Constance Markievicz during the 1916 uprising, for which she was sentenced to death, later commuted because she was a woman.

As Theresa May accepts a portrait of the great woman, who was the first woman elected to the House of Common, we remember her refusal to take her seat in that place where she would never have agreed for her portrait to sit while the six northeastern countries of Ireland were held by British imperialism.

She explained, “I would never take an oath of allegiance to the power I meant to overthrow”.

Why today, much talk about good relations with British Royalty and Tories but no talk of “the power we mean to overthrow”.

 

There were 120,000 of Dublin’s poor at her funeral in 1927:

“Whoever mistook the intentions of madam, the poor did not.”

Markievicz funeral oration in 1927 delivered by Eamon de Valera.

“Madame Markievicz is gone from us. Madame, the friend of the toiler, the lover of the poor. Ease and station she put aside, and took the hard way of service with the weak and the downtrodden. Sacrifice, misunderstanding, and scorn lay on the road she adopted, but she trod it unflinchingly. She now lies at rest with her fellow-champions of the right, mourned by the people whose liberties she fought for, blessed by the loving prayers of the poor she tried so hard to befriend. The world knew her only as a soldier of Ireland, but we knew her as a colleague and comrade. We knew the friendliness, the great woman’s heart of her, the great Irish soul of her, and we know the loss we have suffered is not to be repaired. It is sadly we take our leave, but we pray high heaven that all she longed and worked for may one day be achieved.”

Whoever misunderstood Madame, the poor did not. In her they instinctively recognised a friend who was prepared to give everything she had to help them. She loved them. She wanted to share their lot. She even chose to die among them in the public ward of a city hospital. They returned her love. When she was dead, they thronged in mourning round her bier, and followed in thousands in her funeral.

Her enthusiasm, her energy, her courage made Madame an effective champion of the people. She served them and Ireland greatly. Ireland will not forget. Gura fada buan a saothar. Ar dheis go raibh a h-anam.

EAMON DE VALERA. May 2, 1934

https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.176226/2015.176226.Prison-Letters-Of-Countess-Markievicz_djvu.txt