Sinn Fein

163.38/161.24 SINN FEIN Sinn Fein (Gaelic for "Ourselves Alone") was the name of the political group founded by Arthur Griffith in 1904-5 and dedicated to achieving Irish independence. The phrase Sinn Fein is used several times in Ulysses and clearly refers to this political group, but this is apparently an anachronism, for I can find no evidence of Sinn Fein being used to designate this group before about November of 1904. Apparently Griffith had used it in a letter to William Rooney several years earlier, but it was not publicly used until late in 1904. Padraic Colum (Ourselves Alone [New York, 1959]) says, ". . . at the end of 1904 an enthusiastic lady, Miss Mary Butler, suggested the name 'Sinn Fein' which Arthur Griffith, forgetting that he had used it in a letter from Africa, instantly adopted" (p. 87; see also p. 32). Apparently Joyce felt Sinn Fein to be so important to his purpose that he disregarded the small anachronism involved in using it.

8.458 (163:38). Sinn Fein – Irish: "We ourselves," with the added implication, "Stand Together." Bloom uses the term (as it was so often used) to mean the underground organization of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (see 2.272n) in the early twentieth century. More accurately, the term applies to the separatist policies articulated by Arthur Griffith late in 1905 and early in 1906. The Sinn Fein policy advocated that the Irish should refuse to support English economic and political institutions and should create their own, whether or not the English were willing to recognize them as constitutional. As originally conceived, Griffith's Sinn Fein did not have a secret or underground military arm, but many Irish republicans with outspoken paramilitary attitudes rallied to Sinn Fein's cause. See 1.176n.

156.11 Sinn Fein: see 7.31 n. Originally without a secret 'military' wing, Sinn Féin policy was economic and cultural: refusal to support England economically, independent development of Ireland's economy and culture whether or not constitutionally recognized by Britain.