Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

After many decades of constitutional lobbying by the Irish Women's Suffrage and Local Government Association, some women grew frustrated with the slow progress. Influenced by the militant strategies of the British Women's Social and Political Union, WSPU, two women, Hannah Sheehy Skeffington and Margaret Cousins set up a new suffrage group in Dublin in 1908, the Irish Women's Franchise League, IWFL. It was impatient for change and ready to challenge social conventions.

Aiming to win the vote for women on the same terms as men, the IWFL, whose leaders were nationalist in their political sympathies but also linked with the labour movement of Larkin and Connolly vociferously lobbied to have female enfranchisement included in the Home Rule Bill. Although the IWFL described itself as militant, members did not engage in militant activity during its early years. It was the frustration caused by the failure of the Irish parliamentary party to support votes for women in the Home Rule Bill of 1912 that finally sparked militant agitation in Ireland. The IWFL decided that militant action was the only way to attract the Irish Parliamentary Party's attention or that of the British Government. On 13 June 1912, eight women were arrested for throwing stones at Government Buildings in Dublin. When Hannah Sheehy Skeffington, Marguerite Palmer and sisters Jane and Margaret Murphy came to trial, 200 women, including the other arrested suffragettes, Kathleen Houston, Marjorie Hasler, Maud Lloyd and Hilda Webb, packed the court room. The women were each sentenced to either a fine or two months imprisonment. All refused to pay and opted for prison to where they were soon followed by the other four. The IWFL never engaged in the levels of militancy associated with the Pankhursts and the WSPU in Britain.

Research on suffrage activism has focused mainly on the pursuit of the vote which means that the movement can be misunderstood as a single-issue pressure group. We must go beyond the focus on enfranchisement to uncover the complexity of identities, actions and motivations behind the suffrage movement. The study of historical movements often fails to uncover their true dynamism, the lively discussions and debates which underpinned their activities. One way to analyse and assess such debates and the breadth of activity and campaigns undertaken by the Irish suffragists is through their newspaper The Irish Citizen which was published between 1912 and 1920. A paper cannot give voice to all divergent views and voices within the movement with only the most literate and articulate being able to be included, but it is remarkable how many women's suffrage campaigners were represented in that paper's eight years. Many contributors to The Irish Citizen described themselves as feminists. They analysed the relationship between suffrage and feminism. In December 1912 Margaret Connery wrote in The Irish Citizen that:

What is called the votes for women movement is but a side issue of a much greater and more far-reaching problem. It is true that the votes for women movement is the chief manifestation of feminism but though public attention has been particularly focused on this one phase of feminism, the girl who first defied conventions by riding a bicycle or the poorest woman anywhere who is revolting against the conditions of her life and longing for her chance to relieve its monotony, all these are part and parcel of the great uprising amongst women.

As part of its feminist agenda, The Irish Citizen discussed a wide range of issues effecting women and girls. Socialist voices argued that working-class women needed trade unions and better working conditions and to lead themselves and decide their own priorities. Other contributors raised the matters of domestic violence and sexual assaults in Irish society. They established a court-watching committee which monitored cases involving girls and women. The committee's reports appeared regularly in The Irish Citizen. The women's presence in court, especially in cases which included indecency, was not always welcome and many times they were ejected, something against which they rallied.

It is important to note that there was class, debate and discussion within the movement. Today, 100 years ago Irish women were given the right to vote but only some of them, those over 30 years, with property rights or a university education. The Act also gave the vote to men over the age of 21 years. That meant that only 40% of women were able to vote. Some 60% of women, including those in the slums and in living in poverty in rural areas, had no vote until 1922. In December 1918 Countess Markievicz was the first women to be elected to the UK House of Commons while she was imprisoned in Britain.

After 1922, we began many decades of political and religious conservatism in Ireland. Many of the women and men of 1913, 1916 and of the suffrage movement were written out of the pages of history. Many left Ireland's shores. I want to say one thing to those men and women: I salute them. Had they been here in this Dáil in 2011, we would never have had the austerity measures that were imposed on pensioners, lone parents and all the other austerity measures which were put in place by the Fine Gael-Labour Government.

There is a statue of Countess Markievicz on Townsend Street in Dublin city. I propose that it be brought into O'Connell Street where she played an active part during 1913, and placed on a pedestal beside James Larkin.

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