The Road to the Vote Part 1 by UCC98.3FM

Programme 1 charts the development of the suffrage movement in Ireland and the role of the Irish Citizen newspaper, the mouthpiece of the Irish Women’s Suffrage League. The programme assesses the influence of Britain’s Emily Pankhurst and her more militant suffragette movement, the Women’s Social and Political Union, on the more pacifist Irish suffragists. Discussion points for this programme include the effects of the 1913 Lockout on the attitude of many key figures such as the poet W.B. Yeats, and the dramatist Sean O’Casey- to Irish politics and the influence of the socialist thinker, James Connolly- on the Irish suffrage movement. Also the opposition of John Redmond’s Irish Parliamentary Party to women’s suffrage, provides a challenging field of discussion.