War of Independence
Griffith was elected a Sinn Féin MP in the Cavan East by-election of mid-1918 when he asked William O'Brien to move the writ for his candidacy, and held the seat when Sinn Féin subsequently routed the Irish Parliamentary Party at the 1918 general election. In that election he was also returned for the seat of Tyrone North West.
Sinn Féin's MPs decided not to take their seats in the British House of Commons but instead set up an Irish parliament, Dáil Éireann; the Irish War of Independence followed almost immediately. The dominant leaders in the new unilaterally declared Irish Republic were figures like Éamon de Valera, President of Dáil Éireann (1919–21), President of the Republic (1921–1922), and Michael Collins, Minister for Finance, head of the IRB and the Irish Republican Army's Director of Intelligence.
During de Valera's absence in the United States (1919–21) Griffith served as Acting President and gave regular press interviews. He was imprisoned in December 1920 but was subsequently released on 30 June 1921.
Read more about this topic: Arthur Griffith
Famous quotes containing the words war and/or independence:
“To this war of every man against every man, this also is consequent; that nothing can be Unjust. The notions of Right and Wrong, Justice and Injustice have there no place. Where there is no common Power, there is no Law; where no Law, no Injustice. Force, and Fraud, are in war the two Cardinal virtues.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)
“Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath.”
—Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797)