Page 56 - GAHS Journal Volume 9

IT IS THE HOME RULE BILL THAT HAS DONE THAT

'It is the Home Rule Bill that has done that':

Wicklow women, unionism, and the Women's
Declaration of 1912

Rosemary Raughter
Background

I
n September 1912, as over half a million Irish men and women
signed their names to a pledge to resist at all costs the impo-
sition of home rule, Rathdown (No 2) Rural District Council met
to consider the no less vital question of sewage provision, and
found the two issues unexpectedly converging. A letter had been
received, the meeting was informed, from Mrs Le Blond, owner
of much of the land around Greystones, declaring that ‘in the
present state of Ireland’, she did not feel justified in continuing
the development of her property, and was, therefore, unwilling to
co-operate with the Council in carrying out the necessary work.
As one councillor commented bitterly, ‘It is the Home Rule bill
1
that has done that.’ The Wicklow Newsletter saw in this purely
local episode an indication of a wider malaise, concluding that:

'A spirit of unrest and uncertainty is one of the ugly
shadows cast by the Home Rule Bogeyman, and until it
is removed the progress of Ireland must remain at a
2
standstill, or, at most, make but little progress.'

Although this seems to have been Mrs Le Blond’s most high-
profile intervention in the debate , she was far from alone among
3

1 Aberdeen Press and Journal, 26 September 1912.
2 The Wicklow Newsletter, 28 September 1912.
3 However, she is listed in The Times, 2 April 1914, as one of the signatories
of a Women’s Covenant ‘in aid of Ulster’.
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