Mayo woman features in TG4 series Croíthe Radacacha

Croíthe Radacacha (Radical Hearts) is a feature documentary about ‘the love that dares not speak its name’ found at the very heart of the Irish Revolution.

Director Ciara Hyland explores the hidden stories of eight female couples who were at the core of the Irish Revolution that freed Ireland from the British Empire – among them Mayo's Kathleen Lynn.

These women's relationships have largely remained unexamined, denied and hidden from history – until now.

As well as Lynn, the series features Margaret Skinnider, Eva Gore Booth and many more.

Kathleen Lynn was pioneering in that she was one of the few women to have qualified as a doctor. She and Madeline ffrench-Mullen had met each other through the fight for votes for women and quickly became inseparable. They ran soup kitchens side by side to feed the striking workers and their families during the 1913 Lockout. In Constance Markievicz's home, they came into contact with Helena Molony, who convinced them of the need to join the nationalist movement.

Madeline and Kathleen had been living together since 1915 when they served side by side during the Rising. Madeline was a lieutenant in the Irish Citizen Army and Kathleen was the chief medical officer. Both came under heavy and sustained fire while Kathleen treated the injured and the dying.

After the Rising, they continued to live together for the rest of their lives.

Kathleen and Madeline also campaigned for better conditions for the poor. As founders of St. Ultan’s Hospital for Sick Infants, they were pioneering providers of healthcare in the first decades of the Irish State.

This relationship – which Roy Foster, in Vivid Faces, said ‘had all the marks of a marriage’ – lasted 30 years from when the women met during the 1913 Lockout to Madeline’s death in 1944. During all that time the couple lived together, shared a life together, were activists together and, in their diaries, leave hints of an intimate partnership.

Their prison letters and diaries kept in the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland illustrate poignantly the depth of their love for each other.

These women were extraordinary in the lives they lived. They were radical in their politics, in their feminism, their socialism and their devotion to freedom and equality. Together they reimagined a new Ireland that would hold a brighter future for all regardless of gender, background or wealth. In this they have much in common with today’s activist generation who make similar demands for equality and an end to discrimination.

FOUGHT

In the end, many of the women featured in Croíthe Radacacha picked up a gun and went and fought for that freedom and equality.

They suffered huge losses but ultimately lived life on their own terms – where the personal was political and their private lives were as radical as their public.

A major turning point for the women in this documentary proved to be the Civil War that broke out in Ireland in 1922 over the Treaty. This Treaty would create an independent free state in the south of Ireland. It would not, however, be a Republic and would not include the north of Ireland.

Remarkably, almost all the women in this documentary took the anti-Treaty side. Their radicalness meant they were not willing to settle for anything less than the republic that had been proclaimed in 1916.

The anti-Treaty side lost the Civil War and the women’s dreams of equality and socialism were smashed. The establishment forces won and immediately set about building a new identity for Ireland as conservative and Catholic.

Based on groundbreaking research by historian Mary McAuliffe, this is also the story of 'doing gay history' - the difficulties of finding evidence of love that by necessity had to fly under the radar, the glimpses we get of how people lived in the past and the burden of proof placed on examining gay relationships. In doing so, Radical Hearts rewrites the contribution of LGBTQ+ people back into the history of the creation of the modern Irish state.

Croíthe Radacacha was commissioned by TG4 and supported by Coimisiún na Meán with funding from the television licence fee. It features tracks by the Pillow Queens and Elaine Mai, who kindly supported the film because they believed in the message of inclusivity that is at the core of it, as well as original music by composer Darren Sheehan.

The couples featured in the documentary include: Eva Gore Booth and Esther Roper; Elizabeth O'Farrell and Julia Grenan; Helena Molony and Evelyn (Eveleen) O’Brien; Margaret Skinnider and Nora O’Keeffe; Kathleen O’Brennan and Marie Equi; Kathleen Lynn and Madeline Ffrench-Mullen; and Louie Bennet and Helen Chenevix.

The feature documentary airs on Wednesday, December 6, at 9.30 p.m. and thereafter it can be viewed online on www.TG4.ie.