Radical role model

Young women seeking role models could do worse than look at the life of Constance Markievicz.

Born in London into the Anglo-Irish ascendancy, Ireland’s first elected female politician — for Sinn Féin — a minister in the 1919 Irish

revolutionary government, and unquestionably a heroine of the country’s struggle for independence.

It’s said that she was an unlikely socialist, although this can be a slightly simplistic judgement, given the natural tendencies of children to rebel against wealthy parents and be appalled by the poverty endured by other families.

More than a few of the leaders of Britain’s Labour Party have been the scions of families with land, either in their own country or someone else’s.

Neither can her advice to women in the republican militias be endorsed today: “Dress suitably in short skirts and strong boots, leave your jewels in the bank and buy a revolver.”

Well, that was then.

It’s her bequest as a radical suffragette that’s as relevant now across this island as it was in 1896, when in Drumcliff, Sligo, making her first public speech, she said the sooner women “begin to make a row, the better”.

It’s a message that has caught on.