KILDARE’S FIRST FEMALE COUNTY COUNCILLOR

Kildare’s first female County Councillor

Liam Kenny

They say that the good which men do goes with them into the grave. Well it must be the same for women. How else could one explain the amnesia which surrounds Kildare County Council’s first woman elected member? In coverage relating to the local elections over the past couple of weeks a statement gained currency in print and on the airwaves that the Athy electoral area had never before elected a female member to Kildare County Council. This could not be further from the truth. Not alone did the Athy electoral area elect a female county councillor to the Council in the past; it was Athy which elected Kildare’s first female councillor.

And the lady in question, Miss Brigid Darby of Leinster Street, Athy, left a big impression on the public record with her outspoken contributions to council meetings making headlines right through the 1930s.  She also had her fair share of public spats with other parties including the Trade Unions and with a party colleague. She seems to have taken all such disputes in her stride actively corresponding with the press if she felt her position had been misrepresented.

Her election to Kildare County Council was reported in an edition of the Kildare Observer in July 1934: “In Athy a lady candidate, Ms B. Darby, (Fianna Fáil) headed the poll for the County Council … Ms Darby is the first lady candidate to be elected on the County Council.” She had been a an elected member of the Athy Urban District Council for the previous six years but her association with public life in Athy goes back even earlier.

Athy’s foremost historical writer, Frank Taaffe, has recorded how Miss Darby’s name first appeared in the minute book of Athy UDC when the Council passed a motion thanking her for her work in helping relieve the suffering of households during the terrible influenza outbreak of winter 1918.  On another occasion when the money did not arrive to the dole office in the town, she loaned the sum needed to the dole officer so that the poor of Athy would be able to buy their necessities.

A teacher at Churchtown National School, she was an active secretary of the Gaelic League branch and often spoke Irish in her contributions to meetings.  The Fianna Fáil party was the natural fit for her cultural aspirations and she stood for the party in the Urban Council elections of 1928. The 1934 County Council elections  saw her breakthrough at County level when she headed the poll in the Athy electoral area for the Kildare County Council. She retained her County Council seat in the 1942 local elections as the only Fianna Fáil Councillor for the Athy area and stepped down in 1945 having served eleven years on the council.  

Her political ambitions did not stop at the County Council and she contested for General Elections on two occasions. She ran for election in the 1933 General Election with such heavyweights as Tom Harris of her own party, Fianna Fáil, and Bill Norton of Labour, among others on the ballot paper. She polled a respectable 2,636 votes and four years later contested a General Election where she increased her tally to over 4,000 votes but not enough to secure election.

She was strongly nationalist in her political outlook and she made sure that leaders of nationalism were given due recognition in the various committees and councils where she held office. In July 1927 she is recorded as proposing a vote of sympathy on the death of Countess Markievicz.  The following year she made the first speech in Irish ever heard in the Athy Council Chamber when she proposed Mr. P. Dooley for the Chair of the Urban Council.

One of her finest rhetorical moments came in 1936 when she put forward a motion tendering congratulations to “His Excellency – the Governor General” on his appointment. The nominee in question was another Kildare patriot –Domhnall Ua Buachalla from Maynooth — who had been appointed by Eamon De Valera to fill the largely token position of Governor-General, a hang-over from British rule in Ireland. She proposed a motion describing him as a “trusted champion to fill the ‘Bearna Boaghal’ at this critical period in the nation’s history. Well they know, and all who know him, that the nation’s honor could not be in better hands. Honours and emoluments mean nothing to Domhnall Ua Buachalla compared with his duties to the Irish nation.”

She was prominent in a number of controversial episodes. One such was in 1932 over a special meeting convened to pass a vote congratulating Eamonn de Valera on winning the General Election.  Not everybody on the council was happy at making this gesture and Mr. Minch protested at “a letter of a political nature being read” at the meeting. However, he was contested by Miss Darby who as well as being an ardent Fianna Fáiler was a personal friend of President de Valera.

However she was also at the receiving end of criticism. In the 1930s the Co. Kildare branch of the Labour party passed a motion “condemning the action of Miss B. Darby in taking up a stand against the workers since her election to Kildare County Council.” On the other hand she promoted the use of Athy Brick for building projects carried out by the local authorities so as to retain employment in the labour intensive industry of brick-making which was undertaken in the marl clays south of the Barrow.

She stepped down from the Urban Council in 1942, but her role as Principal of Churchtown National School meant that she was in touch with the issues of the day. She continued to live in her native Leinster Street until her death in 1958.

In the assessment of historian and former councillor Frank Taaffe, Miss Darby was a formidable lady whose involvement with various public bodies in the county, including the county council and the urban council, was marked with tremendous strides in the provision of housing and other services in South Kildare during the 1930s. And current political commentators please note – she was the first woman elected to the Kildare County Council, from the Athy area or anywhere else.

Leinster Leader 9 June 2014, Looking Back Series No. 385