The Irish Question

     There are several incidents which link the Irish question to the events in the Ripper game.

• R. A. Anderson (current head of CID) in 1876 was brought into an intelligence branch to combat Fenianism. Although the branch officially closed, he remained an advisor to the Home Office in matters related to political crime. He was also the controller for the spy Thomas Miller Beach who had penetrated the Fenian movement.
• Two British government officials, Lord Frederick Cavendish and T.H. Burke, were slashed to death with surgical knives in Phoenix Park, Dublin on the night of May 6, 1882 by a group of Irish extremists -- the ``Phoenix Park murders''.
  These extremists were part of a secret society known as ``The Invincibles'' which terrorized landlords and British officials.
  They were captured when a Dublin tradesman named Field, who had been a juror in a murder trial, was attacked by the same gang and stabbed in many places. He escaped with life, though with shattered health, and it was the identification of the man who drove his assailants' care that afterwards led to the discovery of the whole conspiracy. The clue was obtained by a private examination of suspected persons under the powers given by the Crimes Act.
• The Special Irish Branch of London Police was formed in 1883.

     In 1858 John Doheny, James Stephens, and John Mahoney founded the Fenian Brotherhood and then Stephens returned to Ireland to found what turned into the Irish Republican Brotherhood. The Fenians understood the power of propaganda, too, founding a newspaper, The Irish People, which began to publicize the struggle for independence and to recruit members and money both in Ireland and the USA. Infiltration and violent suppression of the IRB by the Irish Constabulary and opposition by the Catholic Church forced the Fenians underground, making them largely ineffectual, but the philosophy of republicanism and Irish nationalism fell onto fertile ground.

     In the political arena, Fenianism found parliamentary expression in the Agrarian and Home Rule movements. Brilliantly led by the Irish Protestant landlord Charles Stewart Parnell, these parallel and sympathetic causes were able through confrontation and accommodation to achieve important and far-reaching reforms in land law. The plight of Irish peasants was vastly improved by the measures passed beginning in 1870 and continuing into the 20th century which gave them the right to reap the benefits of their efforts on leased land. Home Rule did not fare so well, though. When Parnell fell from power in 1890 following a nasty divorce scandal, this other cherished dream of the Fenians languished.

     In the cultural arena, Fenianism truly flourished. Responding to the impetus of the Young Irelanders in the 1840's, by the 1880's a vibrant Gaelic and Celtic revival was in full swing. The Gaelic Athletic Association founded in 1884 and the Gaelic League founded by Eoin MacNeil in 1893 became the backbone of a wildly popular rediscovery of Celtic literature, language, sports, music and dance, all of which were steeped in Catholic, republican nationalism. These two organizations were to nurture nearly all the revolutionaries who soon emerged to confront the British. The IRB quietly resurfaced and rapidly expanded thanks to intense recruiting activities at Gaelic athletic events.

     The Celtic revival also nurtured the emergence of world renowned artists in literature and drama. Such talents as W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, Sean O'Casey, Oscar Wilde, G. B. Shaw, Lady Gregory, J.M. Synge, and somewhat later, Samuel Beckett offered an outpouring of sometimes controversial, sometimes highly romanticized works many of which were deeply grounded in Irish themes and Irish experiences. Their literary works were of such high caliber that they captured the imagination of the world, not just their countrymen, but it was upon their fellow Irish that the impact was most potent. They rekindled deep pride in the Celtic heritage that had suffered so terribly down the dark centuries of oppression.

     Judging that this upswelling of national pride could be translated into effective political power, a loose association of informal political discussion groups devoted to the notion of Irish independence formalized itself as Sinn Fein ("ourselves alone") in 1905. Inspired by Arthur Griffith whose newspaper The United Irishman wielded broad influence in its advocacy of non-violent change, Sinn Fein publicly espoused a platform of economic independence through the development of native Irish industries. As Sinn Fein's popularity faded due in large part to the opposition of the Catholic clergy, it secretly allied itself with the leadership of the underground Irish Republican Brotherhood.