Clarke, Kathleen (1878–1972)

Irish republican activist. Name variations: Mrs. Tom Clarke. Born Kathleen Daly in Limerick, Ireland, on April 11, 1878; died in Liverpool, England, on September 29, 1972; daughter of Edward Daly and Catherine (O'Mara) Daly; educated privately; married Thomas J. Clarke, on July 16, 1901 (died May 3, 1916); children: three sons, John Daly, Thomas and Emmet.

Kathleen Clarke was born into a family that had long been prominent in Irish republican circles, and she remained a dedicated republican throughout her long life while witnessing the execution of both her husband and her only brother for the sake of the republican cause. Both her father Edward and her uncle John were prominent Fenians, members of the secret revolutionary brotherhood dedicated to the overthrow of British rule in Ireland and to the establishment of an independent Irish republic. Her father had been arrested at the age of 17 in 1865 for suspected Fenian activities, and in 1884 John Daly was arrested and convicted for dynamiting activities in England and sentenced to penal servitude for life. While in Portland Prison, he met Thomas Clarke who had been sentenced to penal servitude in 1883, also for dynamite activities, and they became close friends.

Kathleen Clarke came from a large family of nine girls and one boy; her only brother Edward (Ned) was born five months after her father's death in 1890. She recalled that at bedtime, the first prayer was "always for Irish freedom." Her grandmother lived until the age of 97 and died "a rebel against England to her last breath." Her aunt Ellen Daly was a formative influence in her childhood and told her many stories from Irish history, especially about the Fenians who were active in the 1860s and 1870s. She painted the Fenian period, recalled her niece, "in the most glowing and romantic colours."

At the age of 16, Kathleen was apprenticed to a dressmaker. Two years later, displaying the determination and independence that was a marked feature of her character, she rented premises and set up her own prospering business. In 1896, her uncle John was released from prison and returned to Limerick where he established his own bakery. In 1899, he was elected mayor of Limerick and set up a branch of the Irish Labor Party in the city. Kathleen refused to go into the bakery business as some of her sisters did, preferring her own independence.

Thomas Clarke was eventually released from prison in October 1898 and when he came to stay with John Daly early the following year he was given the Freedom of Limerick. In poor health after his 15 years in prison, he looked much older than his 40 years. Kathleen Clarke recalled in her autobiography that her first impression of him was one of keen disappointment after what she had heard of him from her uncle. But they became friends and, in the summer of 1899, became engaged, though the betrothal, while welcomed by her uncle, was opposed by her mother and her aunt because of Thomas Clarke's lack of prospects. These looked so unpromising that at one point Thomas offered to release her from the engagement. He went to the United States in 1900 and obtained employment. Kathleen gave up her business and joined him in New York where they were married in July 1901. Their first son was born the following year when Thomas started work for the American counterpart organization of the Fenians, Clan na Gael. The Clan was setting up a newspaper, the Gaelic American, of which Thomas became general manager. He also started the Brooklyn Gaelic Society and was involved with the Clan na Gael Volunteers. He and Kathleen ran an ice cream and candy store, and in 1906 they bought a small farm on Long Island.

By 1907, Thomas was anxious to return to Ireland and help reorganize the republican cause. Though reluctant to leave America, Kathleen agreed. They left in November 1907 and over the next two years opened several shops in Dublin. Their shop in O'Connell Street, Dublin's principal street, soon became the center for the reorganization of revolutionary republicanism in Ireland, attracting a number of young organizers, among them Sean MacDermott who became one of Thomas' closest associates. A new journal, Irish Freedom, was founded and with this, as Kathleen Clarke recalled, "the work towards the Rising began." She was deep in her husband's confidence and became an ever more trusted confidante as the plans for a rebellion against British rule gradually took shape.

Kathleen was present at the first meeting in April 1914 of the women's auxiliary organization of the Irish Volunteers, Cumann na mBan (the Women's Club). She and Aine Ceannt , wife of Eamon Ceannt who was also to be executed in 1916, started the Central Branch of Cumann na mBan of which Kathleen Clarke was later president. When the First World War broke out, both the Irish Volunteers and Cumann na mBan split over whether to support the British war effort. The membership of the Central Branch declined from 200 to about 24. Kathleen Clarke remained with the anti-British group and ran classes and lectures in first aid, rifle practice, and signalling, preparations for a rebellion that she now knew her husband and his associates were planning to take place during the war.

The Rising was planned for Easter 1916. Shortly before it was due to occur, Thomas Clarke told his wife that in the event of the arrest of the leaders, she had been chosen as the custodian of their plans, which she was to pass on to the next in command. She memorized the names of all the key men in the organization around the country and, knowing what was being planned, feared for the future. Knowledge of the key role her husband played in these events made her extremely protective of his reputation in later life; in her autobiography, she was disparaging of, among others, Patrick Pearse and Roger Casement whom she felt did not deserve the prominence they attracted after 1916.

Thomas Clarke was the first signatory of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, read by Patrick Pearse outside the General Post Office in O'Connell Street on Easter Monday, 1916. "I felt Tom would not come through," wrote Kathleen, "and I think he knew he would not, but neither of us would admit it." They had three sons and she was expecting a fourth child but decided not to tell him of her pregnancy. On the previous Thursday, Kathleen had gone down to Limerick with dispatches for the local Irish Volunteers and left her children with her mother so that she would be free for the Rising. Thomas had told her not to get involved and to hold herself in readiness for what might happen afterwards.

After a week of intense fighting, the rebels surrendered on the Saturday after the proclamation and the following day the Clarke house was raided and Kathleen Clarke was arrested and escorted to Dublin Castle. She was taken to see her husband in Kilmainham Jail the night before he was shot for his part in the rebellion. To her horror, he told her that her only brother Ned, who had taken part in the Rising, was also to be executed. They had a poignant farewell, repeated a few days later when she saw her brother the night before his death. Kathleen subsequently miscarried the baby she was expecting.

She was released from detention and within days of her husband's death she set up the Irish Republican Prisoners Dependants' Fund (IRPDF), to help not just the families of the executed men but also those of the hundreds of men and women who had been deported and interned without trial. Thomas Clarke had left her over £3,000 pounds of republican funds, which she distributed to the dependants with the help of Cumann na mBan. The IRPDF later merged with Irish National Aid to form the National Aid and Volunteers' Dependants' Fund (NAVDF); as secretary of the new organization, Kathleen Clarke chose a young man who had just been released from internment in England, Michael Collins, whom she remembered for "his forceful personality, his wonderful magnetism and his organizing ability." She was more waspish about other survivors of the Rising, especially Eoin MacNeill (who had tried to cancel the plans at the last minute) and Cathal Brugha. Clarke was also noticeably cool towards some of the other prominent women in the movement, including Mary MacSwiney and Countess Markievicz .

When the British government started to release the rebellion prisoners in 1917, they began to reorganize the Sinn Fein party as a political movement. At its first conference in October 1917, Kathleen Clarke was elected to the executive and became vice-president of Cumann na mBan. In May 1918, she was arrested with other Sinn Fein leaders, including Eamon de Valera, on suspicion of plotting with the Germans. No proof was ever produced and there was no trial. She was imprisoned at Holloway Jail in London and was not released until February 1919 by which time her health had deteriorated seriously, in part through anxiety for her children. Her fellow prisoners included Maud Gonne and Countess Markievicz, and she was considerably annoyed when she heard that the countess had been chosen, while she had not, to represent Sinn Fein in the parliamentary elections of December 1918; she regarded this selection as an insult to her husband's memory and her own ability. The Sinn Fein leaders, she noted caustically, were "not over-eager to put women into places of honor or power." However, in the 1919 municipal elections for Dublin Corporation, she was elected an alderman. By now the Irish war of independence was at its height, and she served on the executive committee of the White Cross organization, which helped to alleviate distress among the families and dependants affected by the war. Her own home in Dublin was continually raided by British forces. As a further deliberate reprisal, her mother's home in Limerick was burned to the ground along with its contents. In May 1921, she was elected to the Irish republican parliament, the Dail.

When the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed in December 1921, Clarke rejected the terms for Irish independence demanded by the British government. In her speech to the Dail explaining the reasons for her rejection of the treaty, she recalled her last visit to her husband before his execution. She would never go back on the oath she had taken to the Irish republic, she told the Dail, and she regarded the treaty as "a surrender of all our ideals." Increasingly disturbed as the country lurched towards civil war in 1922, she retained her affection for Michael Collins although he had signed the treaty she opposed. In the general elections of June 1922, she lost her Dail seat. When the civil war broke out, she sympathized with the republicans but took no active part in the war, although this did not prevent her house from being raided by the forces of the new Irish government. She became involved with a new dependants' fund, this time for republican prisoners, and toured America for money on their behalf. The civil war ended in May 1923 but the republicans remained in a political limbo, refusing to take their seats in the new Irish Parliament. This policy of abstention was finally opposed by de Valera, the republican leader, and Kathleen Clarke supported him when he decided to set up a new political party, Fianna Fail. She was on the first executive of Fianna Fail and was briefly elected to the Irish Parliament in 1927 though she did not take her seat. De Valera then decided to end the policy of abstention and Fianna Fail entered the Parliament in late 1927. In 1928, Kathleen Clarke accepted nomination for the Irish senate where she served until 1936. In 1930, she was again elected to Dublin Corporation.

Fianna Fail won the general election in 1932, but over the following years Kathleen Clarke experienced growing disillusionment with the party and its leader, de Valera, whom she regarded as socially conservative, especially in relation to women. She opposed the clauses of his 1937 constitution, which concerned women and was censured by the party. In June 1939, despite opposition from within her own party, she was elected the first woman Lord Mayor of Dublin, and controversy attended one of her first actions in office—the removal of a large portrait of Queen Victoria . She condemned the bombing campaign that the Irish Republican Army initiated in Britain in 1939–40 but opposed de Valera's policy of internment and arrests of IRA men. When IRA men were executed in 1940, she ordered the flag of Dublin City Hall to be flown at half-mast. Her term as Lord Mayor finished in 1941 and her uncomfortable membership in Fianna Fail was finally terminated in 1943.

Clarke stood as a candidate in the 1948 general election for the new republican party, Clann na Poblachta, but was defeated. This marked her effective retirement from political life although she continued to serve on the boards of several Dublin hospitals. In 1965, she moved to England to live with her youngest son, Dr. Emmet Daly, but returned to Dublin the following year for the 50th anniversary celebrations of the 1916 Rising. She was conferred with an honorary doctorate of the National University of Ireland by its chancellor, Eamon de Valera. When she died in September 1972, Kathleen Clarke was given a state funeral.

sources:

Clarke, Kathleen. Revolutionary Woman: An Autobiography. O'Brien Press, 1991.

Ward, Margaret. Unmanageable Revolutionaries: Women and Irish Nationalism. Brandon, 1983.

Deirdre McMahon , Dublin, Ireland, Assistant Editor, Dance Theatre Journal (London), and author of Republicans and Imperialists (Yale University Press, 1984)