Constance Gore-Booth (1868-1927), a leading figure in the Irish Revolution and a prominent campaigner for women’s suffrage, was the first woman elected to Westminster. The eldest of five children, Constance came from a privileged, upper-class Irish Protestant family. Prior to embarking on her political career, Constance studied art in London and Paris. In Paris, she met Count Casimir Dunin Markievicz (1874-1932), whom she later married in 1900, and had a daughter, Maeve, in 1901. Subsequently, the Markieviczs moved to Dublin and became prominent participants in the city’s cultural scene, including co-founding the United Arts Club in 1907. During this period Constance was particularly influenced by the Irish revival occurring in Dublin and took an interest in Irish nationalism, joining Sinn Féin and Inghinidhe na hÉireann (Daughters of Ireland) in 1908, and helping to found Ireland’s first women’s nationalist journal Bean na hÉireann (Women of Ireland).
In 1909, Constance amicably separated from her husband. Afterwards, she continued to nurture her interest in Irish nationalism, founding the youth movement Na Fianna Éireann (The Fianna of Ireland). By 1911, she had become an executive member of both Sinn Féin and Inghinidhe na hÉireann and had her first experience of being arrested (a consequence of protesting George V’s visit to Dublin). Her nationalist political leanings continued to develop during the First World War through her opposition to Irish participation in the allied war effort leading to her co-founding the Irish Neutrality League in 1914. In 1916, she participated in the Easter Rising, which was an armed rebellion that called for an end to British rule in Ireland, and was second in command to a troop of Irish Citizen Army combatants at St Stephen’s Green. Following the Rising, Constance was arrested by the British government along with other known participants. She was sentenced to death but, because she was a women, her sentence was reduced to penal servitude for life. She only served fourteen months of this sentence before being released in June 1917 as part of the amnesty prior to the Irish Convention.
Following her release, Constance remained active in the Irish independence movement. In 1918, she was arrested with fellow Sinn Féin members for their alleged involvement in a ‘German plot’, which was purported to include the transfer of money to purchase German bonds to assist in another rebellion in Ireland. During that prison sentence she won the Dublin St Patrick division seat as a Sinn Féin candidate in the 1918 general election. With this victory she became the first woman elected to the British Parliament. However, as with all Sinn Féin MPs, she refused to take her seat. She was released from gaol in March 1919, after which she was appointed secretary for labour in the first Dáil Éireann (Sinn Féin’s Parliament). Her time as a political leader saw her arrested twice more, resulting in one sentence of four months’ hard labour and another of two years’ hard labour. This second sentence was cut short by the signing of the Anglo-Irish treaty in December 1921.
After her release, Constance actively denounced the Treaty with fellow anti-Treaty Sinn Féin members. She subsequently lost her seat in the general Dáil election of 1922 but was elected to the Free State Parliament in August 1923. However, like her other Republican comrades, she refused to take the oath of allegiance to the King and was disqualified from sitting. She was arrested one final time in November 1923 but was released following her hunger strike protest. In 1926, she joined fellow anti-Treaty member Éamon de Valera’s newly established Fianna Fáil party and had a successful candidacy in the 1927 general election. Although she remained politically active, her health deteriorated and she died on 15 July 1927 of peritonitis at Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospital in Dublin.
By Erin Scheopner
Erin is a PHD Student at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Bibliography:
Lauren Arrington, Revolutionary Lives: Constance and Casimir Markievicz (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015)
Senia Pašeta, Modern Ireland: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
Senia Pašeta, ‘Markievicz , Constance Georgine, Countess Markievicz in the Polish nobility (1868–1927)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Sept 2013 [http://0-www.oxforddnb.com.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/view/article/37472, accessed 30 Oct 2017]
‘Sinn Feiners in the United States’, Daily Telegraph, 25 October 1917, p. 5.
