Members of the Second Dáil - Mary MacSwiney

Mary MacSwiney

Mary MacSwiney (pronounced 'MacSweeney'; Irish Máire Nic Suibhne) (27 March 1872 – 8 March 1942) was an Irish politician and educationalist.

Born in London,to an Irish father and English mother, 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, at the age of twenty, she studied for a Teaching Diploma at Cambridge University, which was normally reserved for men, and worked at Hillside Convent, Farnborough and the Benedictine Convent, Ventnor.

On the death of her mother, she returned to Cork to look after the younger members of her family and took a post at St Angela’s Ursuline High School where she had been a pupil. Influenced by her staunchly republican brother, Terence MacSwiney,she joined the Gaelic League and Inghinidhe na hÉireann, and was a founder member of Cumann na mBan when it was formed in 1914 in Cork and became a National Vice-President of the organisation. In 1916 she was arrested and imprisoned following the Easter Rising and also was dismissed from her teaching position for her republican activities. Several months later, upon her release from prison, she and her sister Annie founded Scoil Íte, modelled on Padraig Pearse's St. Enda's School, and she remained involved with the school for the rest of her life.

She supported the Irish war of independence in 1919-21. After the death of her brother Terence in October 1920 on hunger strike during the height of the Black and Tan War she was elected for Sinn Féin to the Cork Borough constituency (taking her seat in Dáil Éireann) in 1921. Another brother Seán was also elected to the Dáil in a different Cork constituency. She gave evidence in Washington, D.C. 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, debated in December 1921-January 1922, preferring to resume the war: 'This matter has been put to us as the Treaty or war. I say now if it were war, I would take it gladly and gleefully, not flippantly, but gladly, because I realise that there are evils worse than war, and no physical victory can compensate for a spiritual surrender.' On 21 December she spoke for three hours criticising the agreement from all angles.

During and after the Irish Civil War she 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 their 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.

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 was 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.