Constance Markiewicz

Constance Markievicz (4 February 1868 – 15 July 1927), born in London was perhaps one of the most intellectual of the leaders of the Easter Rising, and has become one of the most revered women in Irish history. She married Count Casimir Markievicz, a Polish nobleman and joined Sinn Féin in 1900 but grew weary of Arthur Griffiths' pacifism. She launched Fianna Eireann in 1909. She became an officer in the Irish Citizen's Army, prompting the resignation of the Socialist playwright Seán O Casey. She was a prominent rebel in the 1916 Easter Rising but her death sentence was commuted on account of her sex. She became President of Cumann na mBan in 1917 and converted to Catholicism. She was elected Sinn Féin MP for St Patrick’s Dublin, 1918, thereby being the first woman to be elected to the House of Commons, but did not take her seat due to the Sinn Féin policy of abstention. She became Minister for Labour in the Cabinet of the first Dáil Éireann while imprisoned between 1919-21 and became Minister for Labor in the second Dáil. She denounced the Anglo-Irish Treaty as a capitalist ploy and thus supported the republicans in the Irish Civil War, 1923-4. She then became Sinn Féin abstentionist TD for South Dublin, 1923-7.

See also

• Easter Rising