How did the political wing of the labour movement view feminist ideals and co-operation with the suffrage movement? At the 1912 Irish Trade Union Congress (ITUC) a motion demanding adult suffrage, proposed by Larkin and seconded by William O’Brien, exposed the divisions beneath the surface. One delegate agreed that a woman’s status as a wage earner should be raised, but feared that granting the vote would ‘tend to take away from the peace of the home’ resulting in ‘the destruction of that nobility of character for which their women were prized’18. Hanna Sheehy Skeffington noted that ‘organised labour wanted women to help them press for adult suffrage, ridiculing women’s suffrage as “votes for ladies”’.19 There was some justification for that accusation, as the existing franchise was property based and, if extended, would only benefit middle class women. At the 1914 ITUC there was disagreement on whether a deputation from the IWRL should be admitted to speak on the issue of women’s suffrage. James Larkin objected to such a deputation, arguing that ‘the suffrage could be used for or against their class’. James Connolly, while noting his preference for the militant wing of suffragism, argued that ‘he was out to give women the vote, even if they used it against him as a human right’.20 Consistently in the pages of the Irish Citizen and at meetings of the IWFL and the IWRL the economic position of women was equated with their voteless condition. Connolly continued this theme when he told a meeting of the IWFL:
It was because women workers had no vote that they had not the safeguards even of the laws passed for their protection because these were ignored. They had women working for wages on which a man could not keep a dog. Men’s conditions, bad as they were, had been improved because of the vote.21
Connolly, described by the Irish Citizen as ‘the soundest and most thorough going feminist among all the Irish Labour men’ was a crucial link between the two movements. At the most difficult time for Irish suffragists – following the 1912 attempts by English suffragettes to attack Prime Minister Asquith during his home rule ‘promotional’ visit to Dublin – Connolly showed his support for the women’s movement by travelling from Belfast to speak at the weekly public meeting of the IWFL, an action long and greatly appreciated by the women. During the following weeks when there was much violence against IWFL public meetings, members of his union, the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU), often protected suffragettes from attack. A regular speaker at suffrage meetings north and south, Connolly told the 1913 ITUC that until women were made equal politically they could only be half free. At a meeting held in the Albert Hall to generate solidarity for the Dublin strikers and to demand the release of the imprisoned Larkin, Connolly was loudly cheered when he declared that he stood for opposition to the domination of nation over nation, class over class, and sex over sex.22
In Belfast later, he stressed that agitation for the vote should be accompanied by the more immediate prospect of better working conditions and pay. The Irish Worker reported on a series of meetings held to discuss Connolly’s ideas, noting that ‘labour ideas and ideals are entering in and these meetings will make excellent propaganda’.23 But propaganda for whom? While individuals within the IWFL and the IWSF brought both groups closer to alliance with Labour, this was due to the beliefs of individual members rather than official policy. Some Belfast suffragists feared that too close an association with Labour might sidetrack their campaign. The question of women’s co-operation and involvement with other contemporary movements would prove problematic in Ireland as it had done elsewhere.
In The reconquest of Ireland Connolly wrote that ‘the women’s cause is felt by all labour men and women as their cause … the labour cause has not more earnest and whole hearted supporters than the militant women’.24 Certainly, the involvement of young, socialist-oriented feminists in the suffrage campaign from 1908 onwards coincided with a recognition by some labour leaders of common disabilities shared by men and women. As the women’s movement organised and radicalised, labour leaders saw its potential as an ally. The most positive influence of both groups can be found in the wording of the 1916 Proclamation, which was addressed to both Irish men and women and guaranteed equal rights and opportunities to all citizens. The other main area of influence between the two groups was the movement of women from the suffrage into the labour movement.
FEMINISM AND NATIONALISM
In states struggling for national self-determination feminists often subordinated their own aims to those of the parent nationalist movement.25
By 1913 there were eighteen suffrage societies in Ireland, catering for women of varying political, social and religious backgrounds. Yet, as was pointed out in the Irish Citizen that year, there was still no distinct nationalist women’s franchise association. Existing suffrage groups had been consistently criticised as being mere branches of English societies. While there were some instances where this was the case, generally the newer groups – particularly the IWFL and the IWSF – recognised the need to assert their Irishness and independence from English groups. In fact, many prominent nationalist women were at some stage involved in the suffrage campaign, particularly in the 1908–14 period. Included in this group were women such as Constance Markievicz, Agnes O’Farrelly, Rosamund Jacob, Dr Kathleen Lynn, Mary MacSwiney and Jenny Wyse Power. Initially two strands of nationalism developed amongst such women:
(1) those that supported home rule for Ireland and fought for the recognition of women as voters within the home rule bill; and (2) those who sought complete independence for Ireland, believing that the suffrage struggle should wait until this was achieved. Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, writing in Bean na hÉireann in 1909 on ‘Sinn Féin and Irishwomen’, addressed both groups when she commented that ‘until the parliamentarian and the Sinn Féin woman alike possess the vote, the keystone of citizenship, she will count but little with either party’.26 The ‘parliamentarian’ woman, who supported the home rule cause, often deliberately refrained from involvement in the suffrage campaign for fear of damaging the attainment of home rule. However, with home rule apparently assured in 1914, some women felt more confident in airing suffrage views. One such woman, Elizabeth Bloxham, now appealed to John Redmond to ensure that ‘home rule would mean freedom for women as well as men’.27 Mary Hayden also entered the debate in 1914, and sought an amendment to the bill incorporating women’s suffrage on the basis of the local government register. Jenny Wyse Power, re-iterating the stance of nationalist women regarding suffrage during the home rule years, noted that:
Now the situation has quite changed, and those of us who are Irish nationalists can only hope that an appeal at this time of the extension of the suffrage to Irishwomen will not fall on unheeding ears [and] that they may be allowed to exercise their right to participate in the government of their own country.28
A deputation of militant and non-militant suffragists travelled to London to petition for such an amendment, but neither Redmond nor Asquith would receive them.
From this point on, it was the growing separatist movement that most threatened the unity of the women’s movement in Ireland. While the Irish Citizen argued ‘there can be no free nation without free women’, the counter argument was made ‘neither can there be free women in an enslaved nation’.29 This argument had been made over the past five years by the second group of ‘nationalist’ women – those who sought full independence over home rule. Amongst this group, criticism was directed not against the principle of women’s suffrage, but against the propriety of Irish women seeking the vote from an English government. Most advocated equality, but believed it would follow automatically on political independence. The ‘suffrage first before all else’ policy of the Irish Citizen led to much conflict with those with different priorities. Agnes O’Farrelly, a member of the Gaelic League and a suffragist, articulated this disagreement from the nationalist side:
Are we or are we not fighting for the vote before all other things? Some of us certainly are not. Keenly anxious as we are for the ordinary rights of citizenship f
or ourselves, we give woman suffrage second place to … some measure of freedom – for, at all events, the men of our own country.30
Similarly, Rosamund Jacob, another suffragist member of the Gaelic League, and later of Cumann na mBan, wrote:
Political rights conferred on Irishwomen by a foreign government would be a miserable substitute for the same rights won, even three years later, from our own legislative assembly.31
Prior to the Irish Citizen there had been an earlier Irish women’s paper, Bean na hÉireann, published between 1909–11 by Inghinidhe na hÉireann (Daughters of Erin), a nationalist women’s group with a strong feminist bias. Many issues covered by Bean na hÉireann were similar to those later covered by the Irish Citizen. That there was concern about the status of women among some nationalist women had been clear from the pages of Bean na hÉireann. Its editor, Helena Maloney, stated: ‘We wanted it to be “a woman’s paper”, advocating militancy, separatism and feminism.’ In its pages the views of nationalist women on the suffrage issue were made quite clear. An editorial in 1909 declared that:
We do not refuse to join the women’s franchise movement, but we decline to join with parliamentarians and unionists in trying to force a bill through Westminster. We prefer to try and organise a woman’s movement on Sinn Féin lines. Freedom for our nation and the complete removal of all disabilities to our sex will be our battlecry.32
Correspondence to the journal voiced many similar arguments:
The women of Irish Ireland have the franchise, and it would be only humiliating themselves and their country to appeal or even demand the endorsement of a hostile parliament. They stand on equal footing with the men in the Gaelic League, in Sinn Féin, and the industrial movement. They are represented on the executives of all these, and under the present circumstances we should be content to regard these as representing Irish government.33
Women in the suffrage movement and those represented by Bean na hÉireann shared many basic feminist principles on the role and position of women. Bean na hÉireann advocated the unionisation of women workers, discussed the migration of Irish women from the farm, and reported progress on the women’s suffrage movement abroad. But it was on the precise issue of agitation for parliamentary suffrage from ‘an alien government’ that sharp differences arose:
As our country has had her freedom and her nationhood taken from her by England, so also our sex is denied emancipation and citizenship by the same enemy. So therefore the first step on the road to freedom is to realise ourselves as Irishwomen – not only as Irish or merely as women, but as Irish-women doubly enslaved, and with a double battle to fight.34
Relations between ‘separatist nationalists’ and sufffage groups became more strained from 1914. The formation of Cumann na mBan in April 1914 crystallised the differences between those who sought national freedom first and equal rights second, and those who sought ‘suffrage first before all else’. At the formation of the Irish Volunteers in November 1913 its general secretary had indicated that there would be work for women to do in the organisation. What would be the nature of this work? When the issue of women’s role within the Volunteers had been raised with Pádraig Pearse, he had confessed that they had been so busy organising and drilling the men, they had not had time to consider in any detail what work women might do, but he indicated:
First of all there will be ambulance and Red Cross work for them, and then I think a women’s rifle club is desirable. I would not like the idea of women drilling and marching in the ordinary way but there is no reason why they should not learn to shoot.35
An article in the Irish Volunteer early in 1914 suggested that women could do their duty within the movement by forming an ambulance corps, learning first aid, making flags and doing any necessary embroidery work on badges and uniforms, the writer asking: ‘To a patriotic Irishwoman could there be any work of more intense delight than this?’36 Shortly afterwards the organisation of women supporters of the Volunteers emerged in Dublin. The first public meeting of the Irish Women’s Council, afterwards known as Cumann na mBan, was held in Wynn’s hotel in April 1914, presided over by Agnes O’Farrelly. The first task they set themselves, the initiation of a defence of Ireland fund for arming and equipping the Volunteers, unleashed a torrent of criticism from suffrage campaigners. The pages of the Irish Citizen became the scene of a bitter war of words between women activists on both sides. Days after the inaugural meeting of Cumann na mBan, an Irish Citizen editorial criticised:
The slavish attitude of a group of women who have just formed an ‘Irish Women’s Council’, not to take any forward action themselves, but to help the men of the Irish Volunteers to raise money for their equipment, in generally toady to them as the Ulster unionist women have done to the Ulster Volunteers.37
This latter comment referred to the Ulster Women’s Unionist Council (UWUC), which had been formed in 1911 ‘with the incipient intent of supporting male unionists’ opposition to home rule for Ireland’.38 The Irish Citizen editorial continued that ‘such women deserve nothing but contempt, and will assuredly earn it’. Such strong criticism engendered counter-criticism. Mary MacSwiney, who had resigned from the suffrage movement in Cork because of the Munster Women’s Franchise League (MWFL)’s involvement in war work, wrote to the Irish Citizen, accusing the paper of alienating nationalists from the suffrage cause, an argument agreed with by Helena Molony. In the Freeman’s Journal Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, reporting on a recent Cumann na mBan meeting she had attended, commented:
Any society of women which proposes to act merely as an ‘animated collecting box’ for men cannot have the sympathy of any self-respecting woman. The proposed ‘Ladies Auxiliary Committee’ has apparently no function beyond that of a conduit pipe to pour a stream of gold into the coffers of the male organisation, and to be turned off automatically as soon as it has served this mean and subordinate purpose.39
In the Irish Independent, Máire Ní Chillín replied to Sheehy Skeffington’s arguments, stating:
The Volunteers have not sought our help. We give it freely and ungrudgingly. There is a large class of Irishwomen who believe that they are represented at the polls and on the battlefields by their husbands, fathers or sons, who want neither vote, nor rifle, nor stone to help them in asserting their rights, who are willing to act as conduit pipes or collecting boxes or armour polishers, or do any other good thing that would help on the cause.40
While many key women involved in establishing Cumann na mBan would not have agreed with this statement, the nature of the organisation left it open to charges of passivity. Two of its founders, Mary Colum and Louise Gavan Duffy, attempted to clarify this situation in the Irish Independent. Pointing out that their organisation was in no sense a ladies auxiliary society, that it was an entirely distinct organisation from the Irish Volunteers with its own committee and constitution, and its own objects of organising women towards the advancement of Irish liberty, they declared:
We are a nationalist women’s political organisation and we propose to engage in any patriotic work that comes within the scope of our objects and constitution. We consider at the moment that helping to equip the Irish Volunteers is the most necessary national work. We may mention that many of the members of our society are keen suffragists, but as an organisation we must confine ourselves within the four walls of our constitution.41
The core disagreement between suffragists and nationalist women in the pre-1916 scenario would appear to have been summed up in a letter to the Irish Citizen by Kathleen Connery of the IWFL that stated:
If there is ignorance of the suffrage to be overcome in Ireland, it is that type of ignorance which has its roots in a false conception of freedom and nationhood, and which is unable to grasp the simple fact that the freedom of Irish womanhood is a vital and indispensable factor in true Irish nationhood, not a mere trifling side issue to be settled anyhow or anytime at the convenience of men.42
POST-1916
Later political developments would
bring the two groups closer together. The cumulative effect of the 1916 rebellion, the killing of Francis Sheehy Skeffington, and the execution of republican leaders followed by the mass imprisonment of republican activists, all had a profound effect on women’s organisations. Although the 1916 Proclamation had been addressed to Irishmen and Irishwomen, and guaranteed equal rights and opportunities to all citizens, events were to prove that some Irish men needed reminding of these points. Neither the Proclamation nor the imminent passage of a British bill giving votes to women over thirty ensured that the way was now clear for women in public life. Following Sinn Féin victories at three by-elections in 1917, a conference held to unite the various groupings identified with Sinn Féin appointed a central steering committee of nine, one of whom was a woman, Josephine Mary Plunkett. Shortly afterwards women delegates to that conference held a meeting of their own. This meeting was attended by women from Inghinidhe na hÉireann, Cumann na mBan, the IWWU, and the Irish Citizen Army.43 When the question of suffrage was raised, it was pointed out that Sinn Féin candidates at the recent by-elections had taken their stand on the 1916 Proclamation which granted equal rights to all citizens; therefore, agitation for the vote was not deemed necessary as ‘the vote had already been granted to Irishwomen by Irishmen’. However, with the expansion of the original Sinn Féin committee of nine to include released Sinn Féin prisoners, women delegates met with resistance to their request for increased representation. A letter from the women to the Sinn Féin executive stated:
1916 Page 24