Marcella Corcoran Kennedy (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)

There have been numerous discussions around commemoration ceremonies in recent times. I welcome the opportunity to raise the role of women and the contribution they made to Irish society in our turbulent past. I am sad to note there is scant acknowledgement of those brave and patriotic women who, alongside their men, fought for Irish freedom in different ways, some as pacifists and others as militants. Even in a recent supplement on the Home Rule Bill in The Irish Times, the 13 contributors and staff writers, all of whom were male, made little reference to the role played by women. None of the articles was dedicated to this subject.

I wish to focus on the events of 1912, when votes for women became entangled with the Irish Home Rule Bill introduced in Westminster. Irish and English feminists came to the issue from differing perspectives. Most women and men in Ireland were Nationalists who wanted home rule. Most Irish feminists wanted votes for women in an Irish Parliament of one kind or another. However, Irish Unionist women and men did not support home rule and both Unionists and English feminists wanted the vote in the UK Parliament.

What outraged feminists here and in England was the attitude taken by the Prime Minister, Herbert Henry Asquith, and the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, John Redmond. I do not blame them. In a conversation with Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, the deputy leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, John Dillon, stated:

Women's suffrage will, I believe, be the ruin of our Western civilisation. It will destroy the home, challenging the headship of man, laid down by God. It may come in your time - I hope not in mine.

It is no wonder they were cross.

A mass meeting was held in June 1912 at which 19 women's organisations were represented. Patience finally ran out and some of the members of the Irish Women's Franchise League smashed windows at the GPO, Dublin Castle and the Custom House. Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington and Margaret Cousins were sent to jail and Mary Leigh and Gladys Evans, who were members of an English organisation, the Women's Social and Political Union, were sentenced to five years imprisonment for disrupting the Prime Minister and went on hunger strike in Mountjoy Prison. Forcible feeding was practised in England at the time and there was considerable debate on the issue. Augustine Birrell, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, stated:

Personally I am dead against forcible feeding which always ends with the release of the prisoner long before her time. I want to keep these ladies under lock and key for five years and I am quite willing to feed them with Priest's Champagne and Michaelmas Geese all the time if it can be done ... but these wretched hags ... are obstinate to the point of death.

No fewer than 36 women were imprisoned during this campaign and many of them went on hunger strike for political status. We should not forget these wonderful women and what they achieved. Margaret Cousins put it well when she stated:

I am not a criminal but a political prisoner - my motives were neither criminal nor personal - being wholly associated with the agitation to obtain Votes for Women. I shall fight in every way in my power against being branded a criminal.

With these thoughts in mind I call on the Government to dedicate a commemoration ceremony to these women and the role they played as we approach June 2012.

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