IRELAND’S Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald reaffirmed the party’s abstentionist policy in a speech yesterday to commemorate the centenary of the first woman to be elected to Westminster.

She was responding to the demands of Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, who has called on Sinn Fein to take up its seats in the British Parliament and take part in tomorrow’s crucial parliamentary vote on Theresa May’s Brexit deal.

Sinn Fein MPs in the north of Ireland contest elections but refuse to take their seats in the British Parliament as a point of principle.

Ms McDonald was speaking at an event marking almost 100 years since Constance Markievicz was elected to the House of Commons. She refused to pledge loyalty to the British crown and did not take her seat.

Ms Markiewicz, who took part in the Easter Rising of 1916, did serve in the Dail. She was the first woman to hold an Irish cabinet post as minister of labour from 1919 to 1922.

“These revisionists celebrate the election of Markievicz as the first woman elected to Westminster — as they should,” Ms McDonald said. “What they ignore is her principled abstention from that parliament, her pledge to never to take an oath of allegiance to the power she meant to overthrow.

“These revisionists attack Sinn Fein for that same principled stance — that unwillingness to take an oath of allegiance to a foreign power. I ask those revisionists: would they take that oath?

“One hundred years on and Constance Markievicz remains a troubling figure for those in power. Because she stands against the hypocrisy of Irish political leaders calling on others to swear an oath to a queen.

“Because she reminds them that no republic worthy of that title would tolerate homelessness, or partition, or would be a home to poverty and inequality,” she said.