Unmanageable Revolutionaries

Margaret Ward explains in her introduction that this book arose from her perception, as an active socialist feminist in Belfast, that the ‘conflicting allegiance of nationalism and _ feminism, [would] continue to overwhelm us’ unless a start was made by honestly confronting them. The book rcords the conflicts, tensions, and productive interactions between feminism and nationalism between 1880 and 1940 in Ireland.

It is a pioneering work forcing all of us to look at both the past and the present day ir a completely differen way from before.

Because of the relentless pressure from the international womens’ movement over the past 20 years, it has now become a truism, even in some right-wing liberal circles to say that women have been written out of the pages of history. Especlally in a backward country like Ireland we are his story, rarely if ever *. her story.

Established _ historians, are now beginning to perceive dimly the threat to their credibility posed by the scandalous exclusion of half the human race from their his story.They would like to make fake gestures to women and get away with it. Margaret Ward, because of her genuine socialist feminist approach, avoids this trap and warns against ‘simply tagging (women)on to what we already know’. Her method is ‘to re-examine what is already accepted so that a whole people will eventually come into focus:our historical categorics will have to change.’

The book begins with a remarkable event on 31January 1881:-Irish women were asked by Irish men to take over a turbulent mass movement called the. Land League. For the next 18 months the Ladies Land League took control of the campaign. It proved such an embarrassment to the men that they quickly moved to rewrite the history of the period once the agitation was over. But not everything could be suppressed. In 1886 Maud Gonne, daughter of a British Army officer, had decided at the age of 21 to devote her life to the cause of trish freedom. She went to numerous men in the nationalist movement asking for help and information. She met the old fenian John OLeary at a_ talk Organised by the exclusive™™~and. all-male, Contemporary Club?®hes subject was the Land League. Maud was stil! . only trying to: find he feet and asked just one question: what had happened to the Ladies Land League? John O Leary made a famous reply:‘They may not have been right, but they were suppressed because they were honester and more sincere than the men.’

Anna Parnell was the driving force behind the Ladies Land League. As a result of her experience she became a recluse in an artists’ colony in Cornwall,England. She never broke her links with Ireland, once, despite being almost penniless, she sent a donation to a Patriotic Childrens’ Treat in 1900. It. ws a protest against the visit of Queen Victoria to Dub lin, ‘the Famine Queen’ This event, organised by women, was a big success. Arthur Griffith wrote: ‘Dublin never witnessed anything so marvellous as the procession through its streets last Sunday of the 30,000 used to be bi into parading before the Queen of England.’

The government sponsored free treat in Queen Victoria's honour attracted only 5,000 children. There were 4 speakers at the Patriotic Children’s Treat. Although the event had been organised by women from start to finish 3 of the speakers were men. The one woman orator was Maud Gonne, the main organiser. 40 years later she was still meeting people who had been patriotic children at the treat. Maud’s romantic admirer, the poet WB Yeats, commented gloomily:-How many of these children will carry bomb or rifle when a little under or a little over thirty?

As Margaret Ward says‘He proved more farsighted than he realised.’ As a direct result of this experience the women who set up the Patriotic Treat founded Inghinidhe na hEireann (Daughters of Ireland) in October 1900. It was the oniy nationalist women’s organisation in this period that was completely independent. Although it was very successful it made one fatal strategic errorvit subordinated the _ interests of women to those of the entire nationalist movement. It would not support the cam-. paign to win the vote for women, because this was ‘English agitation’. Inghinidhe argued it was wrong to make demands on the foreign British government. There should be no_ diversion from the ‘main aim’ of winning freedom for ireland. This strategy was “disastrous on two counts. Firstly, putting off pro-' gressive campaigns to a future ‘stage’ of the struggle,meant making unacceptable concessions to reactionary forces and giving them a base within the broad _nationalist movement. Secondly, it meant that when the national struggle reached its height in the early ‘20s, it was sold out due to betrayal from within. As we now know to our cost women were penalised very severely bythe imposition of’ partition:as Connolly accurately predicted the 2 partitioned states became a ‘carnival of reaction.’

A theme that runs implicitly through Margaret Ward’s book is that a strategy which does not seek to combine the national and social revolutions ...that is a permanent revolution strategy ...is a strategy doomed to fail.

At. this. junction there between the strategic goals of both feminists -and Trotskyists.

Inghinidhe, because of their abstention from the women’s suffrage movement, cut themselves off from potential allies in the Irish Women’s row an old man_ hit Markiewicz with a stick, h attached to a Union Jack. Markiewicz burnt a Union Jack and her comrade Helena Moloney put a brick through a shop window displaying pictures of the royal couple.

Court cases followed, Markiewicz making one flamboyant gesture after another, and the government eventually decided because of mass support for the women.

Helena Moloney at this time was a close colleague of James Connolly ‘and his Socialist Party of Ireland(SPI). They ad no qualms about supporting the campaign for women's suffrage Inghinidhe continued to decline and the remaining members of the dwindling organisation decided, says Margaret Ward, to give their support to the small group of Socialists associated with Liberty hall.

There are stron paraitude of Inghinidhe and Sinn Fein’s attitude to the anti-abortion amendment:they refuse to campaign for a No vote on the grounds that the constitution is illegitAGAINST imate. Margaret Ward notes that: ‘The Sinn Fein Women’s. Department ... may in consequence be rendered all but irrelevant, when confronted with, the first major crisis, of its existence.’

In the short space of thi: review I have only been » able to cover a small amount of Margare Ward's excellent book, BUY. IT!!) READ IT