Inspirational Women - Mary MacSwiney

David Collins
Martin Hurson Cumann
University College Cork

Mary MacSwiney came to prominence in the Republican Movement when she was elected the TD for the Cork Borough following the death of her younger brother and Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Cork City, Terence MacSwiney. Terence had died in Brixton Prison after a 74 day hunger strike protesting his arrest and internment.
However, her involvement in the struggle for Irish Independence had stretched back long before her election to Dail Éireann. In the years following the turn of the century, she had joined the women's organisation, Inghinidhe na hÉireann as well as being involved in the Irish language revival movement in Cork. In 1914, MacSwiney was one of the founding members of the revolutionary movement, Cumann na mBan.

Educated in Queen's College Cork and Cambridge University, Mary was a qualified teacher. During the Rising of 1916, she was arrested in her classroom for her involvement with the Irish Republican cause. That subsequent year, at the Sinn Féin Árd Fheis of 1917, delegates voted in favour of a motion calling for the establishment of an independent Irish Republic. It was in the wake of this, that Mary MacSwiney joined Sinn Féin.

In the months following the death of her bother in 1920, on instruction from the President, Mary toured the United States, giving lectures and gaining much publicity for the Irish cause. The following year, MacSwiney, now the Pesident of Cumann na mBan, was elected to the National Assembly in Dublin.

Of all her involvements within Irish republicanism, she will arguably be remembered most for her impassioned opposition to the Anglo-Irish Treaty. “This is not the will of the Irish people; it is the fear of the Irish people”, she said. Mary made no secret of her beliefs on what she called “the greatest act of betrayal that Ireland ever endured”. In her final address to the Dáil, she gave a speech to that effect for two hours and fourty minutes. During this she laid verbal seige to the man who gave the main oration at her brother's funeral the previous year, Arthur Griffith, as well as those representatives who she felt were blindly betraying the Republic for which she stood - “The Minister of Finance, Michael Collins - his name alone will make that thing acceptable to many people in this country, as he made it acceptable to many of the young men of this Dáil - “What is good enough for Michael Collins is good enough for me”. If Mick Collins went to hell in the morning, would you follow him there? ”.

Having been arrested by the Free State during the Civil War and enduring two hunger strikes, Mary was re-elected in 1923. Standing by her principals, she refused to swear allegiance to the English King and enter the Free State parliament. When de Valera and others agreed to take this Oath of Allegiance, Mary was among the few who stayed true to her beliefs, a position she never waivered upon until her death in 1942.