Ireland's OWN: Women Freedom Fighters

Constance de Markievicz
(1868-1927)
—by Míchealín Ní Dhochartaigh

Constance Gore-Booth, a highly strung, eager woman, was born in an aristocratic family. Born at Lissadell, Co. Constance de Markievicz founded the youth movement of na Fianna Éireann, Sligo, on 4 February 1868, she was the third child of Sir Henry Gore-Booth. Although a land warden, Gore-Booth, was always kind to his tenants, and this may have influenced his two daughters, Constance and Eva, who both grew up to be revolutionaries.

In 1893, Constance moved to London to study art and became involved in issues of women's suffrage. She then moved to Paris to continue her studies, where she met and married Count Casimir Markievicz from Poland.

After completing her studies, Constance and Casimir moved to Dublin, where Constance obtained work as a landscape artist. She also acted in several plays at the Abbey Theatre where she met Maud Gonne. Other than her work in London on women's suffrage, Constance had not been active in human rights issues, but Gonne recruited her as a member of revolutionary group, Inghidhe na hÉireann (Daughters of Ireland) and as a member of the Ladies Land League.

Constance would later say of the time: "there were three great movements — the struggle for land, the struggle for women's rights and the struggle of labour. These three movements were inextricably intertwined."

Constance also continued to be interested in the struggle for women's rights and with her sister Eva, joined in the 1908 campaign against the parliamentary election of Winston Churchill. That same year, Constance also joined Sinn Féin.

In 1909, Constance helped found the youth movement Fianna Éireann, an organization that taught military drill and the use of firearms. It was through Fianna Éireann, that she met Nora Connolly. Markievicz, already a member of Sinn Féin, recalls Arthur Griffith's reaction when she raised the idea of a national boy-scout movement. Griffith, who opposed the formation of the Fianna. Constance said: "…he [Griffith] always came to meetings with his mind made up, only being concerned with forcing his own part of view...he did not want anyone to begin to talk of fighting for Ireland's freedom...the Sinn Féin programme contained no provision for organising an army…" Thus, although her requests for the Sinn Féin programme to at least include provision for rebel boy scouts was turned down, Markievicz pressed ahead under her own steam.

The group Constance formed was first called the 'Red Branch Knights,' reminiscent of the Cú Chulainn, the legendary hero in ancient Irish Gaelic folklore and mythology, and the greatest of the Knights of the Red Branch. With the help of Helena Moloney, Dr. Mc Cartan and Sean Mac Garry they explained their objectives and set to work teaching drilling and signalling to boys at a camp in the Dublin Mountains — a little valley on the side of Three Rock Mountain. Nora Connolly also joined in the work at the camp, which was only somewhat successful.

Constance then joined forces with Bulmer Hobson, who had founded a boy’s organisation in Belfast 1902, and called it 'Na Fianna Éireann' after the mythical army of Ancient Ireland. A notice was placed in the Claidheamh Solius announcing that a meeting of boys would be held at the Camden Street in Dublin to form "a national Boys Brigade". It attracted 100 boys. Markievicz and Moloney were present and Hobson presided. Hobson was chosen as president; officers — who included Markievicz as one of its secretaries — a committee — who included Helena Moloney — were provisionally elected, and the Red Knights became Na Fianna Éireann in memory of Hobson's Belfast boys and girls.

In 1911 Constance was arrested with Helena Moloney whilst taking part in a demonstration against the visit of George V to Ireland.

Additionally, Constance help establish a soup kitchen in Liberty Hall during the lockout of unionized workers in 1913. Later that year she was elected Honorary treasurer to the Irish Citizen Army.

The Women of 1916 During the Easter Rising in April 1916, Constance Markievicz was appointed second in command to Michael Mallin in St Stephen's Green. She took part in the fighting and after her arrest was charged with treason. Her death sentence was later commuted to "penal servitude for life" because the authorities were unwilling to execute a woman.

After her release from jail in 1917, Constance was elected to the executive of Sinn Féin. Soon afterwards she was imprisoned again for her part in the campaign against the conscription of Irish men into the British Army. Then in 1918, Constance Markievicz was elected the first woman MP while she was still incarcerated in Holloway Jail; and in 1923 she was elected Minister of Labour the Dáil.

Constance also joined, along with Kathleen Clarke and Maud Gonne MacBride, for the Irish White Cross, which was formed near the end of 1920 to provide relief for families in distress as result of the War of Independence. After 1922, it became known as the Children's Relief Association and extended its assistance to children on both sides of the fight whose parents had been killed as a result of the Civil War.

In a debate in the Dáil in 1921, Constance told how her lifelong commitment to equality began with her early involvement in the Sligo Women's Suffrage Society. She said:

"It is one of the things that I have worked for since I was a young girl. That was my first bite, you may say, at the apple of freedom and soon I got on to the other freedoms, freedom to the nation, freedom to the workers. The question of votes for women, with the bigger thing, freedom for women and the opening of professions to women, has been one of the things that I have worked for and given my lifelong influence and time to procuring all my life whenever I got an opportunity. I have worked in Ireland, I have even worked in England, to help women to obtain their freedom. I would work for it anywhere, as one of the crying wrongs of the world, the women, because of their sex, should be debarred from any position or any right that their brains entitle them to hold."

After a short illness Constance Markievicz died in Sir Patrick Dunn's Hospital in Dublin on 15th July 1927.

See Also:

Sources:

Fox, RM: Rebel Irishwomen. 2nd ed. Dublin: Progress House. 1967.
Haverty, H: Constance Markievicz — Irish Revolutionary.
Kostick, C and Collins, L: The Easter Rising: A Guide to Dublin in 1916. O'Brien Press. 2000.
Moloney, H: "The Countess and the Fianna," Irish Independent, 18 August 1966.
Taillon, R: When History Was Made: The Women of 1916. Dublin: Beyond the Pale Publications. 1996.
Van Vorris, J: Constance D. Markievicz: In the Cause of Ireland: University of Massachusetts Press. 1967.