Mary Kenny: Constance rightly honoured for UK first

LATER this week, it is expected that a portrait of Constance Markievicz will be formally presented to the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, to honour – and make known – the historical fact that she was the first woman to be elected to the British parliament in December 1918.

In Britain, it’s still widely assumed that Nancy Astor was the first female member of parliament – since the American-born Astor was the first woman to take her seat. But Theresa May seems receptive to restoring Constance Markievicz to her rightful position in the canon of political feminism as the first woman to be elected.

Yet the irony is that Constance regarded her parliamentary victory almost casually. She only agreed to stand “for sport”, and when the results came in, she told her sister Eva that it was Sinn Féin’s activism that won the seat in St Patrick’s ward, in Dublin’s inner city. It had shrewdly concentrated on the “doubtfuls” and got them to the polls. Constance took no credit for herself – and anyway, she was in jail at the time.

Moreover, she had no intention of assuming her seat in a British “imperial” parliament, which she excoriated, as she abhorred the British Empire, which she called “an ass”. Not all Irish nationalists have been Anglophobic, but Constance rarely let an opportunity pass without having a dig at “the English” (she seldom said “the British”), whom she compared to the slugs in her garden which needed exterminating.

She was, in fact, half-English herself, through her mother Georgina. Her family in Sligo, the Gore-Booths, were politically quite “imperialist”, actively supporting Britain during World War I – her brother Josslyn tried to increase enrolment to the King’s forces in Ballymote just when Constance, Sinn Féin and the Catholic Church were vehemently opposing such conscription.

But perhaps a psychologist might suggest Constance’s Anglophobia was enhanced by her fear of being thought English, and her emphatic desire to be identified as Irish. And the “English” did consign her to prison four times (the fifth sojourn at the instigation of the Free State).

Some commentators have opined that considering her contempt for “an English parliament”, it seems incongruous to honour her image at the Palace of Westminster. Others may see it, more benignly, as a gesture of reconciliation, especially at a time when Brexit threatens to fracture British-Irish relations.

Yet, for Theresa May, Constance Markievicz represents the victory of feminism, and female suffrage, rather than that of the political party for which she stood. Constance Markievicz certainly supported suffrage and women’s equality: but she was never really in alignment with the Suffragette movement, which, be it remembered, was also “English” in inspiration. Con said, of the Irish Women’s Franchise League, Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington’s admirable feminist group, that it “bore the hallmark of English agitation”. She warned against “joining with unionists” in women’s movements – this would water down commitment to the national cause. Irish women suffragists must be Irish nationalists first. Some of the English Suffragettes were, indeed, Tories – Mrs Pankhurst became a Conservative after war broke out in 1914 – and others used tactics such as vandalising works of art, which would hardly have appealed to Constance, as an artist herself. The English Suffragette Mary Richardson famously took an axe to the renowned Rokeby Venus by Velazquez.

Constance remained encouraging of women in politics throughout her life – and was always on cordial terms with Hanna Sheehy Skeffington – but the woman’s cause was never the priority for her. Ireland was.

Her most devoted inflexions, in her letters to her sister Eva, are for “Kathleen ni Houlihan” (and for her pet dog, Poppet). She was also a committed Catholic convert, having had a religious epiphany at the College of Surgeons during the 1916 Rising, when she witnessed Michael Mallin and William Partridge recite the Rosary. She remained close to Father Michael Sweetman, and to the Capuchin priests, and a Capuchin, Father Ryan, brought her special rosary beads on her deathbed.

When Constance died in 1927, fulsome tributes were paid to her – Éamon de Valera leading the pack – and the many achievements of her life were lauded. Her bravery, her generosity, her sympathy for the underdog, and most notably, her dedication to the Dublin poor, were all justifiably extolled. But her achievement in being the first woman elected to the House of Commons went virtually unmentioned. It didn’t seem to be a significant aspect of her life at the time of her death, just as she herself had never placed any emphasis on it as a personal achievement.

But the purpose of history is to correct and amend what has been overlooked or occluded. Constance’s election was a landmark first, and it should be duly honoured: and now it will be.

Her Anglophobia may have been enhanced by her emphatic desire to be identified as Irish

Mary Kenny’s monologue ‘Dearest Old Darling’, drawing on the prison letters of Constance Markievicz, will be given a reading by the actress Jeananne Crowley at the Dublin Arts Club on April 6