Tipperary woman featured in 'Croíthe Radacacha' to be broadcast on TG4

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.

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

It features women such as Kathleen Lynn, Margaret Skinnider, Eva Gore Booth, Kathleen Lynn, Nora O'Keefe from Glenough in Tipperary and many more.

Constance Markiewicz was the connector that brought Margaret Skinnider into the nationalist and worker’s rights movements.

When Constance gave Margaret a tour of some of the poorest parts of Dublin, Margaret commented “I do not believe there is a worse place in the world”. Margaret became a committed nationalist and socialist.

Margaret subverted many of the gender norms of the time. She taught herself to shoot in a gun club.

In the run up to the Rising, she smuggled arms and ammunition into the country and tested dynamite in the Dublin Hills alongside Madeline French Mullen.

Margaret subverted gender stereotypes in other ways too  - there is an extraordinary photograph of her dressed in male attire, with a woman on either arm. 

After the Rising, she travelled to the US.  There she met Irish born Nora O’Keeffe, a fellow radical feminist, trade unionist and nationalist. The two women returned to Ireland together in 1919.

They would live together in Clontarf from that point on until Nora’s death in 1961.  

Margaret campaigned hard for women’s rights and against the marriage bar. Her partner Nora O’Keeffe fought during the War of Independence and the Civil War and then campaigned against the 1937 Constitution on the grounds that it relegated women to the home.

Margaret was a major activist in the teachers union, the INTO, becoming its President in 1956 and the first chair of the Women’s Advisory Committee of ICTU in 1969. 

Nora O’ Keeffe died in 1961. Every year afterwards Margaret Skinnider placed a memorial to her in the obituaries column signed simply – ‘Margaret’. Margaret herself died ten years later in 1971. 

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.  

In the end, many of them 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 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. Croíthe also features original music by composer Darren Sheehan. 

Croíthe Radacacha was commissioned by TG4 and supported by Coimisiún na Meán with funding from the Television Licence Fee.

The couples featured in the documentary include:

Eva Gore Booth & Esther Roper  

Elizabeth O' Farrell & Julia Grenan  

Helena Molony & Evelyn (Eveleen) O’ Brien  

Margaret Skinnider & Nora O’ Keeffe  

Kathleen O’Brennan & Marie Equi  

Kathleen Lynn & Madeline Ffrench-Mullen 

Louie Bennet & Helen Chenevix