Constance Markievicz

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On 28 December 1918 the first woman MP was elected to the House of Commons. She was an Irishwoman, a nationalist, a revolutionary & a suffragette: Constance Markievicz, ‘the Rebel Countess’. Of 1,623 candidates in the election, only 17 were women & only one, Markievicz, succeeded. However, she never took her seat. She was one of 72 Sinn Féin MPs who all followed an abstentionist policy, not recognising the validity of Westminster’s jurisdiction in Ireland.

 

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Karl McDonald, ‘Countess Markievicz: The Violent Republican Feminist Who Was UK’s First Female MP’ (iNews The Essential Daily Briefing, 8 January 2018) https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/countess-markievicz-violent-republican-feminist-uks-first-female-mp/