Fullscreen image

1st June 1912

Mass meeting of Irish suffrage Societies

The meeting of delegates from various Irish Women's suffrage organisations unanimously adopted a resolution calling for the Home Rule Bill to be amended to include giving women the right to vote in parliamentary elections. Copies of the resolution were sent to each cabinet member and to all Irish MPs and was ignored by all.

The Irish Women's Franchise League (IWFL) decided to adopt a more militant approach. In June, eight members of the IWFL were arrested for breaking the windows of government buildings in Dublin. The women were sentenced and fined, they refused to pay the fine and went to prison. In March 1913 a bust of John Redmond in the Royal Hibernian Academy was defaced by a women's suffrage campaigner in protest at the Irish Parliamentary Party's opposition to the Women’s Franchise Bill in the House of Commons.

Voting Rights, Parliament, Nationalism
Irish Citizen front page, 15th June 1912.
Irish Citizen