Countess Markievicz: the violent republican feminist who was UK’s first female MP Just over a century on from passing a death sentence on her, the British Government has confirmed it will commemorate […]

Just over a century on from passing a death sentence on her, the British Government has confirmed it will commemorate Countess Markievicz as it celebrates the centenary of women’s suffrage.

The tale of Countess Markievicz, born Constance Gore-Booth, might prove something of a difficulty for today’s Government. Unlike Nancy Astor, the first female MP who actually sat in the House of Commons, she was no conservative: two years before her election to Parliament, she reportedly shot dead a member of the Dublin Metropolitan Police as fighting kicked off on St Stephen’s Green during the 1916 Easter Rising.

When she was given clemency on account of her sex, she famously retorted: “I do wish your lot had the decency to shoot me.”

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But in December 1918, 65 per cent of the constituency of Dublin St Patrick’s voted for Countess Markievicz alongside 72 other Sinn Féin MPs. That act made her, from her cell in Holloway Prison, a very significant figure in the history of British democracy.

Voice and Vote

The Government confirmed to Irish news site The Journal that Markievicz would form part of the Vote100 commemorations, marking the anniversary of women getting the vote.

Events will take place across the year, centred around a “Voice and Vote” exhibition this summer and a series of so-called “Equalitea” tea parties around the country on 2 July, celebrating the 1928 act of parliament that gave women equal franchise with men.

It’s an important cultural moment outside official channels too: Celebrity Big Brother and UK Vogue have already produced tributes in their own way to the suffragettes and the centenary.

Nancy Astor, who actually sat (and spoke) in the House of Commons for decades, arrived on the benches a year after Markievicz in 1919. She was an American-born Conservative who won a by-election in Plymouth to replace her husband, and she might provide a smoother focus for commemorations, despite her anti-Semitic views.

But back on 21 November 1918, the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act, the shortest statute on the books to this day, had been given royal assent, allowing women to run for election. Weeks later, on 14 December, there was a general election, with just 17 women candidates out of a total of 1,623. Christabel Pankhurst fell 775 votes short – but Markievicz won in a landslide.

Every major movement

In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz by WB Yeats The light of evening, Lissadell,

Great windows open to the south,

Two girls in silk kimonos, both

Beautiful, one a gazelle… Read more

Markievicz is a largely forgotten figure in British history, but she looms large in Ireland, as Mary McAuliffe, gender studies professor at University College Dublin, explains.

“If you ask somebody to name one woman – or any woman – who was part of the Irish revolutionary period, they will say Countess Markievicz,” she says.

Outside of politics, her life, with a childhood friendship with poet WB Yeats and her training as an artist, has fascinated successive generations. Born to Anglo-Irish ascendancy stock, her non-traditional name comes from her husband Casimir, a member of the Polish-Ukrainian gentry she met in Paris. His title of Count was later found to be fraudulent but it stuck to Constance nonetheless, perhaps as a sign of esteem.

“She was involved in all of the main movements in Ireland from cultural nationalism through Inghinidhe na hÉireann [Daughters of Ireland] through to feminist activism to getting involved in the 1913 Lockout [Ireland’s most significant industrial dispute], becoming a senior member of the Irish Citizen Army, fighting in the Rising and being the only woman court-martialled – she wasn’t sentenced to death because of her gender but she was imprisoned,” McAuliffe says.

“She continued her activism throughout the war of independence and the Civil War and she was imprisoned four or five more times in that period.”

After her election in 1918, she, along with the other Sinn Féin MPs elected to Westminster, created their own parliament in Ireland, known as Dáil Éireann. In that illegal, provisional government, she became Minister for Labour, one of the first female ministers in the world. Britain’s first would follow in 1929 with Margaret Bondfield, but it would be 1979 before Ireland had another woman in Cabinet.

She died relatively young at the age of 59, in 1927, without participating in what would become an increasingly misogynist government alongside former revolutionary comrades such as Eamonn De Valera (Taoiseach for 20 years) and Sean T O’Kelly (future President).

The Gore Booths vs Churchill

Getting elected to Parliament wasn’t the first thing she did to get noticed in the British press. Associating with the labour movement, never mind bearing arms in the cause of revolution, was not the usual thing for women at the time, especially for a daughter of Sir Henry Gore-Booth, 5th Baronet.

“She was fairly well known in England at the time,” says Professor McAuliffe. “She would have appeared in the newspapers quite a bit.”

“It was a scandal for aristocratic ladies to be hanging out with revolutionaries and working-class trade union activists.”

Almost decade before the Rising, she had made waves alongside her sister, Eva Gore-Booth, a nationally prominent suffragist who spent her life in Britain.

In 1908, the Liberal Government in London introduced a licensing bill with a provision that was set to put swathes of the working population out of a job in one fell swoop: it was going to abolish barmaids.

Eva, who focused much of her efforts on women’s industrial rights, flew into opposition, and when newly appointed Liberal minister Winston Churchill faced a by-election in Manchester, she determined to make things as difficult as possible for him.

To do so, she called in her older sister Constance – Countess Markievicz – who, in her first major political action, rallied supporters to the cause.

“She drove a coach and four through Manchester – and of course women couldn’t vote then – calling on the male working class of the town to defeat Winston Churchill,” says Professor McAuliffe.

“And they succeeded.”

More than a table quiz answer

There is some trepidation about whether commemorating Markievicz in London makes any sense, given her beliefs – and some activists warn against a polite, meaningless celebration.

“While it’s great to see Countess Markievicz being honoured, I really hope that her politics and beliefs are also spoken about,”says Jeanne Sutton, co-founder of the Women’s Museum of Ireland site.

“British history needs to reflect more on the legacy of the empire. In the media, a lot of women’s history is often centred around ‘the first’, but I feel that can often erase the fact various female trailblazers are more than the answer to a table quiz question.”

For Professor McAuliffe, however, bringing Markievicz back into the British canon is not about republicanism, feminism or trade union activism.

“She is being commemorated for a different reason, which is to solidify the relationship between the two governments,” she says.

“Nobody can say whether Markievicz herself would approve of this or not, but most historians would agree that this is something that should be done – because she’s the first woman elected – and those who object would object out of modern sensibilities.”

If Vote100 aims to focus on women’s history, then, it could do worse than draw the attention of modern Britain to one of the most fascinating protagonists in the story of the first decades of the last century.