Sunday, March 26, 2006

Mary MacSwiney: A Revolutionary, From A Family of Revolutionaries

On March 27, 1872, Mary MacSwiney (Maire Nic Shuibhne), republican activist, was born in Surrey, England, of an Irish father and an English mother.

Mary MacSwiney, left. National Library of Ireland

Mary grew up in Cork and was educated as a teacher, like her mother and father. Influenced by her revolutionary brother, Terence, she became involved with the Irish nationalist movement. She was arrested in her classroom during the 1916 Easter Rising. After her brother's death on hunger strike, she toured the United States in support of the republican cause. She opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty, calling it, "the grossest act of betrayal that Ireland ever endured." When de Valera compromised in 1926 in order to enter the Dáil, MacSwiney, much like her brother before her, held fast to her strict republican ideals, refusing to take the required oath to the Crown. Mary MacSwiney died at her home in Cork on March 8, 1942. Read the rest HERE.


Read about other Irish Revolutionary women in “When History Was Made: The Women of 1916” by Ruth Taillon
Searc's Web Guide to 20th Century Ireland - Mary MacSwiney (1872-1942)
Ireland's OWN: Women Freedom Fighters

Terance MacSwiney: Irish martyr: Probably no man outside of Michael Collins was as responsible for getting England to agree to peace talks in 1921 as Mary MacSwiney's brother, Terence, and he accomplished this without an act of violence.

Terence MacSwiney, left, Lord Mayor of Cork, University College, Dublin.

MacSwiney, like Ghandi some twenty years later, helped bring English rule in his country to an end by passive resistance; he refused to submit to English law, and by that simple act he brought the harsh glare of a worldwide spotlight to the injustice of England’s colonial regime.

MacSwiney was born in Cork city 1879, he died on Oct. 25, 1920. Read the rest of his story, HERE.

Principles Of Freedom by Terence MacSwiney.
Enduring the most: The life and death of Terence MacSwiney” by Francis Costello

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