Even when thin on the ground, women made an impact in Irish politics by taking a brave stand in opposition to powerful, male, elites.
In 1939, the first female lord mayor of Dublin, Kathleen Clarke, realised an ambition of 20 years as a councillor by removing the portrait of Queen Victoria from the entrance hall to the Mansion House. She then took down the other paintings of British monarchs that she found in her official residence, and left them all outside to be seen by a bemused public. In her memoir she recalled one letter of congratulation that came from a “delighted” Irish exile in the US, who wanted to know “why in hell didn’t you burn her”? Kathleen, widow of Tom Clarke, the first signatory of the 1916 Proclamation, was an independent voice in her party, Fianna Fáil, and had previously clashed with Éamon de Valera when she refused to stand down as a candidate for the Free State Senate. De Valera told her that he thought too many women had been nominated by the party. As a senator she angered the leadership by criticising measures which adversely affected women’s rights, particularly de Valera’s “kitchen sink” clauses in the 1937 Constitution.
Clarke found herself at odds with de Valera again in 1940 when she appealed, unsuccessfully, for a reprieve for Patrick McGrath, a 1916 veteran like herself, who had been sentenced to death by a non-jury special court. When McGrath was executed she ordered the blinds to be drawn at the Mansion House, and the flag to be flown at half-mast. Clarke soon resigned from Fianna Fáil, and later remembered: “It is extraordinary the change that comes over men, or most men, when they get a little taste of power; they seem to become so intolerant.” She ran unsuccessfully for Seán MacBride’s Clann na Poblachta in 1948, when it appeared – briefly – to be capable of capturing Fianna Fáil’s republican support.
In the heady days of the late 1960s the Labour Party rushed to the left – at least by Irish standards – and promised to challenge the power of the Catholic hierarchy in the education and health areas. At its 1969 annual conference Labour proposed to legislate for contraception, but this proved to be controversial – Fine Gael’s Oliver J Flanagan described the idea as a “slap in the face” for the Pope. A strong advocate of women’s rights, Mid Cork TD Eileen Desmond told the conference that as a “Catholic mother” she found nothing objectionable in the party’s proposals for social reform.
Duke of Hazard – Frank McNally on the literary pubs (and restaurants) of Dublin 2
Look Behind You – Frank McNally on the surprising second life of a 1980s suit
Breffni Benefactor – Frank McNally on the revolutionary largesse of Edgar Allan Poe’s Irish ancestor
Goodness and Guinness – Tony Corcoran on pioneering doctor Sir John Lumsden
However, Labour trumpeted a disastrous slogan in that year’s general election, “The seventies will be socialist”, and instead of making major gains, as was widely predicted, the party’s vote fell. Desmond lost her seat. Re-elected as a TD in 1973, when there were twice as many men named Michael than women in the Dáil, she became an MEP in 1979, representing the Munster constituency.
Two years later she became minister for health and social welfare in Garret FitzGerald’s first coalition government, the third, and most senior, female minister appointed to that date.
During FitzGerald’s second term as taoiseach, in 1983, Fine Gael TD Monica Barnes, like Desmond, courageously argued against the eighth amendment to the Constitution, which guaranteed the right to life of the unborn. They saw the “anti-abortion” amendment as anti-woman. Two years later, Barnes made a trenchant intervention in the Dáil which enabled a contraception Bill to be passed by a narrow margin. An unlikely Fine Gaeler, she was no stranger to street marches and embassy protests. When 33 women demonstrators were detained in Dublin’s Bridewell during Ronald Reagan’s visit to Ireland, Barnes was the only TD to visit them.
In 1993, the Fianna Fáil minister for justice, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, introduced a bill to decriminalise consensual sex between adult men. In repealing a law more than 130 years old – enacted during the reign of Queen Victoria – she said she was bringing this limitation of human rights to an end. She heard some criticism in the Dáil for “decriminalising homosexuality” but received congratulations from one opposition TD, Eamon Gilmore of Democratic Left, a fellow Galwegian. She had faced opposition from “intolerant groups”, he pointed out, and had stood up to threats from some within her own party.
At this point Mary Robinson resided in Áras an Uachtaráin, having ended Fianna Fáil’s dominance in the presidential contest three years earlier. She had plenty of experience of insults from the intolerant. For example, knocking on doors during a general election with a new-born baby in her arms she was told “you should be at home minding the child”.
Abuse of women in politics has become increasingly worse in the recent past, particularly anonymous online abuse. However, these few examples of female trailblazers in public life raise an interesting question: would our political culture significantly improve if at least half our elected representatives were women?