Constance Markievicz

Countess Markiewicz

Constance Georgine Markievicz (née Gore-Booth; 4 February 1868 – 15 July 1927), also known as Countess Markievicz and Madame Markievicz, was an Irish politician, revolutionary, nationalist, suffragist, socialist, and the first woman elected to the Westminster Parliament, and was elected Minister for Labour in the First Dáil, becoming the first female cabinet minister in Europe. She served as a Teachta Dála for the Dublin South constituency from 1921 to 1922 and 1923 to 1927. She was a Member of Parliament (MP) for Dublin St Patrick's from 1918 to 1922.

A founding member of Fianna Éireann, Cumann na mBan and the Irish Citizen Army, she took part in the Easter Rising in 1916, when Irish republicans attempted to end British rule and establish an Irish Republic. She was sentenced to death, commuted to life imprisonment on the grounds of her sex. On 28 December 1918, she was the first woman elected to the UK House of Commons, though, being in Holloway Prison at the time and in accordance with party policy, she did not take her seat. Instead, she and the other Sinn Féin MPs (as TDs) formed the first Dáil Éireann. She was also one of the first women in the world to hold a cabinet position, as Minister for Labour, from 1919 to 1922.

Quotes

• Dress suitably in short skirts and strong boots, leave your jewels and gold wands in the bank, and buy a revolver.
  • Mullaly, Una (11 March 2017). A history of Ireland in 100 great quotes. The Irish Times.
  • This is the context of the upcoming Irish rebellion against English rule.

Quotes about Markievicz

• She was like an extinct volcano, her former violent self burnt out ... What she had fought for had not really come into being; maybe nothing on earth could have brought it into being, so romantic and heroic was it.
  • Mary Colum, Irish author and literary critic, on seeing her old friend shortly before Markievicz died (via Markievicz: A Most Outrageous Rebel by Lindie Naughton)[1]

• ...condemned to death,
  Pardoned, drags out lonely years
  Conspiring among the ignorant.
  
  • W.B. Yeats, "In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz" (1927) [2]

Works by Markievicz

(in en)A Battle Hymn: (Dedicated to the Irish Citzen Army), Composer: Joseph M. Crofts, Wikidata Q115943449 

• Armed for the battle, kneel we before thee / Bless Thou our banners, God of the Brave
  • Seán McMahon (1987) (in en). A book of Irish quotations. Dublin: O'Brien Press. p. 100. Wikidata Q115941703. ISBN 0-86278-137-X. OCLC 1200288435. 
  • Words by Markievicz and score by Crofts of a hymn composed in or before 1917.