Sheena Campbell
Sinn Fein is the major socialist party in Ireland, established in 1905 with the aim of winning independence from Britain. In 1980 the women's department of Sinn Fein was formed out of a realisation that women needed an organised political voice within the party. Women came together to discuss their work within Sinn Fein, the problems they faced in fulfilling their roles as political activists and the need for Sinn Fein to have strong, progressive policies on issues important, not just to women, but to society as a whole.
I spoke to Hugh McFinney, the international secretary of Sinn Fein, in Belfast recently. He emphasised that women have been the backbone of the republican struggle. "They have died for the cause of a free Ireland, and they have held families together when the men have been put in jail", he told me.
The women's department is currently involved in a major campaign to highlight the issue of forcible strip-searching of female Irish political prisoners. Last year, on the eve of International Women's Day, there was a brutal strip-search of the women POWs in Maghaberry Female Prison, Lisburn. Bronwyn McGahan, one of the women subjected to the treatment, explained to Women in Struggle, the major publication of the Sinn Fein women's department, that "these strip searches have been going on for years. It's one way the prison officials use our sexuality, our very womanhood, against us."
She described how, in March 1992, male guards were permitted to watch the strip-searches from windows. "They broke into choruses of 'Happy days are here again' when the women's genitals were searched", she said.
In recent local government elections in the six counties, seven Sinn Fein women were elected. Many of the murals which decorate Falls Road and tell of the fight for freedom, depict women holding their fists high in determination, and flying flags of solidarity with other oppressed groups across the world.
Women republican activists offer inspiration to all women everywhere to never give up the struggle against sexism and oppression in every form. In 1992 Sinn Fein activist Sheena Campbell was murdered by pro-British death squads. As Gerry Adams explained in his speech to the 1993 Sinn Fein conference, "Sheena Campbell was murdered because she was a republican, because she was a woman, because she was a leader of our struggle ... [She was] killed to send a message to other republican women activists. She was not killed by accident or despite being a woman. She was murdered because she was a woman."
By Julia Perkins