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Neither the All-for-Ireland Party nor Sinn Fein was represented at the Convention, although Mr Lloyd George made a second appeal to Mr O'Brien to assist in its deliberations. It says something for the wisdom of Mr O'Brien's proposal for a small Conference that after debating the matter for months the Convention decided to transmit their powers to a Committee of Nine to draw up terms of agreement.
The representatives of the Irish Party, of Labour, of Sinn Fein and of the All-for-Irelanders met in Conference at the Mansion House, Dublin, to concert measures of Irish defence. The Mansion House Conference, at its first meeting, on 18th April, issued the following declaration:
So labor fights for a republic first. At the last general elections it withdrew all its labor party candidates that the Sinn Fein candidates might have a clear field to demonstrate to the world how unified is Irish sentiment in favor of a republic.
He had been chosen deliberately as a link with Sinn Fein. It stamped an aspect of the Convention that he was the youngest man there for he would not have been noticeably young in the House of Commons. We were a middle-aged assembly. Another link, though not so explicit, with Republican Ireland was Mr.
He then proposed as an alternative that an Irish Convention, composed of representative Irishmen, should assemble to deliberate upon the best means of governing their own country. The All-for-Ireland Party were asked to nominate representatives to this Convention, as were also Sinn Fein.
I do not propose to deal with the activities of Sinn Fein since it won its redoubtable victory over the forces of Parliamentarianism as represented by the Irish Party at the General Election. The country turned to it as its only avenue of salvation from a reign of corruption, incompetence and helplessness unparalleled in history.
So in the Catholic Church there are proletarian rebellions; there is many a priest who does not carry out the political orders of his superiors, but goes to the polls and votes for his class instead of for his pope. In Ireland, as I write, the young priests are defying their bishops and joining the Sinn Fein, a non-religious movement for an Irish Republic.
So anyhow when I got back they were at it dingdong, John Wyse saying it was Bloom gave the ideas for Sinn Fein to Griffith to put in his paper all kinds of jerrymandering, packed juries and swindling the taxes off of the government and appointing consuls all over the world to walk about selling Irish industries. Robbing Peter to pay Paul.
As if to make matters as impracticable as possible for the Parliamentarians, Mr Lloyd George introduced a Bill to conscript Ireland at the very time the Convention proposals were before Parliament. A more callous indifference to Irish psychology could scarcely be imagined. A series of Sinn Fein victories at the polls had decided the fate of Partition once and for all.
But any measure which gives genuine, if even partial, control of their own affairs to Irishmen shall meet with no opposition from us and should meet with no opposition from any section of Irishmen." From now onward until 1914 the Sinn Fein Movement was practically moribund and its name was scarcely heard of.
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