Book extract: Woman who refused to be silenced in fight for republican independence

Betrayal of the republic, for Mary MacSwiney, would have meant betrayal of a brother she loved and admired, and it would have been almost impossible for her to think and feel in any other way

During the Civil War Mary MacSwiney, described by the British government as one of 'the most extreme and dangerous women in Ireland', endured two gruelling hunger strikes. Pictures: Getty

• Mary MacSwiney
• Leeann Lane
• UCD Press, €30 

In June 1923 the Belfast Newsletter described Mary MacSwiney as falling on those with whom she disagreed “with every tooth bared, drops of clotted venom suspended from every outstretched fang”. 

In her lifetime, MacSwiney was not, however, just a one-dimensional caricature of extreme republicanism but rather a multi-faceted individual.

Her biography cannot be written without sustained reference to the importance of family to MacSwiney; in particular, her politics must be understood with reference to the politics of Terence, both in his life and in the aftermath of his death.

That is not to deny Mary individual political agency or to suggest that she was anything other than the strong and principled woman that she was. 

A recognition of the centrality of her siblings to Mary MacSwiney’s life is instead a testament to familial love and the influence of such on a political level.

Initially a supporter of female suffrage as a member of the Cork branch of the Munster Women’s Franchise League, MacSwiney moved to prioritise the national cause in the second decade of the 20th century. 

In the lead up to the 1916 Rising she, as most republican women, was involved in gendered work. 

Unlike in Dublin where the Rising did take place, women in Cork had limited opportunity to expand their involvement in republican politics during Easter week.

Founder of Cumann na mBan in Cork

However, Mary as the founder of Cumann na mBan in Cork was centrally involved in all the discussions and recriminations that took place in the city. 

Her brother Terence’s position as deputy leader of the Irish Volunteers in Cork meant that the MacSwiney home in the suburb of Blackrock was the locus for many of those who delivered the series of messages, often contradictory, that emanated from members of the Military Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in Dublin.

After the Rising, MacSwiney began what would become a lifelong pattern of defending the actions of Terence. 

The MacSwiney siblings operated as a republican family unit; riddled with anguish about the failure of Cork to rise, Terence’s sufferings were also Mary’s. 

From this period, she sought to explain and rationalise his actions in pursuit of an Irish republic from her position as a firm republican in her own right.

Relatively unusual for a woman born in 1872, MacSwiney was educated to third level. 

One of two women arrested in Cork after the 1916 Rising she lost her teaching position in St Angela’s School on Patrick’s Hill. 

While this was distressing on a personal and financial level, with true strength of character she established St Ita’s High School in Belgrave Place in the September 1916. 

The first lay Catholic school of girls in the city, it was also intended to educate the future citizens of the republic. 

Irish activist, Maud Gonne MacBride, with the writer Miss Barry Delany and Mary MacSwiney, at Mountjoy Prison, during the hunger strike in November 1922. Pictures: Getty

This was achieved while she visited her brother Terence and other prisoners in internment camps and jail across England and Wales in the aftermath of the Easter Rising. 

On Thursday, August 12, 1920, Terence MacSwiney left Belgrave Place where he had tea with his sisters, Mary and Annie, at half past five. He then took the six-minute walk across the north and south channels of the River Lee to the City Hall. 

Violence in Cork was high so Mary must have experienced some anxiety for his welfare when he departed. 

Three days earlier the Cork politician Liam de Róiste wrote in his diary that the city had experienced “another night of terror: volleys of rifle fire in many districts; bullets entering houses; shops broken into and looted by the English soldiery”.

Terence, along with 10 other men, was arrested in the City Hall less than two hours after he left Mary’s home and later deported to Brixton Jail. 

The death of her beloved younger brother in a high-profile hunger strike on October 25, 1920, was a watershed moment for Mary. 

The everyday nature of her life as she carried out her teaching and political activities was viscerally sundered.

After Terence’s death, Mary MacSwiney assumed a central role in republican politics. She conducted two American tours in 1921 and again in 1925. 

Elected a Sinn Féin TD for Cork in 1921, a seat she held until the first general election of 1927. Her unyielding adherence to the ideal of full republican independence was a stance she maintained during the Civil War and after the Sinn Féin split in 1926, right down to her death in 1942.

During the Civil War MacSwiney, described by the British government as one of “the most extreme and dangerous women in Ireland”, endured two gruelling hunger strikes: in November 1922 in Mountjoy Jail and again in April 1923 in Kilmainham Goal. 

She was a woman who refused to be silenced or defer to what she deemed inappropriate authority, for example, the right of the Catholic Church to make political statements during the Civil War. 

That de Valera explained his political choices and leanings to MacSwiney in an intimate political correspondence is noteworthy and testifies to her political centrality in the period of the war.

MacSwiney was not a cipher for the extreme element within republicanism during the Treaty debates and during the Civil War. 

Her brother’s ‘agony’ would never, as she wrote to de Valera, “have been endured to the end for anything less than absolute and entire Separation”; this determined her unyielding rejection of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, 1921.

Terence’s high-profile death to advance the cause of full republican independence also meant that MacSwiney was not able to countenance, as de Valera was, re-entry into parliamentary politics in 1926. 

Mary MacSwiney was a woman who suffered ultimate loss in Brixton Jail in 1920. Her witnessing of, in the words of her sister Annie, scenes that were “agonising beyond anything I could described”, changed the trajectory of her life.

When she declared in the Dáil on December 21, 1921, that Ireland had “stood on a noble and spiritual ideal for the last three years”, she was referring to the sacrifices of men such as her brother. 

Betrayal of the republic, for Mary, would have meant betrayal of a brother she loved and admired, and it would have been almost impossible for her to think and feel in any other way.

• Mary MacSwiney is in bookshops nationwide and at www.ucdpress.ie;
• Mary MacSwiney will be launched by Taoiseach Micheál Martin at Cork City Hall on Friday, July 18, at 4pm.

BOOKS & MORE

Check out our Books Hub where you will find the latest news, reviews, features, opinions and analysis on all things books from the Irish Examiner's team of specialist writers, columnists and contributors.