Communicating With Prisoners

A Machine Readable Version

Christopher Baran

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The role of women in the Irish struggle for independence was no less than that of their more famous male counterparts. Writing of Jack Yeats' painting, Communicating with Prisoners, Thomas MacGreevy declares '. . . they [Irish women] did everything except get executed. Many of them gave all they had, they suffered, they fought, they went to gaol, they hunger-struck.' ( MacGreevy 250). It is odd, not that Yeats would paint a picture of the women's imprisonment, so much as MacGreevy would wish to draw attention to it. In conservative Ireland, one's image of the normal feminine place is that of the unknown flower girl in Yeats' Bachelor's Walk, removed from the mainstream of political events, on the side, mourning the losses. However, like the image of Plataean women hurling roofing tiles at the Theban invaders, ( Thucydides , bk. 2, para. 4.) Yeats' painting may simply be meant to draw attention to the severity of the Irish civil war, in terms of the damage or reversal done to traditional social roles. After all, it even resulted in female prisoners.

In truth, there was a certain progressive, leftist strain in the Irish nationalist movement, which also had ties to Irish feminism and the suffragist movement. It is true that the participation of Irish women in political affairs remained for many years sporadic. Nevertheless, they continued to perform, even if only in limited numbers, similar roles to men. The Proclamation of the Irish Republic made during the Easter Rising, in particular, granted 'equal rights and opportunities to all its citizens.' ( McKillen , 17.3:52-67, 17.4:72-90, 65) In the Easter Rising, nationalist-minded members of Cumann na mBan, the female 'auxiliary' to the Irish Volunteers, served alongside their male counterparts. Most of these individuals acted in traditionally feminine capacities such as cooks and nurses. However, a few Irishwomen also served as soldiers in St. Stephen's Green. During the War for Independence and Civil War, many women served as messengers, a potentially dangerous job if they were caught, carrying vital information between commanders, Women were favoured over men for this task by Michael Collins as they were much less likely to be stopped and searched by British soldiers. ( McKillen17.3:62-63) In the December 1918 parliamentary elections, Constance Markievicz, a Sinn Fé in candidate, became the first women ever elected to Westminster. However, as a nationalist candidate, she abstained from that body and joined the newly-created Irish Dá il. Like some of her male colleagues, Markievicz was also a political prisoner at the time. ( McKillen 17.4:79) Irish women had only won the right to vote several months before. However, Irish women under thirty still could not vote, unlike their male counterparts. N

The activities of Cumann na mBan continued in support of the nationalist impulse during the War for Independence from 1919. These activities were predominantly support activities, though some members nevertheless found themselves arrested by the British. ( McKillen 17.4:85) However, nationalist women sided overwhelmingly with the anti-Treaty party in the political split that rent Ireland after December 1921. The six women Dá il members voted against acceptance, and nearly six-sevenths of the almost five hundred members present at the Cumann na mBan convention opposed it. Five of those Dá il deputies eventually withdrew from the body, following defeat of an amendment to fully grant equal political rights to Irish women. Some male deputies argued the Irish body had not the authority to alter the Treaty or the Free State Constitution or that Britain would oppose such a move.

The most pressing argument, though, against the extension of women's rights, particularly that of the franchise to women younger than thirty, was that it would delay the adoption of the Treaty. Arthur Griffith's proposal to enact the extension of the franchise, but to delay implementation after the July 1922 elections, likewise failed passage. Five of the six female Dá il representatives eventually withdrew from the body and, with Cumann na mBan, assisted the anti-Treaty side during the Irish Civil War, particularly in defense of the Four Courts garrison in Dublin. ( McKillen 17.4:86-87)

The Free State government imprisoned several of these former Dá il representatives, including Mary MacSwiney, arrested in Dublin in November 1922, around the start of the period of official executions and reprisals. MacSwiney began to hunger strike as soon as she arrived at Mountjoy Jail. Her cause was taken up and publicized by Cumann na mBan through 'monster' meetings and protests outside government prisons. More than three weeks later, she was released. In the wake of the Free State execution of Erskine Childers, as historian Charlotte Fallon has pointed out, her execution would have created something innovative in Irish nationalist mythology, 'a republican heroine.' ( Fallon 75-91, 77-78) MacGreevy commented that Irish republican women, '...did everything except get executed.' ( MacGreevy 250) His observation may be a veiled reference to MacSwiney's activism.

The following spring, six rebel women held at Kilmainham Jail, including MacSwiney, Catherine O'Callaghan, and Maud Gonne MacBride, again went on hunger-strike. O'Callaghan was also a Dá il deputy and had introduced the failed motion to amend the Free State Constitution to equalize the political rights of Irish women with those enjoyed by men. MacBride was the romantic interest of nationalist poet William Butler Yeats, and a prolific influence on his writing. Patrick MacCartan, at the behest of Free State Minister for Home Affairs, Kevin O'Higgins, eventually introduced legislation into the Dá il to provide for the release of any future prisoners that might hunger-strike. ( Fallon 83-85)

It is this tradition of radical female involvement in the Irish nationalist movement, that is commemorated in Yeats' painting. However, the key concept here, one would suggest, is the very irregularity of such activities. This painting, paired with the violent legacy of executions and assassinations tacitly referred to in Yeats' rendering of Harry Boland's funeral, serves to emphasize the psychological magnitude and turmoil of the Irish Civil War.