May Keating (6 October 1895 – 4 March 1965) was an Irish socialist, feminist, and human rights campaigner.
Early Life and Family
Born Mary Josephine Walsh in Eadestown, Rathmore, County Kildare, on 6 October 1895, she was the daughter of John Walsh, a farmer, and Martha (née Cullen), a national school teacher. She had an older brother, Joseph Walsh, who became a doctor and married the writer Una Troy. She was educated as a boarder at the Sacred Heart school in Roscrea, County Tipperary. Following the death of her mother and a bout of rheumatic fever that left lesions on her heart, she was sent to a Sacred Heart convent near Seville, Spain, to complete her education. She worked as a bilingual secretary in Seville and was engaged to a Viscayan engineer, who died in a mining explosion in the Basque Country. She returned to Ireland in May 1916.
She joined the Keating branch (Craobh an Chéitinnigh) of the Gaelic League, where she met the artist Seán Keating. They married on 2 May 1919 in the University Church, St Stephen's Green, Dublin. She listed her religion as "independent" on the marriage certificate, identifying as agnostic. The couple had two sons, Michael (1927–2001) and Justin (who later became a prominent Irish politician and broadcaster). She was a frequent model for her husband's paintings, appearing as Mother Ireland in An Allegory (1924) and as a wife and mother in Night Candles Are Burnt Out (1929).
Career and Activism
Keating trained as a typist at Caffrey's Secretarial College, Dublin. She worked as secretary to Robert Barton and later to Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, whom she had met while working with the Irish White Cross (1920–1922), which raised funds for dependants of republican prisoners. She spent two months teaching at the Berlitz school in Hamburg in 1922.
She moved in left-wing republican and feminist circles that included Charlotte Despard, Rosamond Jacob, Dorothy Macardle, and Harry Kernoff. She was an active member of the Friends of Soviet Russia and a passionate supporter of the republican side in the Spanish Civil War. In 1937, she hosted Fr Ramon Laborda, a pro-republican Basque priest, and acted as his interpreter at public meetings organised by the Spanish Aid Committee.
Keating campaigned for women's political and reproductive rights, particularly defending the rights of single mothers to raise their own children. She was strongly opposed to the authority of the Catholic Church in Irish political and social life. She sat on the "mother-and-child scheme committee" in 1951, campaigning for the free maternal and infant medical services proposed by Minister for Health Noël Browne. She and Browne considered founding a new left-wing political party in 1952.
Throughout the 1950s, the Keatings hosted a wide range of activists, dissidents, and radicals in their home. Keating served on the executive committee of the Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and was a member of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties. She was instrumental in securing Noël Browne's election as an independent candidate in 1957. She was one of the founders of The Plough (1957–1968), a left-wing, cooperatively owned monthly journal, contributing articles, raising subscriptions, and organising printing and distribution. She was also an active member of the 1913 Club, a political discussion group espousing the socialist nationalism of James Connolly.
Death
Keating died of heart failure on 4 March 1965 at her home, 'The Wood', Ballyboden Road, Rathfarnham, County Dublin. She is buried at Cruagh cemetery, Rockbrook, County Dublin.
