Countess Constance Markievicz: Rebel, feminist, and first lady of Irish politics

Born into privilege but drawn to revolution, Constance Markievicz lived a life of striking contradictions. The daughter of a wealthy Anglo-Irish family, she turned her back on societal expectations to fight for the poor, women’s suffrage, and Irish independence. A fierce nationalist, committed socialist, and trailblazing feminist, she endured police brutality, imprisonment, and public scorn to become the first woman elected to the British Parliament and Ireland’s first female cabinet minister. Yet despite her towering contributions, she died disillusioned—grieving the unfulfilled vision of a truly egalitarian Ireland.

Constance Gore-Booth was born in 1868 to the Gore-Booth family, one of the largest landowning families in County Sligo on the Irish west coast. Her wealthy Protestant family was part of the Anglo-Irish "Ascendancy", whose control of nearly all Irish farmland was a source of long-standing resentment to the Catholic Irish majority. At 18, she became a debutante and enjoyed several London "seasons" but was unable to attract a husband, possibly because of her abrasive mockery and an inclination toward practical jokes. From these beginnings, Constance became imbued with a concern for the working person.

Constance moved on to an art school for women in Paris, and there she met Polish Count Casimir Markievicz. They wed the following year and spent the early years of their marriage moving between Paris, Lissadell in Sligo, and his family estates at Zywotowka.

Before her marriage, she and her sister Eva had organized the votes for women movement in their home parish; now Markievicz took up the issue of feminism more seriously and began to write for the Daughters of Ireland journal "Bean na hEireann."  Markievicz, too, began to develop sympathy for socialism. These three convictions—Irish nationalism, feminism, and socialism—were to guide her through the rest of her life.

When Constance Markievicz and other Irish suffragists realized that John Redmond’s Irish Party in the British Parliament intended to exclude women from the vote if they achieved their goal of Home Rule, they went into open opposition.   Moderate Irish nationalists, supporters of Redmond, detested the suffragists for threatening their movement in this way, but Markievicz won steady support from the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union, and its leader, Jim Larkin.

Constance Markievicz.

 She repaid him by supporting the unions and unemployed workers during the massive lockout of summer 1913, in which Dublin employers tried to break the growing unions’ power once and for all. Larkin stayed at the Markievicz house on the night before "Bloody Sunday", 31 August 1913, when a huge police contingent attacked a large crowd of trade unionists in O'Connell Street. Markievicz herself was severely beaten by the police.

Experiences like this made Markievicz implacable; hating industrial exploitation and male domination, she yet believed that British power lay at the root of all Irish evils. When the First Dail was seated in January 1919, Constance Markievicz may not have been the most logical choice to be Minister for Labour, but in light of her growth as an advocate for the working person, she was a popular choice with the Irish public.

Markievicz served as Minister for Labour from April 1919 to January 1922, in the cabinets of the Second and the Third Dáils. Holding cabinet rank from April to August 1919, she became both the first Irish female Cabinet member and at the same time, only the second female government minister in Europe. (She remained the only female cabinet minister in Irish history until 1979 when Maire Geoghegan-Quinn was appointed to the cabinet position of Minister for the Gaeltacht in a Fianna Fail government.)

Preferring to be called "Madame", Markievicz continued her efforts on behalf of the working class for the rest of her life.

Constance Markievicz.

In June 1927, Countess Markievicz was admitted to Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospital to a ward filled with the poor. She had appendicitis and was operated on by Sir William Taylor. An infection set in following the operation and she developed peritonitis. She was very run-down as a result of her many activities on behalf of the poor of Dublin and in support of Republicanism, and her health suffered badly. She was also heartsick, could not accept the oath and could not enter the Dáil. At first, she appeared to be getting better, but she passed away on 15 July 1927.

Constance Markievicz died disappointed at the outcome of her life’s labours, dismayed that the Irish Free State was such a prosaic, compromised affair rather than the radical workers’ democracy she had dreamed of and worked for throughout her adult life

Though truckloads of flowers and thousands of mourners attended her funeral, the Free State government refused to grant Countess Constance Markievicz official funeral honours.

For more on the Irish Rebellion period from 1916 to 1923, read "The Shadow War and The Terror War."

This article was submitted to the IrishCentral contributors network by a member of the global Irish community. To become an IrishCentral contributor click here.