Maírín Beaumont: Vice President 1951-1953: ‘Deeds, not Words is their Motto’ (Irish Independent, 22 December 1951) Maírín/ Maureen Beaumont (née McGavock): Vice President of the Irish Federation of University Women, 1951–53.

In December 1951, Maírín Beaumont, my paternal grandmother, hosted the National University Women Graduates’ Association (NUWGA) annual dinner. At this time she was President of the NUWGA and University College Dublin Women Graduates (1951-1952) and Vice President of the Irish Federation of University Women (IrFUW) (1951-53). The dinner, attended by 120 women, included members from the Dublin, Galway and Belfast women graduates’ associations as well as members of the IrFUW, including the first Irish President of the International Federation of University Women, Dr Frances Moran. Guest of honour was her Excellency Mrs Phyllis O’Kelly, wife of the Irish President Sean T. O’Kelly, herself a National University of Ireland (NUI) graduate. This high-profile event featured in an article published in the Irish Independent newspaper on 22 December 1951 with the eye-catching headline ‘Deeds, not Words, is their Motto’. It is interesting that the paper chose ‘Deeds, not Words’ to describe the work of the NUWGA and the IrFUW. This was the phrase first adopted in 1903 by the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), the British militant suffragette group led by Emmeline Pankhurst, who advocated the use of disruption to win women the parliamentary vote in Britain and Ireland.
Looking at the newspaper photograph of my grandmother Maírín, smiling and standing alongside fellow NUWGA members and guests at the dinner, it is hard to associate her image here as a well-dressed, ‘respectable’ and highly educated woman with any form of revolutionary, militant or radical activism. However as this contribution will go on to reveal my grandmother, aged 57 in 1951, had in her twenties been a revolutionary directly engaged in the nationalist struggle against British rule in Ireland. After the end of the Irish Civil War (1922-23), women like Maírín were labelled ‘die-hards’ and ‘furies’ whose ‘ecstasies at their extremist can find no outlet so satisfying as destruction – sheer destruction’. (William T Cosgrave, President of the Irish Executive Council, new year day’s speech, Irish Times, 1 January 1923). It was Maírín’s rejection of the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty in February 1922, alongside other members of Cumann na mBan, that drew down such condemnation from the President of the new Irish Free State. Her rationale for refusing to accept the compromise of a divided Ireland, which would bring about an end to hostilities with Britain, was that if ‘we accept this treaty we will never get a republic’ (National Library of Ireland, Minutes of the Cumann na mBan Special Convention, February 1922).