Countess Markiewicz in
Fianna Éireann uniform
 |
| Copywirght |
COUNTESS MARKIEVICZ
Countess
Markievicz (Polish: Markiewicz; née Gore-Booth; 4 February 1868 – 15 July 1927) founder of Na Fianna Éireann, a revolutionary, nationalist, suffragette, socialist, and an Irish Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil politician. In December 1918, she was the first woman elected to
the British House of Commons, though she did not take her seat and, along with
the other Sinn Féin TDs, formed the first Dáil Éireann. She was also one of the
first women in the world to hold a cabinet position (Minister for Labour of the
Irish Republic, 1919–1922).
Contributors: TOR.
Countess Markievicz (Polish: Markiewicz;
née Gore-Booth; 4 February 1868 – 15 July 1927) was an Irish Sinn Féin and
Fianna Fáil politician, revolutionary nationalist, suffragette and socialist.
In December 1918, she was the first woman elected to the British House of
Commons, though she did not take her seat and, along with the other Sinn Féin
TDs, formed the first Dáil Éireann. She was also one of the first women in the
world to hold a cabinet position (Minister for Labour of the Irish Republic,
1919–1922).
Countess Constance Georgina Markievicz
[née Gore-Booth] (1868-1927), revolutionary and politician; born at 7
Buckingham Gate, London, on 4 February 1868. Her father, the philanthropist
Henry Gore-Booth, was also an Arctic explorer and a landlord in the west of
Ireland, and was married to Georgina May Hill, of Tickhill Castle, York.
Constance was educated by a governess at Lissadell, Co. Sligo where the family
held extensive estates. She was the eldest of three daughters and two sons and
her sister, Eva Gore-Booth would later become a campaigner for women’s
suffrage. In the monarch jubilee year of 1887 she was presented at court to
Queen Victoria and was called ‘the new Irish beauty’, and took her place in
society as a member of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy. She was also noted as a
fine horsewoman, and as an excellent shot. William Butler Yeats was a frequent
guest at Lissadell. After listening to his stories of Irish myths and folklore
and to his passionate political ideas, she was stirred to action. At that time
women were not allowed to vote in elections or to become Members of Parliament.
Markievicz decided to join the suffragettes who were fighting for women’s
rights. Around this time she joined the National Union of Women’s Suffrage
Societies, a cause she was to remain devoted to throughout her life.
In 1893 she moved to London to study at
the Slade School of Art in London. In 1898 she moved to Paris where she
continued to study art at the Julian School. While there she met and later
married fellow artist and Count Casimir Dunin-Markievicz. The Polish widower’s
family owned a large estate in Ukraine. After travelling abroad, they returned
to Sligo where their daughter Maeve was born in 1901. Maeve was raised by her
grandparents. In 1903 Markievicz moved to Dublin where she began to make a name
for herself as a landscape artist. Dublin was a vibrant city at the time, a
centre for artists, actors, writers and politicians. Markievicz was attracted
to the Gaelic League and the Abbey Theatre. She helped to found the United Arts
Club in 1907, which helped bring together people of the artistic renaissance.
Markievicz expressed her dissatisfaction with this kind of life ‘nature should
provide me with something to live for, something to die for’. In 1906 she
rented a cottage at Ballally, Co. Dublin, and came across a number of old
copies of the revolutionary publications the Peasant and Sinn
Féin left by a previous tenant, the poet Pádraig Colum. After reading
these, Markievicz knew she had found a cause to inspire her life. Her interest
in the struggle for freedom was aroused.
Markievicz became active in nationalist
politics and her aim was to make Ireland an independent nation. In 1908 she
joined Sinn Féin and Maud Gonne’s women group, Inghinidhe na hÉireann (Daughters
of Ireland). She also became a regular contributor to Bean na hÉireann (Women
of Ireland), Ireland’s first women’s nationalist journal and the United
Irishman. She went to Manchester in 1908 and stood unsuccessfully for
election with her sister Eva, who was deeply involved in social reform. At the
suggestion of Bulmer Hobson, she founded Na Fianna Éireann (1909),
an organisation for boys, who were taught to drill and use arms. The movement
aimed to establish an independent Ireland and also to promote the Irish
language.
In 1911 Markievicz was arrested when
she took part in a demonstration against the visit of King George V to Ireland.
She worked closely with James Connolly who fought for Irish nationalism and
social equality. She ran a soup kitchen in Liberty Hall during the 1913 Dublin
lockout. Markievicz then joined the Irish Citizens Army. She had separated from
her husband about 1909 and later worked as a war correspondent in the Balkans.
She was strongly opposed to Irish involvement in the Great War and co-founded
the Irish Neutrality League in 1914. During the 1916 Rising Markievicz was
appointed second in command to Michael Mallin at St. Stephen’s Green. Although
condemned to death when the rising was crushed, she had her sentence commuted
to penal servitude for life (on account of her sex) and was imprisoned in
Aylesbury Jail. Under the general amnesty of 1917, Markievicz was released and
immediately became a convert to Catholicism—she claimed to have experienced an
epiphany during the rising. In August 1917 she was made a freeman of Sligo. She
was made honorary president of the Irish Women Workers’s Union.
In 1918 she was again arrested by the
British during their bogus ‘German Plot’, which was aimed at defeating the
anti-conscription forces in Ireland. While in prison, she was returned in the
general election of December 1918 for St. Patrick’s division of Dublin.
Markievicz became the first woman to be elected to the British Parliament, but
in accordance with Sinn Féin policy she did not take her seat. She refused to
take the oath of allegiance to the King. She was a member of the first Dáil
Éireann, which met on the 21 January 1919, and was appointed Minister for
Labour. She was arrested in the summer of 1919 for making a seditious speech,
and was sentenced to four months’ hard labour. After being arrested again in
1920 she received a sentence of two years’ hard labour.
She denounced the Anglo-Irish treaty of
1921, which established the Irish Free State within the British Commonwealth,
in the Dáil after being released from prison early under the general amnesty
that followed its signing. She toured America in 1922 to enlist support for the
Republican cause. She stated:
‘It is the capitalist interests in
England and Ireland that are pushing this Treaty to block the march of the
working people in England and Ireland ... Now I say that Ireland’s freedom is
worth blood, and worth my blood, and I will willingly give it for it, and I
appeal to the men of the Dáil to stand true’.
She was also leader of Cumann
na mBan. An opponent of the Irish Free State, she supported the
‘Irregulars’ during the Civil War, for which she was imprisoned. She was
released soon after she went on hunger strike in protest. In the general
election of 1923 she was elected as Sinn Féin abstentionist TD for Dublin City
South. When de Valera formed Fianna Fáil in 1926 Markievicz became a member.
During the general election of 1927 she conducted her own campaign and was
re-elected to the Dáil. For some years her health was failing, and she died in
a public ward in Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospital, Dublin on 15 July 1927. The
working-class people of Dublin lined the streets of Dublin for her funeral.
Eamonn de Valera was one of the pall-bearers. She is commemorated by a
limestone bust in St. Stephen’s Green, by a plaque in St. Ultan’s Hospital and
by the Yeats’s poem ‘In memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Constance Markievicz’. She
is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Co. Dublin.
Seán
O'Casey said of her: "One thing she had in abundance—physical courage;
with that she was clothed as with a garment.”
