Arthur Griffith
Arthur Griffith (1871-1922) was the founding father of the Sinn Fein Party. Originally the party was not Republican, but an advocate of a dual-monarchy system, similar to that of Austria-Hungary. Arthur was also a proponent of protectionism and as a result his party followed through with his convictions. Although Arthur himself was opposed to violence as a legitimate form of political activism, he could not stop the Sinn Fein party developing into a political wing of organisations such as the Irish Volunteer Force (Later the Irish Volunteers and the National Volunteers) and the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Nonetheless he was a signatore of the Anglo-Irish Treaty and a firm Collins-ite. Griffith died from heart failure but is commonly said to have died from a broken heart during the outbreak of the Irish Civil War as the conflict hurt him deeply.