Countess Markiewicz (The English Countess of Irish Freedom) The Countess Markiewicz was born Constance Georgine Gore-Booth on 4 February, 1868, to an old Anglo-Irish family that owned a large estate in County Sligo, Western Ireland. She lived a privileged life and enjoyed her time as a young lady of the manor, hunting, fishing, and in short time becoming an accomplished horsewoman. She was considered to be a great beauty, had many male suitors and admirers, and was at one time presented to Queen Victoria. But she had no relish for the ornamental life. She wanted to achieve things. So she studied art, first in London and then in Paris, where she met Count Casimir Markiewicz, a Ukrainian aristocrat of Polish descent. They married in 1901. Though not an unhappy marriage; Constance was not cut out to be a wife and help-mate, and over time they became increasingly distant. Despite her marriage, her art, and mixing in the best social circles, Constance was unfulfilled. She needed some purpose. In 1905, she wrote, "Nature should provide me with something to live for, something to die for". Dissatisfied, she came late to politics and the Irish Nationalist Cause.
In 1908, she joined Sinn Fein, and in the same year stood for election in Manchester, and lost. She then joined Maud Gonne's (W B Yeats' great unrequited love) women’s' organisation. She plunged enthusiastically into its activities and her work soon got her noticed. In 1909, she founded Fianna Eireean, an organisation which surreptitiously provided young boys with military training. By 1911, she held an executive position with Sinn Fein. In the years immediately preceding the outbreak of World War One she was involved in the many industrial disputes that plagued Dublin. Working closely with James Connolly, the socialist and Irish nationalist leader, she helped rally the women, organising collections and running soup kitchens. With the outbreak of war and the shelving of the Irish Home Rule Bill until after its conclusion, the political situation in Dublin was stretched to breaking point. On 24 April, 1916, the Irish Nationalists rose in open rebellion. The Easter Rising, though it didn't seem so at the time, was a pivotal moment in the struggle for Irish freedom. They had little popular support, but were willing to make a stand. From the start, Countess Markiewicz was in the thick of the fighting. She was second in command of the forces based at St Stephens Green, where she organised the defences, built barricades, and then took up arms. The fighting was fierce but after six days she was forced to surrender, as it turned out to a distant relative. Marched through the streets of Dublin she found herself jostled and jeered by the crowd, but this was soon to change. Imprisoned in Kilmainham Jail and kept in solitary confinement (the only female prisoner to be so)
she expected to be executed. At her trial she said, "I did what was right and I stand by it". She was indeed sentenced to death but this was commuted to life imprisonment on account of her sex. Hearing of the news she remarked, "I wish they had the decency to shoot me". However, she served little time in prison being released in the general amnesty of political prisoners in 1917. On her release, as a reconfirmation of her devotion to the Irish Nationalist Cause, she converted to Catholicism. She wasted no time in becoming politically active again and was jailed in 1918 for opposing the draft. In the General Election of 1918, she became Britain's first female Member of Parliament. The 73 elected members of Sinn Fein refused to take the Oath to the Crown and boycotted the Parliament however, so the Countess never took up her seat. She fought in the Irish War for Independence though her effectiveness was limited by her need to remain constantly in hiding. A staunch supporter of the Irish Republican Army's Commander-in-Chief Michael Collins, she fell out badly with him over the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. On the day it was debated in the Dail (Irish Parliament) she walked out with the other anti-treaty politicians accusing Collin's of being a traitor as she did so. Collins accused her witheringly in turn, of being English. In the Civil War that followed she fought for the anti-treaty forces and even found herself jailed by the Free State Government. In 1926, she joined Eamonn de Valera's newly formed Fianna Fail Party and was elected to the Dail in 1927. But she never had the opportunity to serve as a peacetime politician dying just a month later possibly of cancer or tuberculosis. Was Constance Gore Booth, however, a traitor? And how do we define treachery? She may have fought for what she believed in but she did take up arms against her fellow countrymen. She was a scion of the very people from whom the Irish so desparately sought deliverance - the rich English landlord who had been exploiting Ireland for their own benefit for centuries. Was she merely a bored rich woman of privelige who had found in the Irish struggle for independence some purpose to her life. That she behaved with courage and devotion cannot be questioned but then neither can the fact that she was English. That aching desire to be free of the yolk of English oppression lay not in her blood nor in her soul. She was never threatened by poverty or suffered the pain of dispossession and starvation. Her decisions were intellectual only, something that Michael Collins was so gleefully happy to point out.