From 1975 to 1977, Irishwomen United (IWU) – and the culture of change it generated – radically fed into the emancipation of Irish society that led to 2018’s referendum to lift the constitutional abortion ban. In their deeds and words, IWU threw off much of the misogynistic, theocratic, social and mind control that was so oppressively exerted from 1922 with the formation of the postcolonial Irish “Free” State.
“Lest they forget,” and as a blueprint for ongoing social justice transformation, After the Train has been durably designed and produced to weather many decades of reading and rereading: to be passed from hand to hand, and down the generations, with future cultural insurgency in mind.
The “train” of the title refers to the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement 1971 stunt of bringing contraceptives from Belfast to Dublin’s Connolly Station; a spark of civil disobedience which the IWU took up again in 1976 with its aptly named CAP (Contraception Action Programme). CAP openly and illegally distributed contraception, enacting the principle that women’s control of their own fertility is the bedrock of female equality.
Reading how inferior women’s social and legal status was in Ireland in the early 1970s compared to now demonstrates the far-reaching impact of IWU and its cultural offshoots. Contributor Anne Speed writes: “A wife was officially the property of her husband; rape was legal in marriage; contraceptives were banned since 1935; divorce was unconstitutional; a woman could not sit on juries; by law, children’s allowances were paid to the husband, and it was legal to pay women less than men for the same job.”
IWU seized the narrative through the development of feminist publishing; set up organisations to tackle rape, the abortion ban and the plight of single mothers; and lobbied powerfully to affect equality through law reform and the trade union movement.
[ From the archive: A history of Irish women in 50 objectsOpens in new window ]
Here’s reader testimony to the revolutionary power of this skilfully edited collection: as the mother of a disabled adult son, I’m at the coalface of human rights travesties that have barely begun to be recognised as such by wider Irish society. My desire for disabled people’s self-determination, inclusion and equality, and my understanding of how these might be achieved, feel turbocharged with After the Train on my shelf and in my heart.
