PD Organise Amendment
Socialist Republic1983Women's liberationPartition and the national questionRepublicanism and the IRAChurch, state and civil libertiesWomen's liberationPartition and the national questionRepublicanism and the IRAChurch, state and civil liberties
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Many Inghinidhe activists were founders of Sinn Fein in 1908. The Party’s programme was very moderate and explicitly anti-socialist.Conflicts often broke out within the party because of the contradiction between this programme and the vigorous instincts of the rank. and file membership. On such occasions Inghinidhe ne hEireann, which had become inactive, was resurrected as a safety valve for militant activity.
Margaret Ward tells us that in 1911 Sinn Fein set up a broad committee to oppose the visit of the new English King, George V. The United National Societies Committee organised one of the biggest nationalist demonstrations since the days of’ the Land League. But some wanted to go further:-‘Countess Markiewicz ..... remembered Inghinidhe as being always in favour of the most extreme action possible, while people like Griffith.....were in’ great dread of a riot’.
As George V_ passed, through admiring loy-. alist crowds in Dublin, , Markiewicz unfurled a, black flag and began, distributing a leafletdenouncing Irish people. |willing to‘crawl to those. who oppress and rob, them.’ In the ensuing, ‘Women, Partition and the Amendment’ was the theme of a public meeting held on Monday, August 29 in Dublin. Organised by Peoples Democracy in opposition to the Amendment. some 40 pepple turned out to ear an interesting panel of speakers:
eonora Lloyd, a founder member of the International Contraception, Abortion and against Enforced Sterilisation Campaign, Margaret Ward, author of the recently published ‘Unmanageable Revolutionaries’ - Women and Irish Nationalism. (reviewed elsewhere on this page).
Helen Mahony, Secretary of Trade Unionists against the Amendment, and PD member Sue Esterson. eo Leonora Lloyd told the meeting that there is a Struggle all over the wor,ld by women to win control over their own fertility. She drew a parallel between the circumstances which gave birth to the. British National Abortion Campaign and those of the Anti-Amendment Campaign in Ireland. ‘The Pro-Choice movement came into existence in Britain for the same reasons that the AAC came about in Ireland - because of | anti-abortion hysteria. In ‘Britain th > was formed after ames White’s attempt in 1975 to restrict the 1967 Abortion Act. In Ireland the AAC was formed after the PLAC secured romises from_ politicans to amend the 1937 Constitution’.
Helen Mahony explained that the Amendment was an attempt to ‘penalize,terrorise and isolate women’ and warned that it might ‘stem the ‘fight for uemocratic rights iike contraception and divorce’.
Margaret Ward warned that partition would be bolstered by the Amend-. ment: ‘It will highlight the differences , tween the two parts of Ireland, with pregnant women the symbol of the difference. Women _ in the North will never give up the right to treated for cancerous wombs in exchange for a United Ireland’.
Speaking for Peoples Democracy, Sue Esterson condemned the statement of the cath.olic bishops as a veiled attempt to coerce catholics into supporting the Amendment. She said ‘The bishops hope to exclude discussion of the underlying political reasons for the Amend-: ment’. Sue also warned | that the Amendment ‘undermines the prospect of Irish unity’