1. John Sweetman was an Irish nationalist politician who served as an Anti-Parnellite Irish National Federation Member of Parliament in the 1890s, but later radicalised.
21 Facts About John Sweetman
1. 2.
John Sweetman was one of the founders of Sinn Fein and was the party's president from 1908 to 1911.
3.
John Sweetman was the eldest son of John Sweetman, a Dublin brewer, and Honoria, daughter of Malachy O'Connor.
4.
John Sweetman was born in County Dublin and educated at Downside School in Somerset.
5.
John Sweetman married Agnes Hanly in Navan, County Meath on 11 September 1895.
6.
John Sweetman was a major investor in the National Press newspaper.
7.
John Sweetman was elected at the 1892 general election as MP for East Wicklow as a member of the Anti-Parnellite Irish National Federation faction of the Irish Parliamentary Party.
8.
John Sweetman became a Parnellite in 1895 and resigned the seat on 8 April 1895.
9.
In 1900, John Sweetman denounced Queen Victoria's visit to Ireland, attacked Edward VII for taking the Oath of Coronation oath, and opposed the votes of congratulation to the king passed by public bodies in Ireland at the time of the coronation.
10.
In recognition for becoming chairman of the council, John Sweetman was offered an honour to be granted by Edward VII John Sweetman declared that his possession of Wolfe Tone's notebook was a greater honour than any the king could bestow and organised a campaign against the king's visit to Ireland.
11.
John Sweetman was one of the founders of Sinn Fein in 1905.
12.
John Sweetman became the party's second president in 1908, succeeding Edward Martyn, and retained the presidency until 1911 when he stepped down, to be succeeded by Arthur Griffith.
13.
John Sweetman practised a form of "clericalist catholicism" and was socially conservative, a stance that lead him to reject any idea of class politics, and to declare in his writing that the only way by which Ireland could be a prosperous nation was if the political class in Ireland cultivated a "national feeling" of unity that brought people of all backgrounds together into a joined social contract.
14.
John Sweetman's views were often criticised by leftist, liberal, and republican members of the Sinn Fein movement for moving Arthur Griffin to the political right, and for stifling criticism of the clergy in Sinn Fein publications.
15.
John Sweetman opposed Women's suffrage, and was criticised for creating a scholarship for University College Dublin that had a set condition that women must be excluded from it.
16.
John Sweetman opposed Jim Larkin and the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union during the Dublin lockout of 1913, voicing his views in a pamphlet entitled "The industrial problem".
17.
John Sweetman declared that World War I had begun when Britain attacked Germany to grab German trade, that Ireland would be ruined by wartime taxation unless it cut ties with Britain and that if he was arrested for 'speaking the truth' this would prove the falsity of John Redmond's claim that Ireland had regained her freedom.
18.
John Sweetman was briefly arrested and detained after the 1916 Easter Rising, as the British authorities rounded up anyone with connections to Sinn Fein in the mistaken belief that the Rising had been planned by Sinn Fein rather than the Irish Republican Brotherhood.
19.
John Sweetman turned down a Sinn Fein nomination for the 1918 general election on the grounds that he was too old; instead, his cousin Roger John Sweetman was Teachta Dala for North Wexford from 1918 to 1921.
20.
John Sweetman was fiercely opposed to the Blueshirts, comparing Eoin O'Duffy to Hitler.
21.
John Sweetman opposed plans to build a Catholic Cathedral in Merrion Square, where he himself lived, on the grounds that this would cause great trouble and inconvenience to the residents.