THE ULSTERCONFLICT THE REPUBLICANS AND FIANNA FAIL Although the split in Sinn Fein over the Treaty is sornetimes seen as purely a matter of the status of the new Southern entity - whether it was to be the Irish Free State still under the tutelage of the British, or an Irish Republic externa! to the British empire - it can also be seen as a struggle for power over the direction of the Southern economy. By eventually giving recognition to the economic boycott of Belfast, which had been started by small Southern trade interests at a time of slump, the Southern politicians had, de facto, portitioned the island economically and had, incidentally, reinforced the bitterness and destructivity of the relations between the Catholic nationalists and the Protestant unionists in the North, all this from a safe distance. Arthur Griffith had been one of the main supporters of ¡!iving official status to the boycott, and it was he too who was the most willing to accept the Treaty on the grounds that it gave de facto independence with full fiscal powers. would avoid further bloodshed. and would restare a "peace" which would allow the kind of capitalist development of the Southern economy which was the raison d'etre of bis political life. Griffith was, in effect, the spokesman for the budding small manufacturers and traders who had experienced an unparalleled boom (along with the large ranching farmers) during the first world war when the sharp rise in world agricultura! prices had led to an export boom and shortages in sorne imoorted goods had favoured traders and sorne local manufacturers. The urban and rural wage earners fared badly during this same period since wages lagged behind rising prices and P-migration virtually ceased during the war years: the pool of unemoloyed increased in the countrvside, since emigration usually carne from the rural rather than the urban centres, and this pool supplied recruits for the I.R.A. in 1918. Disaffection with the orevailing social order was widesoread among this section of the I.R.A. in the early 1920s, and it was here that De Valera had his strongest support when he went outside Sinn Fein to launch his own oarty, eventually to be known as Fianna Fail ("Warriors of Destiny"). Before this. however, the agricultura! boom collaosed when orices slumped due to the cessation of hostilities in Europe. The economic dislocation in the South was considerable, but 55
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