Mary MacSwiney
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Mary MacSwiney (pronounced 'MacSweeney'; Irish Máire Nic Suibhne) (27 March 1872–8 March 1942) was an Irish politician and educationalist.
Born in London, she returned to Ireland with her family at the age of six and was educated in Cork. After working at private schools in England and France she studied for a Teaching Diploma at Cambridge and worked at Hillside Convent, Farnborough and the Benedictine Convent, Ventnor.
On the death of her mother she returned to Cork and took a post at St Angela’s Ursuline High School where she had been a pupil. She joined the Gaelic League and Inghinidhe na hÉireann, and was a founder member of Cumann na mBan in Cork and became a National Vice-President of the organisation. After she was dismissed from her teaching post in 1916 because of her republican sympathies, she and her sister Annie founded Scoil Íte, modelled on St. Enda's School, and she remained involved with the school for the rest of her life.
After the death of her brother Terence on hunger strike, she was elected for Sinn Féin to the Cork constituency (taking her seat in Dáil Éireann) in 1921. She gave evidence in Washington DC before the American Commission on Conditions in Ireland. For nine months she and Terence's widow, Muriel, toured America lecturing and giving interviews.
She strongly opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty, was interned and went on hunger strike twice. She retained her seat in the 1923 election and along with other Sinn Féin members she refused to enter the Dáil. She later broke with Éamon de Valera and Fianna Fáil over entry to Dáil Éireann in 1926, and continued to maintain a hardline republican position until her death. She lost her seat in the 1927 election.
[edit] MacSwiney and republican legitimacy
In December 1938, MacSwiney was one of a group of seven people, who had been elected to the Second Dáil in 1921, who met with the IRA Army Council under Seán Russell. At this meeting, the seven signed over what they believed were the authority of the Government of Dáil Éireann to the Army Council. Henceforth, the IRA Army Council perceived itself to be the legitimate government of the Irish Republic and, on this basis, the IRA and Sinn Féin justified their rejection of the states of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland and political abstentionism from their parliamentary institutions.
[edit] References
- Mary MacSwiney papers in University College Dublin Archives. (IE UCDA P48a)
- Soul of fire : a biography of Mary MacSwiney by Charlotte H. Fallon (Cork, Mercier Press, 1986)
