Margaret McCoubrey

McCoubrey nee Mearns was born on 5 January 1880[1] in Elderslie, near Glasgow in Scotland.[2]

McCoubrey married an Irish trade unionist and moved to Belfast. There, she joined the British Women's Social and Political Union (WPSU), travelling to London as a representative of women in the north of Ireland.[3] She joined the Irish Women's Suffrage Society in 1910, and was an active militant. The theme of self-sacrifice was paramount amongst suffragettes and Margaret McCoubrey claimed that suffragettes were continuing an Irish tradition of violent protest.[4]

At the outbreak of the First World War, she disagreed with the WSPU's orders to cease agitation, and instead founded a branch of the Irish Women's Suffrage Society in Belfast.[3] She joined the peace movement and gave refuge to conscientious objectors.[2] At that time, the majority of women in Ulster perceived pacifism as unpatriotic and female suffrage as unimportant in comparison with the dangers threatening wartime Europe. As a result, only a few suffragists remained active during the War. McCoubrey single-handedly ran a month-long peace and suffrage campaign in Belfast in August 1917, inspired by her belief that 'a woman looking down on a battlefield would not see dead Germans or dead Englishmen but so many mother's sons'.[4]

She became general secretary of the Co-operative Women's Guild and in 1922, she was elected to represent the Irish guildswomen on the newly formed International Women's Co-operative Committee, which came into existence at Basel.[2]

She was an active member of the Independent Labour Party, and, in 1920, was elected as a Labour councillor for the Dock ward of Belfast.[2]

McCoubrey died on 11 April 1956 in Belfast, Ireland.[1]