Page 72 - GAHS Journal Volume 9

IT IS THE HOME RULE BILL THAT HAS DONE THAT

of the organisers of a ‘cinema entertainment’ in Tinahely, in aid
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of the work of the Red Cross for the wartime sick and wounded.
During the 1918 general election unionism – by now a lost
cause in the southern part of the country - continued to have
some vitality in a few areas, including Wicklow, where the
Unionist candidate attracted some quarter of the total votes. With
women over thirty now in possession of the parliamentary
franchise, it was reported that a ‘surprisingly large’ number of
female voters cast their ballot in the strongly unionist
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Delgany/Greystones area of the constituency.
Conclusion

I would like to stress that this is a work in progress. Much
research remains to be done on unionist women’s activism in
Wicklow, and indeed on the female role within southern unionism
generally. I have been struck during the course of this Decade of
Centenaries at the contrast between the attention lavished by
both academic and local historians on nationalist and republican
women and the almost total lack of interest in the part played by
their southern Unionist and loyalist counterparts. This
examination of the response of Wicklow women to the
Declaration of 1912 is intended as a reminder of their existence,
and an entry point into a wider study of Wicklow women’s
response to the successive crises which threatened and
ultimately overwhelmed unionism in the decades between the
1880s and Independence.

46 Wicklow Newsletter, 29 January 1916, 23 September 1916, 16 March
1918.
47 Ibid, 21 December 1918.
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