LEEANN LANE
UCD Press
€30
ISBN 9781739086381
Reviewed by
Susan Byrne
Susan Byrne is a Research Ireland Post-doctoral Fellow at Trinity College, Dublin.
Mary MacSwiney—labelled a harridan, an unruly woman and incorrigible by her detractors—has up to this point generally been remembered as a vocal, difficult woman with strong, intransigent opinions. Her republican views and her strident anti-Treaty stance are regularly framed as being largely influenced by her brother, Terence MacSwiney, and her witnessing of his slow death on hunger strike in 1920. Based on extensive research, Leeann Lane’s biography of MacSwiney goes a long way towards complicating this representation.
Born in England into a ‘republican family unit’ in 1872, Mary MacSwiney was the eldest child of John MacSwiney and his English wife, Mary. Financial stability proved somewhat elusive for the family, especially after their return to Cork from England in 1879. Following a failed business venture with his brother-in-law, MacSwiney’s father left for Australia in 1885 ‘with the intention of sending for his family once he established himself’. Unfortunately, this did not happen, and he died in 1895.
Education was valued by both parents for all their children, and each child was educated as well as the family’s economic circumstances would allow. This same value, but with a nationalist bent, would inspire MacSwiney and her sister Annie to establish St Ita’s School in Cork. MacSwiney became involved in cultural nationalism and separatist politics during the early 1900s. She was also involved in the suffrage movement but by 1914 had ‘prioritized national independence over female suffrage’.
Following the 1916 Rising, she wrote letters on behalf of republican prisoners to the British Home Office. As with any letter she wrote throughout her political career, she did not hold back; she was reported as ‘being a mischief-maker’ by British authorities and used language which, were she a man, would have seen her arrested under the Defence of the Realm Act. In later dealings with Catholic Church authorities, ‘despite her strong Catholicism’, she would demonstrate similar disregard. Throughout the book, Lane clearly demonstrates MacSwiney’s ‘unwillingness to compromise or be conciliatory’ and provides a well-supported argument that this ‘informed her politics long before the death of her brother in 1920’. Nevertheless, she asserts that ‘Terence’s death was the fulcrum around which Mary’s political activities revolved’. Her role as his sister gave her a platform, an authority, that she would not otherwise have been afforded. She had the intelligence and rhetorical skill to make the most of it, and conducted a very successful tour of America, raising substantial amounts of money on behalf of the nationalist cause.
Her rhetorical skills once again came to the fore during the Treaty debates, and she was declared to be ‘in the highest ranks of the greatest orators of our race’ by Seán T. O’Kelly. Kathleen Clarke noted that she had ‘wiped the floor with Cosgrave and all opponents’. Interestingly, she did not mention her brother in her two-and-a-half-hour speech. For Lane, however, Terence’s ‘agony’ and its effect on Mary was always to the fore.
During the Civil War, three of Terence MacSwiney’s siblings—Mary, Annie and Seán—went on hunger strike while in prison. It seems astonishing that, having witnessed the death of their brother, Mary and Annie would have taken this action, but what comes across strongly is that they were, above all else, idealists—idealists who were prepared to die for their cause. Lane explores the extensive correspondence between MacSwiney and de Valera and exposes a frank and respectful exchange of views. It becomes very clear that he was a pragmatist and able to shift and bend his beliefs to achieve the end-game. MacSwiney would not—her battle cry was ‘no compromise’—and in the end it was this intransigence that saw her politically sidelined.
After the Civil War, MacSwiney became disillusioned as her stance put her increasingly out of step with the rest of the country. She was still held in high regard within Sinn Féin but, as Lane observes, ‘the reality was that Mary was grappling to locate solid ground for Sinn Féin and the republican ideal in a changed political environment’. The nation, the Free State, was ready to move on.
Sometimes, however, she too could be pragmatic. While MacSwiney refused to engage with the institutions of the new state, when she needed to travel to Germany to bring her niece, Máire Óg, back to Ireland from Germany, she approached de Valera for the required passport to enable her to travel. Family, it seems, trumped all.
After her death in 1942, the Irish Press declared her ‘a gallant fighter for her cause’ and said that ‘there was none who gave their services with a more single-minded generosity than this intrepid Cork woman’. Her funeral was private ‘at her own request’—even in death there was no compromise. While the book is somewhat let down by poor editing, repetition and jumping time-lines, it is worth sticking with, and in the end the reader is rewarded with a more rounded and nuanced understanding of MacSwiney.
Lane paints a picture of an intelligent, articulate, outspoken, principled, idealistic and brave woman, who was not afraid of anyone. While recognising the effect that Terence’s agonising death must have had on MacSwiney, Lane does prove that ‘an individual life should never be reduced to a single dimension’. This book shines a light on Mary MacSwiney’s lifelong contribution to Irish nationalism and brings her out of the shadow of her brother.