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Mary Kenny (born 4 April 1944) is an Irish journalist, broadcaster and playwright. A founding member of the Irish Women's Liberation Movement, she was one of the country's first and foremost feminists, often contributes columns to the Irish Independent and has been described as "the grand dame of Irish journalism". [1] She is based in England. [1]
Mary Kenny was born in Dublin, Ireland. Her father was born in 1877. [2] She grew up in Sandymount, [3] and was expelled from convent school at age 16. [4] She had a sister, Ursula. [5]
She began working at the London Evening Standard in 1966 [6] on its "Londoner's Diary" column, later as a general feature writer, and was woman's editor of The Irish Press in the early 1970s. [7]
Kenny was one of the founding members of the Irish Women's Liberation Movement. Although the group had no formal structure of officials, she was often seen as the "ring leader" of the group. [6] In March 1971, as part of an action by the IWLM, she walked out of Haddington Road church after the Archbishop of Dublin's pastoral was read out from the pulpit, confirming that "any contraceptive act is always wrong", [6] saying "this is Church dictatorship". [8] In a follow-up letter to The Irish Times she explained her actions by saying Ian Paisley was right: "Home Rule is Rome Rule". [9]
In 1971, Kenny travelled with Nell McCafferty, June Levine and other Irish feminists on the so-called "Contraceptive Train" from Dublin to Belfast to buy condoms, then illegal within the Republic of Ireland. [10] [11] Later that year she returned to London as Features Editor of the Evening Standard. [6]
In 1973, Kenny was allegedly "disturbed in the arms of a former cabinet minister of President Obote of Uganda during a party", in her words 'snogging an intelligent African judge' (who had one leg, something she did not notice at the time; he was later murdered by Idi Amin), which led poet James Fenton to coin the euphemism "Ugandan discussions" [12] to mean sexual intercourse. [13] The phrase was first used by the magazine Private Eye on 9 March 1973, [14] but has been widely used since then and was included by the BBC in a list of "The 10 most scandalous euphemisms" in 2013. [12]
Kenny has written for numerous broadsheet publications in Ireland and Britain, including the Irish Press , Irish Independent , The Times , The Guardian , The Irish Catholic , The Daily Telegraph and The Spectator . She has written books on feminism, Catholicism in Ireland and a biography of William Joyce.
Roy Foster described Crown and Shamrock: Love and Hate between Ireland and the British Monarchy (2009) as "characteristically breezy, racy and insightful". [15] She wrote the play Allegiance, in which Mel Smith played Winston Churchill and Michael Fassbender played Michael Collins in a performance on the 2006 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Kenny, along with Éamon Ó Cuív and Frank Feighan, is an advocate of the Republic of Ireland returning to its membership of the Commonwealth of Nations.
Kenny married journalist and writer Richard West in 1974 and the couple raised two children: Patrick and Ed West, both journalists. Richard died in 2015.
Mary Patricia McAleese is an Irish activist lawyer, academic, author, and former politician who served as the eighth president of Ireland from November 1997 to November 2011. McAleese was first elected as president in 1997, having received the nomination of Fianna Fáil. She succeeded Mary Robinson, making her the second female president of Ireland, and the first woman in the world to succeed another woman as president. She nominated herself for re-election in 2004 and was returned unopposed for a second term. Born in Ardoyne, north Belfast, McAleese is the first president of Ireland to have come from either Northern Ireland or Ulster.
Ivana Catherine Bacik is an Irish Labour Party politician who has been Leader of the Labour Party since 24 March 2022 and a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin Bay South constituency since winning a by-election on 9 July 2021. Bacik previously served as Leader of the Labour Party in the Seanad from 2011 to 2021, and a Senator for the Dublin University constituency from 2007 to 2021. She previously served as Deputy leader of Seanad Éireann from 2011 to 2016.
Veronica Guerin Turley was an Irish investigative journalist focusing on organised crime in the Republic of Ireland, who was murdered in a contract killing believed to have been ordered by a South Dublin-based drug cartel. Born in Dublin, she was an athlete in school and later played on the Irish national teams for both Association football and basketball. After studying accountancy she ran a public-relations firm for seven years, before working for Fianna Fáil and as an election agent for Seán Haughey. She became a reporter in 1990, writing for the Sunday Business Post and Sunday Tribune. In 1994 she began writing articles about the Irish criminal underworld for the Sunday Independent. In 1996, after pressing charges for assault against major organised crime figure John Gilligan, Guerin was ambushed and fatally shot in her vehicle while waiting at a traffic light. The shooting caused national outrage in Ireland. Investigation into her death led to a number of arrests and convictions.
The phrase "tired and emotional" is a chiefly British euphemism for alcohol intoxication. It was popularised by the British satirical magazine Private Eye in 1967 after being used in a spoof diplomatic memo to describe the state of Labour cabinet minister George Brown, but is now used as a stock phrase. The restraints of parliamentary language mean it is unacceptable in the House of Commons to accuse an MP of being drunk, but one may use this or other euphemisms such as "not quite himself" and "overwrought". The Guardian describes the phrase as having joined "those that are part of every journalist's vocabulary". Because of this widespread interpretation, one source cautions professional British journalists against its use as, "even if the journalist meant it literally", it could be considered defamatory.
Nell McCafferty was an Irish journalist, playwright, civil rights campaigner and feminist. She wrote for The Irish Press, The Irish Times, Sunday Tribune, Hot Press and The Village Voice.
Contraception was illegal in Ireland from 1935 until 1980, when it was legalised with strong restrictions, later loosened. The ban reflected Catholic teachings on sexual morality.
The fortnightly British satirical magazine Private Eye has long had a reputation for using euphemistic and irreverent substitute names and titles for people, groups and organisations and has coined a number of expressions to describe sex, drugs, alcohol and other aspects of human activity. Over the years these names and expressions have become in-jokes, used frequently in the magazine without explanation. Some have passed into general usage and can be found in other media and everyday conversation.
Celebrity Bainisteoir was a prime-time reality programme created by Fiona Looney and first broadcast in 2008 by RTÉ.
June Levine was an Irish journalist, novelist and feminist, who played a central part in the Irish women's movement.
Feminism has played a major role in shaping the legal and social position of women in present-day Ireland. The role of women has been influenced by numerous legal changes in the second part of the 20th century, especially in the 1970s.
Events during the year 2011 in Ireland.
Katherine Zappone is an American-Irish independent politician who served as Minister for Children and Youth Affairs from May 2016 to June 2020. She was a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin South-West constituency from 2016 to 2020. She previously served as a Senator from 2011 to 2016, after being nominated by the Taoiseach.
Events during the year 2012 in Ireland.
The Irish Family Planning Association (IFPA) is an Irish charity working to enable people to make informed choices about sexuality and reproduction. The organisation promotes the right of all people to sexual and reproductive health information as well as dedicated, confidential and affordable healthcare services.
Lord Haw-Haw was a nickname applied to William Joyce and several other people who broadcast Nazi propaganda to the United Kingdom from Germany during the Second World War. The broadcasts opened with "Germany calling, Germany calling," spoken in an affected upper-class English accent. The same nickname was also applied to some other broadcasters of English-language propaganda from Germany, but it is Joyce with whom the name is overwhelmingly identified.
The Contraceptive Train was a women's rights activism event which took place on 22 May 1971. Members of the Irish Women's Liberation Movement (IWLM), in protest against the law prohibiting the importation and sale of contraceptives in the Republic of Ireland, travelled to Belfast to purchase contraceptives.
The Irish Women's Liberation Movement (IWLM) was an alliance of a group of Irish women who were concerned about the sexism within Ireland both socially and legally. They first began after a meeting in Dublin's Bewley's Cafe on Grafton Street in 1970. The group was short-lived, but influential.
Máirín de Burca is an Irish writer, journalist and activist. She is particularly well known in her role with Mary Anderson, of forcing a change in Irish law to enable women to serve on juries.
Máirín Johnston is an Irish author and feminist from The Liberties in Dublin, Ireland who worked to bring contraceptives into Dublin in 1971 with the Irish Women's Liberation Movement (IWLM). Johnston has authored Dublin Belles: Conversations with Dublin Women and Around the Banks of Pimlico, as well as the children's book The Pony Express, which won a Bisto Merit Award in 1994.
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