ABSTRACT
For much of the twentieth century, feminists in Northern Ireland have operated under exceedingly difficult, not to say dangerous, circumstances. Like feminists in the early decades of the century in what was later to become the Republic, Northern Irish feminists have constantly had to decide whether to prioritize their feminism or their politics. Feminists on both sides of the divide in Northern Ireland have found that their feminism has brought them into conflict with their communities. Nationalist women have been wary of supporting any demands of the state, for example for state-sponsored nurseries, which might seem to imply recognition of the legitimacy of British rule. Unionist women, on the other hand, have wished to avoid seeming to challenge state institutions. Deeply held religious beliefs too have often demanded women’s loyalty and prevented them from speaking out on women’s issues. For all these reasons, Northern Irish feminism cannot be compared straightforwardly with the development of feminism in the Republic. The extremely polarized political situation in Northern Ireland has created particular difficulties for women attempting to unite around feminist issues. A lucid and witty account of this effect is contained in Edna Longley’s pamphlet, ‘From Cathleen to Anorexia: The Breakdown of Irelands’. Longley argues that masculinist ideologies such as Protestantism, Catholicism, nationalism and unionism, have exercised and continue to exercise a stronger hold in the North than in the Republic: ‘Ulster’s territorial imperative has produced a politics which pivots on male refusal to give an inch’ (Longley, 1994, 183). In Northern Ireland, Cathleen Ní Houlihan has been turned into a death-cult by Catholic nationalists, she argues, while Ulster Protestantism, though lacking Cathleen Ní Houlihan, is just as patriarchal as republican nationalism. She cites its numerous lodges, brotherhoods, sodalities all of which exclude women. Longley argues that the effect on women is that they have been ‘starved’ and ‘squeezed’ by these different masculinist ideologies with the result that ‘the northern women’s movement has been divided and retarded’ (Longley, 1994, 162). Not all feminist writers on Northern Ireland would agree with Longley’s analysis: Geraldine Meaney, for example, argues that it is possible to be both a republican and a feminist and she refutes any notion of women as victims (Meaney, 1991, 12). On the contrary, she argues, women have often been active supporters of both nationalism and unionism. In Literature, Rhetoric and Violence in Northern Ireland, 1968-98, Patrick Grant points out that what is implicit in Longley’s argument, however, is not the notion that women are inherently more pacifist than men, but that because of their long history of oppression, women
especially should understand the way oppression operates and should take care to resist rather than to collude in it (Grant, 2001, 119). Whatever the merits of Longley’s analysis, it remains the case, as I hope the following brief outline of women in Northern Ireland will make clear, that the highly polarized politics of the North has often resulted in the subordination of gender loyalty to loyalty to one’s community. Sometimes women have been willing to accept this prioritizing of their loyalties, sometimes they have struggled against it. The violent situation in the North has made that struggle difficult and at times dangerous. In their analysis of ‘Women, Politics and the State in Northern Ireland, 191866’ (The Field Day Anthology, V, 353-4), Ruth Taillon and Diane Urquhart describe the weaknesses of feminism amongst both unionist and nationalist women in the North. The Ulster Women’s Unionist Council (UWUC) was established in 1911 to campaign against the Home Rule Bill. It mobilized popular support for the unionist cause and by 1913 it represented the largest female political organization in Ireland with between 115,000 and 200,000 members. Following the passage of the Government of Ireland Act in 1920 partitioning Ireland and establishing a separate six-county state of Northern Ireland, the UWUC continued its work for unionism. Taillon and Urquhart point out that it was not an especially feminist organization, however. It was always ancillary to the Ulster Unionist Council and it never actively encouraged women to come forward as parliamentary candidates. In The Hidden Tradition: Feminism, Women and Nationalism in Ireland, Carol Coulter traces the weakness of feminism among Northern Protestant women even today to the fact that, unlike James Connolly, for instance, Edward Carson refused to take up the issue of women’s suffrage and hence: ‘Unionist women had nowhere to go without breaking with Unionism’ (Coulter, 1993, 29). After the partitioning of Ireland no nationalist woman was elected to the parliament of Northern Ireland, and the only female nationalist association was the Ladies’ Auxiliary of the Ancient Order of Hibernians which, as its name suggests, was, like the UWUC, ancillary to a male organization. It too did not encourage its members to stand as parliamentary candidates. If the situation of women in the Republic was weak during the middle decades of the twentieth century, that of women in Northern Ireland was, if anything, worse. Only nine women were elected to the Northern Irish parliament between 1921 and 1972. Six of these were representatives of the Ulster Unionist Party. Only three women represented Northern Ireland at Westminster, two Ulster Unionists and Bernadette Devlin (now McAliskey), a ‘nationalist unity’ candidate who represented mid Ulster at Stormont in 1969 and at Westminster from 1970 to 1974. Most commentators would agree that the conflict in Northern Ireland is fundamentally about national identity, or even about the state versus nation, rather than about religion.1 Nevertheless because the division between nationalist/ republican and unionist/ loyalist coincides in the main with a Catholic/ Protestant divide, religious ideology has figured largely in the debate over national identity and is woven tightly into the fabric of daily life in Northern Ireland.
