One of our members, well known author Tony Jordan, recently published a new book that should be of interest to many of our members and should find its way into your Christmas stocking! Here is a short introduction to the book by Tony himself. We hope to get Tony to present a miscellany in the new year and I’m sure he’d be delighted to sign copies of his book for any members who bring copies along to the miscellany!
It Is a book about the cultural and national revival through the lens of the 3 Dubliners named in the title. Griffith became acquainted with Yeats & Maud Gonne through Rooney’s Celtic Literary Society. All of them were involved in protests about the Boer War, supporting Major John MacBride and his Irish Transvaal Brigade. Together with James Connolly they sallied forth against the police as described in Joyce’s Ulysses. Yeats remained an activist nationalist until Gonne married MacBride in 1903. While in university Joyce was anti-national despite Griffith introducing him in theUnited Irishman and defending him against censorship; “ growing turnips would be more advantageous to growing censors”. Living on the continent Joyce relied on Griffith’s newspapers for news of Ireland. Joyce came to support Sinn Fein lauding Griffith for ‘doing’ something about the English domination. In articles written during those years Joyce called for an Irish revolution. He said the Irish are great talkers but we want a successful revolution for once and for all. But he added that it wouldn’t come until long after his ‘last tram’ had gone home. When it did come in 1916 he had ‘taken the King’s chilling’ out of dire necessity and remained quiet.
Griffith supported Joyce’s long efforts [1905-1914] to have his Dubliners published. When they met in Dublin in 1912, Joyce told Griffith that he was trying to liberate the Irish politically and economically, while he Joyce was trying to free them spiritually. In 1922 when Ulysses was published Joyce felt that he had set the template for his task, while Griffith had just become President of Dail Eireann. Joyce rewarded Griffith by featuring him, alone of contemporary politicians, throughout Ulysses.
Griffith did not back the 1916 Rising initially, fearing the British would lay the country waste as they had in South Africa. Griffith, who had in 1904 called for Irish parliamentarians to refuse to go to Westminster and set up their own parliament in Dublin, realised that the terms offered under the Treaty were the best that could be achieved and when full fiscal control was thrown in by Lloyd George, persuaded his colleagues to accept. The Dail and people supported this.
Griffith felt betrayed by Collins in the ‘Pact Election’ of 1922 and the bitterness demonstrated by his widow towards Collins and the Irish Free State at the treatment handed out to her and her husband, are to be read in her letters of the period contained in the book. Two of the the last five years of Griffith’s short life were spent in internment. His widow threatened to have her husband’s body exhumed and reburied in her family’s grave if the Government did not honour its promise to give the deeds of his grave to her.
Yeats made an excellent speech in the Senate in 1923 about his old colleague who had sacrificed everything for the cause of Ireland.
Dublin South RTA 