Arthur Griffith

Arthur Joseph Griffith (Irish: Art Seosamh Ó Gríobhtha; 31 March 1871 – 12 August 1922) was an Irish politician and writer, who founded and later led the political party Sinn Féin. He served as President of Dáil Éireann from January to August 1922, and was chairman of the Irish delegation at the negotiations in London that produced the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921.

 

Arthur Joseph Griffith was born at 61 Upper Dominick Street, Dublin on 31 March 1871, of distant Welsh lineage.^[1] A Roman Catholic,^[2] he was educated by the Irish Christian Brothers. He worked for a time as a printer before joining the Gaelic League, which was aimed at promoting the restoration of the Irish language.

His father had been a printer on The Nation newspaper — Griffith was one of several employees locked out in the early 1890s due to a dispute with a new owner of the paper. The young Griffith was a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). He visited South Africa from 1897 to 1898, after the defeat and death of Charles Stewart Parnell whose more moderate views he had initially supported, while recovering from tuberculosis. There he supported the Boers against British expansionism and was a strong admirer of Paul Kruger.^{[citation needed]}

In 1899, on returning to Dublin, he co-founded the weekly United Irishman newspaper with his associate William Rooney, who died in 1901. On 24 November 1910, Griffith married his fiancée, Maud Sheehan, after a fifteen-year engagement; they had a son and a daughter.