Dr. phil. i irsk historie, Michael Farry, har skrevet den innledende delen om redaktrøren i United Irishman, Arthur Griffith. Griffith var grunnleggeren av partiet Sinn Fein.

The editor of the United Irishman was Arthur Griffith (1871-1922), a journalist who was the founder of the Sinn Fein party. This was a small weekly, which had a small circulation. The Sinn Fein policy at the time was pro-independence in contrast to the Home Rule policy of the Irish Parliamentary Party which had the support of most of the nationalist population. Sinn Fein advocated the leaving of the British Parliament, the setting up of a National Parliament in Dublin and passive resistance to Britain. After the 1916 Rising when the rebels were given the Sinn Fein title Griffith rose to prominence and became one of the Sinn Fein MPs who set up Dail Eireann, an Irish Parliament sitting in Dublin. Never a supporter of violence he still remained in the Sinn Fein organization as the war of independence developed and was one of the envoys who accepted the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. He became the President of the Dail (Parliament) after the split over the Treaty which led to the Irish Civil War (1922-23) He died in August 1922 when the Civil War was at its height. Griffith almost certainly was the author of this piece about Norway.

Michael Farry


United Irishman - A national weekly review. Dublin. June 17th 1905.

The dissolution of the Crowns of Norway and Sweden last week gave the Dublin daily journals an opportunity for a display of their ignorance of everything which is not English, which it availed of to the full. The Unionist section pointed to the severance of the Crowns as a proof of the fate which would overtake England if Ireland possessed a legislature of its own. Ireland would act as Norway did, they assured their readers, and England (it) would lost. But what of that if Ireland gained? It is England's loss or England's gain our Imperial patriots think of - their own country being too insignificant to regard as a separate entity. The Home Rule section on the other hand applauded Norway because they vaguely felt it would be a point against them if they admitted that that country - a terra incognito - had gone wrong. The Freeman's Journal babbled of the Swedes being "friends and brothers" unaware that "Swede" is the bitterest epithet of contempt a Norwegian can use to designate his enemy, and that a Norwegian in Sweden is regarded with the same amount of affection an Irish Nationalist is regarded with in England. We have yet to learn that an "Union" enforced by physical power breeds friendship and the Norwegians who ninety years ago were compelled by force to accept the King of Sweden as their sovereign, kept with scrupulous honour to their contract, but never feigned an affection for Sweden or the Swedes.


There is a moral in the Norwegian revolution for Ireland but the blundering writers of the Irish daily press have not pointed it. When Norway was compelled to accept the same sovereign with the Swedes, Precisely the same arrangement was come to between the two countries as was made between Great Britain and Ireland in 1782. Both countries were declared independent, the sole connection between them being the connection of the Crown. As under the Irish arrangement of 1782, the King of Ireland only was recognised in Ireland, so under the arrangement of 1814, the King of Norway only was recognised in Norway. Ireland, under the compact of 1782, was entitled to raise and maintain her own army and her own navy, and conduct her own foreign affairs, even to the extent of waging war and concluding peace without reference to that England for whose interests our Unionists are so deeply concerned. Ireland did none of these things because the spell of a great orator but utterly incapable statesman was over her, and the efforts of far-seeing men like Lucius O'Brien to have an Irish standing army created and an Irish fleet built to defend Ireland's interests, were withered in the eloquence of the man who declaimed against them as a slight on the good faith of England, and carried an emotional people with him. If there had been no Henry Grattan to prevent the ensuring of the maintenance of the Irish independence gained by the swords of the Volunteers, the history of Ireland for the last hundred years would not be a cinematograph of blood and fire, of insurrections, prison-cells, gibbets, famine, eviction, and expatriation. It would be the history of another Belgium, or of another Norway. There was no honest but incompetent orator to teach the Norwegians folly in 1814, and Norway built up her army and navy step by step with her commercial prosperity. Her prosperity grew in greater proportion than that of her neighbour, and the jealous Swedes did what the English did to the prosperous Ireland which succeeded Grattan's Parliament - sought to crush it in their own interests. The Norwegians to protect themselves, insisted on a separate Consular Service, a right appertaining to them under the Consitution, and this right the Swedes unconditionally refused. The King showed himself a Swede by his illegal refusal to sanction a measure, which, under the Constitution, he had no power to withhold, the Norwegians deposed him, as was their right to do, and Sweden had no alternative but to acquiesce, since, although she possesses more than double the population of Norway, she is too shrewd not to realise that a little people like the Norwegians, aflame with national spirit, are more than a match for all the forces she could bring against them.


Five years ago in the United Irishman we pointed out that the Swedish Government was seeking to play the same game with Norway the English Government played with Ireland in the last two decades of the eighteenth Century but we added the event would be different. The Norwegians are a brave and a manly people, but not a people that can easily be imposed upon. We forecasted that, if the Swedish Government continued in its course, Norway would dissolve the Union, and Sweden would be impotent against its action. What we wrote in 1899 has come true in 1905, for the Swedes continued their stupid policy until they left Norway with no option but to secede or sink to the position of office-boy in a firm which they had entered as an equal partner. The motion for secession was carried by an unanimous vote of the Norwegian Parliament. There are no Unionists in Norway to tell to tell its people that it is the duty of Norway to sacrifice itself for the good of the empire. There are in Norway as there are in all continental countries, a multitude of parties, Conservatives, Liberals, Radicals, Socialists, Monarchists, Republicans, but they are all Norwegians owing their allegiance to Norway, and when their nation was threatened they acted as Nationalists. In Ireland we have a party whose allegiance is given to another country, and who, because of that fact, call themselves Loyalists. In Norway they would be called traitors. We observe that lover of liberty, England, is deeply concerned for the future of the Scandinavian countries, whom she fears "owing to their dissention" Russia may attack and annex. But there are no dissentions among the Scandinavian countries, now that the attempt of one to follow the evil example of England in Ireland has been foiled by the resolution of Norway. The patriots of all the countries of Scandinavia have long advocated what has now occurred - the dissolution of the Swedo-Norwegian connection and the substitution in its stead of a defensive alliance between Sweden, Denmark and Norway, which will provide that any outside nation which seeks to overturn the independence of any one of the Scandinavian countries will be faced with the united force of all.


Norway has filled the stage of the world this week, and even in Ireland its greatness has been the topic of discussion. And this nation, great in literature, great in commerce, great in science, whose flag is to be seen flying in every ocean, has a population equal only to that of Leinster and Munster combined. This is a fact for Irishmen to meditate upon until the last poison of the insidious teaching that Ireland is a "little country", helpless of itself, is expelled from their minds. Ireland, with double Norway's pop, and four times her fertility, is miserable, impoverished and forgotten. The day of the "little nations" has returned, and the world is measuring greatness, not by the number of heads in a country, but by the spirit of its people. The spirit of Norway has made Norway great and free. If Ireland learns the lesson she preaches loudly to her, she will learn that national spirit is the shield and sabre of a country, and that the seoinin is its mortal enemy. (Note: A seoinin was the term of abuse for an Irishman who aped British ways. A Gaelic word.)

Oppdatert 14.03.04
Wigo H. Skråmm, Fetsund - Nils Steinar Våge, Lillestrøm