given voice to anticlerical viewpoints and the clergy’s critical role in overthrowing Parnell would encourage him to embrace an IRB-style anticlericalism, claiming that the continued presence of priests and bishops in politics would be ‘fatal’ to the development of Irish political society.53 Many Irish Tory cultural nationalists, who naturally sided with Parnell against the Liberal Party, shared this perspective if only because they lamented the partial eclipse of the prestige of the disestablished Church of Ireland.
The Parnellite defeat at Kilkenny came as quite a shock to much of Dublin society. Griffith and his friends vented their spleen through a series of private debates in which various historical episodes were turned into platforms for giving voice to anticlerical viewpoints.54 In Griffith’s case, this was done primarily in the context of a debate on the French Revolution (1789–93). He described this event as a justifiable ‘outburst of popular feeling against the corrupt and debauched nobility and clergy who governed the land’ before he proceeded to defend the excesses of the French revolutionists in executing their perceived enemies.55 Griffith’s youthful tendency towards extremism, which certainly separated him from the Tory brand of contemporary nationalists, would also be reflected by a ballad he wrote on the Europe-wide 1848 revolutions. This depicted all established authorities as enemies of liberty that deserved to be ‘stricken, in the anger of the people, to the dust’.56
By May 1891, Griffith was attending meetings that were organised by the IRB with the purpose of forming an executive for a new organisation that would create an alliance between all nationalist debating societies in the country. He represented the Leinster Literary Society at such a private convention, held at the National Club.57 That summer, Griffith also worked with the National Club Literary Society in launching a tradition of holding annual Bodenstown demonstrations in honour of Wolfe Tone and began attending meetings of amnesty clubs. These clubs had been formed by James Boland, the Dublin IRB leader (and father of Harry Boland), to campaign for the release of John Daly and P.W. Nally, two IRB leaders who had received terms of life imprisonment several years before.58
Many years later, a newspaper contributor claimed that during 1891 Griffith addressed a rally of university students and ‘old Fenians’ outside of University College Dublin and made a direct personal appeal to T.C. Harrington, a lawyer and future mayor, to resign his Dublin parliamentary seat so that Parnell could contest it.59 This seems unlikely, however, because Griffith never held a position in the new Parnellite Irish National League (the Irish Party’s support body had renamed itself as the Irish National Federation). In July 1891 the National League rejected calls that representatives of debating and trade societies be admitted to its executive. By contrast, reflecting contemporary class dynamics, several wealthy Tories who represented business interests in Cork and Dublin cities were allowed admittance to its executive.60 John R. Whelan, one of Griffith’s maternal cousins, did read an address to Parnell at Kingsbridge (Heuston) Station on behalf of the Leinster Literary Society; an event at which Griffith was no doubt present.61 This address was signed and quite possibly written by ‘J.P. Ruhart’ (Griffith). It began by expressing praise for Parnell’s past use of obstructionist tactics in Westminster before emphasising that the true concerns of Irish nationalists had always far surpassed such considerations:
To us, it matters not whether most or any of those representatives desert that policy and seek fusion with any English party. To us, it matters not whether ecclesiastical domination on the one side or Dublin Castle influence on the other prevail; our duty is imperative. The path of independence is before us. Independent of English politicians, and without Irish traitors and cowards, we will seek for freedom; or failing to obtain it, we will, like the Carthaginians of old, retire behind the embattlements of our rights and refuse to obey the dictates of any leader of an alien people. And we hereby emphasise that resolve by declaring in the words of John Mitchel: ‘all Whig [Liberal] professions about conciliatory and impartial government in Ireland are as false as the father of Whiggery himself’.62
It is unlikely that Parnell was impressed with this somewhat self-righteous address. Shortly thereafter, Griffith was re-elected as president of the Leinster Literary Society. In this capacity he attended Parnell’s funeral and expressed condolences with the relatives of P.W. Nally, who died very suddenly in Mountjoy jail just prior to a date set for his early release.63 Griffith also distributed circulars across the country with a view to creating a federation of nationalist debating societies.64 This had led to the creation of the Young Ireland League (YIL) at the Dublin Rotunda that September under the presidency of John O’Leary.65 The most prestigious club to become affiliated with the YIL was W.B. Yeats’ new National Literary Society, which was popular with Tory cultural nationalists. Fearing the consequences of the bitter passions that Parnell’s fall had aroused, Yeats’ society forbade the discussion of party politics at its meetings.66 This was an example that Griffith’s lesser-known society chose not to follow, ultimately to its own detriment.
Griffith resigned as president of the Leinster Literary Society in December 1891 when he took up his first salaried job, which was as a compositor with the Irish Daily Independent. This was a recently established Parnellite newspaper that was partly funded by the Tories and managed by Fred Allan, a Dublin IRB leader who married into a Royal Navy family.67 During 1892, the Leinster Literary Society expressed unanimous support for republican governments: Griffith even styled himself as the representative of ‘the Republic of Ringsend and the Coombe’.68 In the autumn of 1892, however, a Cork Irish Party supporter was admitted to its meetings and taunted its members by arguing that ‘you are Parnellites here in Dublin but you would be anti-Parnellites
