Arthur Griffith - Charges of Anti-Semitism

Charges of Anti-Semitism

The charge of anti-semitism has often been levelled at Griffith. He published articles signed by 'The Home Secretary' in his newspaper, the United Irishman, during the Dreyfus Affair which displayed clear hatred for Jews. Even after Alfred Dreyfus had been pardoned Griffith remained virulently Anti-Dreyfusard. In 1899 he wrote in the United Irishman:

I have in former years often declared that the Three Evil Influences of the century were the Pirate, the Freemason, and the Jew.

Following the Dreyfus Affair, an article in the 16 September 1899 edition of the United Irishman stated:

A few days ago a Jew traitor, who had sold the most vital secrets of France to her military enemies, was condemned to the mild punishment of imprisonment, after his guilt had been for a second time in five years demonstrated to a court martial of his comrades ... The simple fact is that the whole European world, with the exception of the Anglo-Jew coalition and its Irish sycophants, is utterly indifferent to the traitor's fate.

Griffith's editorial support for the Limerick Pogrom (a boycott of Jewish businesses in Limerick organised by the Redemptorist Father John Creagh in 1904) has also been criticised. His claim that it was a boycott of usurers is weakened by the fact that the vast majority of the people affected by the boycott were tradesmen:

When Catholics - as Catholics - are boycotted, it constitutes undoubtedly an outrageous injustice, and similarly if Jews - as Jews - were boycotted, it would be outrageously unjust. But the Jew in Limerick has not been boycotted because he is a Jew, but because he is a usurer. And we deny that we offend against ethics by most heartily advocating the boycott of usurers, whether they be Jew, Pagan or Christian.

As his biographer Brian Maye has pointed out, Griffith clearly had a "wildly exaggerated notion of the extent of Jewish involvement in money-lending and devious business practices" and his language was dangerously provocative.

Maye has also stated that Griffith's anti-semitic beliefs were tempered after 1910. At that period he became a close friend and associate of the Jewish solicitor Michael Noyk. Noyk defended many IRA members in courts martial during the Irish War of Independence and served as an official in the First Dáil Department of Finance and as a Dáil Court judge during the war. A number of friends included Dr Bethel Solomons, who contributed to the purchase of a house for Griffith when he married, Dr Edward Lipman, Jacob Elyan and Philip Sayers.