Analysis: A stalwart political lobbyist and shrewd economist, Tweedy radicalised the housewives of Ireland during the Emergency
By Sonja Tiernan, RIA
As we approach a referendum, including a proposed update to Article 41.2 on women in the home, it is fitting to remember Hilda Tweedy. A stalwart political lobbyist and shrewd economist, Tweedy radicalised the housewives of Ireland during the Emergency (1939–45) and improved the status of women in Ireland over the next five decades.
Hilda Tweedy (née) Anderson, was born in Clones, county Monaghan in 1911, she attended Alexandra College Dublin and later enrolled at London University, for a degree in Mathematics. In 1936, Hilda married Robert Tweedy, manager of the Court Laundry in Harcourt Street. Tweedy applied to teach at a girl's school but was rejected for the position because she was married, she was told 'it would not be nice for the girls if you became pregnant!’
The Irish Constitution, introduced the year after Tweedy’s marriage, supported the regulations already in place restricting women’s work, including the marriage bar. Irish housewives at this time were viewed as passive characters whose chief responsibilities lay within the domestic sphere and certainly not in the public or political realm. Tweedy attempted to shatter this perception.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
From RTÉ Radio 1's The History Show, Professor Sonja Tiernan and historian Margaret McCurtain on Hilda Tweedy and the IHA
In 1941, Marrowbone Lane, a play by Dublin paediatrician Dr. Robert Collis, was revived. The play exposed the shocking poverty and harsh conditions of Dublin tenement life. Tweedy was moved to action, writing to numerous friends she asked them to meet with her to question: ‘What is your dream of Ireland? What does the story of Marrowbone Lane mean to you?’
Following several meetings, Tweedy; Marguerite Skelton; Nancye Simmons; Sheila Mallagh and Andrée Sheehy Skeffington, formulated a petition which was sent to the government, opposition parties and to the press before budget day on 5 May 1941. The ‘Memorandum on the Food and Fuel Emergency’ urged the government to ration all essential foods, control prices and suppress Black Market sales. They suggested increasing unemployment allowances; offering a mid-day meal to school children; extending the free school milk scheme; implementing a salvage waste scheme; intensive turf cutting for fuel; and government control of transport. The petition caught the attention of the national press who, perhaps condescendingly, dubbed it the ‘Housewives Petition.’
Advised by the trade unionist Louie Bennett to follow up on the demands of the petition; Tweedy, Sheehy Skeffington and Susan Manning of the Irish Women Workers’ Union, called a meeting on 12 May 1942, at which a non-political, non-sectarian pressure group was formed. Tweedy suggested that the group take advantage of media attention and call the organisation the Irish Housewives Association (IHA).
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
From RTÉ Archives, Women laundry workers tell how they went out on strike for a second week's holiday in 1945 and ended up getting it for all workers
Housewives reported incidents to the IHA where individual shopkeepers offered unhygienic service or overcharged for goods. Tweedy bombarded the Minister for Supplies, Seán Lemass, with these accounts. IHA enquires led the government to initiate a milk tribunal in 1945 examining the supply and quality of milk in Dublin; new legislation regulating the supply and price of milk was introduced. Through lobbying, protests and boycotts, the government were forced to introduce regulations on food and hygiene. IHA campaigns led to the introduction of forward-thinking practices which are often taken for granted such as labelling on foods, recycling, and the establishment of the Consumer Association of Ireland.
Tweedy led the IHA to focus on broader matters of gender and social equality. Concerns ranged from the introduction of an adequate system of legal adoption, rights of female prisoners, recruitment of women gardai, and equal pay for equal work. In 1967, Tweedy attended the International Alliance of Women Congress in London, and heard the United Nation’s directive to examine the status of women in affiliated countries. Tweedy conducted a meeting in January 1968 at the Central Hotel in Dublin, demanding that Ireland establish a National Commission on the Status of Women; an Ad Hoc Committee was formed which Tweedy Chaired. The group sent their findings to Taoiseach Jack Lynch. After much pressure, Lynch established the National Commission on the Status of Women in Irish Society on 31 March 1970. Thekla Beere chaired the commission.
When the Beere Report was published in 1973, it became a blue print for the work needed to raise the status of women in Ireland. The report contained recommendations designed to eliminate discrimination against women in the fields of employment, social welfare, education, taxation, property rights and in central and local administration. Tweedy Chaired The Council for the Status of Women, established to help achieve the recommendations of the report. In 1995, following a strategic review, the group’s name was changed to the National Women’s Council of Ireland and continues to campaign for gender equality.
Read more: The story of Ireland's First Commission on the Status of Women
The IHA engaged in numerous victorious campaigns from the 1940s up until they disbanded fifty years later. Prominent politicians including Seán Lemass, John Costello, Charlie Haughey, and Jack Lynch all took heed of the IHA for fear of the pressure that would be released. The women were not afraid to criticise the catholic church, government bodies or private companies when the need arose. At one stage the women of the IHA were accused of having communist sympathies through the pages of the Roscommon Herald. Rather than accept this attack, the IHA took legal action, and the newspaper was forced to issue an apology.
A group calling themselves the Irish Housewives Association may initially have been viewed as a harmless meeting of women who discussed knitting patterns while drinking tea, rather than band of revolutionary, formidable women who would alter society. When Hilda Tweedy first established the IHA she had been refused a teaching job because she was a married woman. By the time the IHA dissolved, a married woman was President of Ireland causing Tweedy to reflect ‘who would have thought in 1942 that women would move from the kitchen to Áras an Uachtaráin.’
Prof Sonja Tiernan is a historian of modern Ireland and coordinator of the Irish Humanities Alliance /Comhaontas Daonnachtaí na hÉireann, based at the Royal Irish Academy.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
