Gnathai Gan Iarriadh
Published: 2016-01-21
Total Pages: 44
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Sinn Fein was founded on 28 November 1905, when, at the first annual Convention of the National Council, Arthur Griffith outlined the Sinn Fein policy, "to establish in Ireland's capital a national legislature endowed with the moral authority of the Irish nation." Sinn Fein contested the North Leitrim by-election, 1908, and secured 27% of the vote. Thereafter, both support and membership fell. At the 1910 Ard Fheis (party conference) the attendance was poor and there was difficulty finding members willing to take seats on the executive. In 1914, Sinn Fein members, including Griffith, joined the anti-Redmond Irish Volunteers, which was referred to by Redmondites and others as the "Sinn Fein Volunteers." Although Griffith himself did not take part in the Easter Rising of 1916, many Sinn Fein members, who were also members of both the Volunteers and the Irish Republican Brotherhood, did. Government and newspapers dubbed the Rising "the Sinn Fein Rising." After the Rising, republicans came together under the banner of Sinn Fein, and at the 1917 Ard Fheis the party committed itself for the first time to the establishment of an Irish Republic. In the 1918 general election, Sinn Fein won 73 of Ireland's 105 seats, and in January 1919, its MPs assembled in Dublin and proclaimed themselves Dail Eireann, the parliament of Ireland. The party supported the Irish Republican Army during the War of Independence, and members of the Dail government negotiated the Anglo-Irish Treaty with the British Government in 1921. In the Dail debates that followed, the party divided on the Treaty. Anti-Treaty members led by Eamon de Valera walked out, and pro- and anti-Treaty members took opposite sides in the ensuing Civil War."