The revolutionary countess who became first woman elected to UK Parliament

If you wander the halls of the Houses of Parliament, you’ll see a few sculptures and other tributes to a person named Lady Nancy Astor.

In the accompanying captions, you’ll read she’s notable as the first woman to take a seat in the House of Commons, serving for 26 years as the MP for Plymouth Sutton.

You may also notice that these descriptions are often quite awkwardly worded, usually focusing on the fact she was the first to physically sit on the green benches.

That’s because Lady Astor was not the first woman elected to Westminster as an MP. That title belongs to someone rather less likely to be celebrated by the British political establishment – and who certainly didn’t take a seat.

Constance Markievicz was born in London in 1868 to an influential Protestant family, the Gore-Booths.

In her early adulthood, it became clear she cared little for the high society life predestined for her by her blood. Instead, she wanted to become an artist, and she rented a studio in the capital to indulge her passion for painting.

When she was 25, she took her brushes and canvas to Paris, where she continued her studies and married a Polish count named Casimir Dunin-Markievicz.

The couple decided to move to Dublin in 1903. Constance already had strong ties to Ireland as much of her childhood was spent in the family home of Lissadell in Sligo, but her attachment was about to grow far more profound.

She quickly settled into the city’s famously dynamic artistic community – a community that was fizzing with politics and agitating for Irish independence in the early twentieth century.

Within five years of the move, she was a prominent campaigner for the nationalist cause, joining Sinn Féin and the militant women’s movement Inghinidhe na hÉireann. She also founded the youth organisation Na Fianna Éireann, around the same time she split amicably with her husband.

Throughout the First World War period, Constance’s fervour only grew, and she became known for wearing military uniforms and carrying weapons when she gave her fiery speeches.

During the Easter Rising in 1916, she was second-in-command at a Dublin park named St Stephen’s Green. After sustaining a week of heavy fire, she and her fellow fighters surrendered and were arrested.

Constance was sentenced to death, but this was commuted to a life sentence due to her sex. After 14 months she was released under a general amnesty, but was soon detained again.

It was the following year that she made British political history. In the postwar election in 1918 – the first in which women were able to vote – shewas voted as Member of Parliament for Dublin St Patrick’s. The result was announced on December 28, while she was in London’s Holloway Prison.

Constance followed Sinn Féin convention and did not take her seat in the House of Commons. Instead, she joined the First Dáil, set up after the election by Sinn Féin as an alternative Parliament in Dublin.

In that capacity, she was named Ireland’s first Minister for Labour, thus becoming one of the first female government ministers in Europe. She stayed in the role for around two and a half years – much of which was spent in prison – before stepping down in protest against the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1922.

Ultimately, she proved to be the final MP for Dublin St Patrick’s: the constituency was, of course, abolished when Constance’s dream of an independent Ireland was finally realised.

However, her opposition to the terms of that independence dictated the rest of her political life. In 1926 she joined Fianna Fáil and stood successfully for the party at the June 1927 general election, but decades of hard work had taken its toll.

The month after she was voted as TD for Dublin South with her new party, she died in a public ward of a city hospital aged 50.

In her short life, Constance Markievicz played many roles: artist, aristocrat and activist.

But it was only in 2018 when her trailblazing status in British politics was recognised with a stately portrait gifted from the Irish Parliament to the UK Parliament.

How she might feel about her picture being displayed by an institution she fought against her entire adult life will never be known – but her mark upon it is undeniable.

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