Women in the Irish Revolution

Mary Smith

Anyone who knows anything and socially from the devastating effects of about history knows also that famine fifty years earlier. It was a predom- great social upheavals are impos- inately rural and agricultural society with sible without the feminine fer- a poorly developed industrial infrastructure, ment. - Karl Marx1 apart from Belfast, where the success of the ship-building industry in particular under- In the introduction to her book Un- pinned loyalty to union with Britain. In manageable Revolutionaries; women and the south, the emerging Catholic middle , the historian Dr Margaret and upper classes were socially conservative, Ward states that: ‘...writing women into his- heavily influenced by, and reliant upon, the tory does not mean simply tagging them church3. They (correctly) perceived them- onto what we already know; rather, it forces selves as being ‘held back’ by the union with us to re-examine what is currently accepted, Britain and aspired to Home Rule. The Irish so that a whole people will eventually come Parliamentary Party or Home Rule Party into focus...’2 This article is an attempt to was the expression of their nationalist as- sharpen the focus on events relating to the pirations. Rising in 1916, by recounting the role played by women. What it seeks to do specifically is: Life for working class men and women was harsh. Poverty and emigration were rife; • briefly outline the role played by Dublin city had reputedly the worst slums women in the itself and in Europe. The minimum working age was the political events and movements eight years old. Casual work and unem- leading up to it ployment were high among men and worse among women. Accurate statistics are dif- • look at the relationship between ficult to come by but it is estimated that a the women’s suffrage movement and third of women with a job were employed as women involved in revolutionary na- servants for the middle and upper classes. tionalism. Single women emigrated in greater num- • briefly discuss the attitude to women’s bers than the men, usually alone. Married rights among the principal political or- women could expect a life of unremitting ganisations of the day drudgery with little access to health and ed- ucational services for their children. In 1911 • consider the element of class in both over a third of married women had seven the fight for national liberation and for children or more.4 Housing was charac- women’s rights terised by over-crowded tenements in which • trace the ‘closing down’ of the path to diseases like TB were at epidemic propor- women’s emancipation by the counter- tions. revolutionary current embodied in the new ’free state’. But change was in the air and Irish women were part of it. Improvements in ed- Background ucation and other social changes began to offer new opportunities for women, and this At the turn of the century the British colony in turn engendered expectation of, and de- of was still recovering economically mand for, more change. 1Letter to Kugelman, 12 Dec 1868 2Unmanageable Revolutionaries; women and Irish Nationalism, Margaret Ward. Brandon Press. 1983 3For an excellent account of this social process read Goretti Horgan’s ‘Changing women’s lives in Ireland’. https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/isj2/2001/isj2-091/horgan.htm 4UCC http://multitext.ucc.ie/d/Ireland_society__economy_1870-1914

29 Times that were a changin’ strated, broke windows and attacked right- wing politicians, endured harassment and ...for the nationalists abuse, imprisonment, hunger-strikes and The closing years of the 19th century saw force-feeding. Between 1912 and 1914 there a rising confidence, fervour and agitation were 35 convictions of women for suffrage among Irish nationalists. The Land League activities. had been suppressed, and with it women’s The question of Home Rule for Ireland involvement in political life but the Gaelic became ever more pressing from 1912, when League, committed to reviving Irish lan- it was ’aired’ in the British parliament. It guage and culture emerged as a vibrant also raised questions around the issue of force on the political scene and was open to votes for women in Ireland. Home Rule women’s involvement in it. This was in stark strained relations between the northern and contrast to what was to become the politi- southern suffragists. The northern suffrag- cally dominant Irish Parliamentary Party for ists were implacably opposed to Home Rule, whom vote less women were an irrelevance. as were some of the privileged suffragists Democratic choice, restricted as it ever in the south, seeing their economic inter- was (and is) under capitalism, was worse in ests best served by maintaining the union Ireland than in Britain. No women had the with Britain. Most southern suffragists, right to vote (as in Britain) and only about while frustrated with the anti- of 30 percent of the adult male population were the Home Rule Party, were sympathetic to eligible to do so; the property qualification the principle of some sort of autonomy for excluded the majority of men (the figure was Ireland, wherein they hoped the franchise 60 percent among British males). It would would be extended to the women of Ireland. take until 1918 for the vote to be extended By 1912 many suffragists’ meetings had to all men over 21 and to women over 30 become scenes of violence. This followed (with a property restriction). events surrounding the visit to Dublin in that year of Asquith, the British Prime Min- ...for suffragists ister. There was an incident; Asquith and Redmond had a hatchet thrown at them The demand for women’s rights was ex- by three militant suffragists from Britain, pressed in the demand for votes for women. over in Dublin for the occasion of Asquith’s The question of women’s suffrage in Ireland visit. No damage was done but the newspa- had been taken up as early as 1866, and by pers went ballistic. Then, as now, militancy 1911 there were some 24 women’s suffrag- was denounced and every opportunity was ist groups agitating with varying degrees of taken to denigrate the women’s cause, along militancy for the vote. with their actions. This helped inflame at- Early suffrage groups of women and men tacks on and harassment of suffragist meet- employed methods of campaigning that were ings and events. It was who relatively conservative - petitioning, lobby- organised for the Irish Transport & General ing etc. But improved educational oppor- Workers Union (ITGWU) to protect their tunities for women and the rising militancy meetings and continued to insist that women of the suffragist movement in Britain, saw were entitled to fight for their demands in numbers of young women, mostly from the whatever way they chose, saying there was middle and upper classes, becoming increas- no action of theirs that he would not sup- ingly inspired and active in the demand for port. Husband and wife team Francis and equality with men, focused on the demand Hannah Sheehy-Skeffington (founders of the for equal voting rights. Irish Women’s Franchise League), were well The best of the Irish suffragists, and suf- known Dublin radicals - he was Ireland’s fragettes (a term coined by newspapers of most famous pacifist and she was Ireland’s the day for the women involved) fought with most famous suffragist. They also identified great courage and commitment to further themselves as socialists (they were members their aims; they campaigned and demon- of the tiny Socialist Party of Ireland) and

30 were delighted to have Connolly come down intended to rustle up support for conscrip- from Belfast to speak at suffrage meetings tion among the Irish to help the British fight they helped organise. the Boer war, and an official children’s pic- nic was intended as a way of getting the population out to cheer for her. The In- ...for the labour movement ghinidhe organised a ’Patriotic Children’s Irish labour too was coming into its own Treat’ instead, where they paraded 30,000 in terms of trades union organisation. Or- children around Dublin streets and then fed ganisers like Larkin and Connolly had hard- them goodies in a park. It was a treat for won but considerable success in getting Irish not cheering for the queen. For the next workers, particularly the hitherto unorgan- 14 years the Inghinidhe would continue to ised unskilled workers, into the unions - the work among Dublin’s poor (along with oth- ITGWU and also the Irish Women Workers ers) providing food, education and cultural Union (IWWU). Among the ranks of the un- opportunities, as well as political organi- skilled were young women workers in shops, sation, until they eventually morphed into factories, laundries and offices; some of these Cumann na mBan (The Women’s Council), would gravitate to the Irish Citizens Army a women’s auxiliary group to Volunteers who and socialist ideas. would be the main force in the 1916 Rising. Although many of the leading lights and founders of Inghinidhe were middle and up- Convergence per class women their commitment was very much to the poor and working people of There was a convergence of these influences Dublin. They attracted and organised com- in the struggle for progress in the Ireland of mitted and militant young working women. the early 1900s - a convergence of struggle Describing some of their early recruits He- for national freedom, for women’s suffrage len Maloney, editor of their paper Bean and for workers’ rights to organise in unions. na HEíreann, writes ‘Now there were some And although a minority in terms of num- young girls in Dublin, chiefly members of bers, those identifying as socialists, notably the Irish classes of Celtic Literary Society... James Connolly, were hugely important in They were (with one exception) all work- providing an ideological and organisational ing girls. They had not much gold and sil- backbone for some of the most important el- ver to give to Ireland, only willing hearts, ements involved in the insurrectionary move- earnestness and determination’. Ella Young, ment, by the time it began. in her memoirs, states that Inghinidhe was ‘composed of girls who work hard all day in Organisations for change: Ire- shops and offices owned for the most part land’s Daughters by pro-British masters, who may at any mo- ment discharge them for treasonable activi- The first women’s organisation in Ireland, ties’; she admired the courage of the young and one of the earliest and most influen- women, for whom dismissal from their job tial organisations in the build-up to insur- would mean ‘semi-starvation or long, con- rectionary period was Inghinidhe na hEíre- tinued unemployment’5 Some of these girls ann (Daughters of Ireland). Maud Gonne and women would later become heroines of was part of an ad-hoc a group of women in- the Easter Rising, and senior figures in the volved the ’reception’ for the visit to Ireland subsequent Civil War and beyond. They in 1900, of Queen Victoria (dubbed ’The were highly active in providing support to Famine Queen’ by Gonne). The ’reception’ the strikers and dependants during the Lock- was a stunt by the women’s group that ef- out in 1913 and many of them later came to fectively launched Inghinidhe as a radical hold dual membership in Inghinidhe and in force for change, and ignited a new mood the . of militancy. The aging monarch’s visit was Inghinidhe published a newspaper specif- 5 Ella Young, Flowering Dusk, London, Dennis Dobson Ltd 1945, p70

31 ically aimed at women. Bean na hEíre- Cumann na mBan ann (meaning ‘Woman of Ireland’), was the first women’s newspaper in Ireland. It was Cumann na mBan was founded at a meet- launched in November 1908 with the ex- ing of 100 women in Wynn’s hotel in 1914. pressed aim ‘to be a women’s paper, advo- According to historian Senia Paseta9 the cating militancy, Irish separatism and femi- meeting had the all debates and elements nism’6 1908 also saw the launch of the Irish that were abroad in Irish politics at the Women’s Franchise League (IWFL), set up time ‘swirling round’ in it; what would hap- by Hanna and Francis Sheehy-Skeffington to pen in the event of the campaign for women’s suffrage in Ireland. In splitting?; what would the relationship of 1912 it began publication of the weekly Irish Cumann na mBan be to constitutional na- Citizen. Until, and indeed after, the appear- tionalism or indeed to revolutionary nation- ance of the Irish Citizen, suffragist women alism? what was its priorities regarding were regular contributors to the columns of votes for women? There was criticism about Bean na hEíreann, which provided a forum the conduct of the inaugural meeting itself, for debate. Writers put forward arguments including the fact that because it was dur- about priorities for Irish women: national ing the day it excluded many working class independence or winning the vote? Suffrag- women. Certainly its founders and most ists queried the worth of an independent prominent members were middle class (some Ireland that did not recognise the right of were renegade upper class women) though women to vote in it; revolutionary nation- by the time of the Rising came about, its alists argued that fighting for the right to ranks included many working class women, vote in a parliament they wanted to bring and its role in the movement was much more down, was a distraction if not an irrelevance. defined and militant than it had been at its Inghinidhe objected to the principle of the inception. It is interesting that although vote being granted by ‘a hostile parliament’ their agenda was a nationalist one, all but and Countess Markievicz asked women to one of members of their first executive were pause before joining a franchise movement active suffragists. What it seems that these that did not have the freedom of the nation women did is not set aside their feminism for as part of its programme7. Criticism of In- nationalism - they ’did’ both. ghinidhe for failure to adequately champion The constitution of Cumann na mBan the rights of women have been made, but stated their aims: Margaret Ward makes the point that ‘Had To advance the cause of Irish liberty. Inghinidhe not existed, a whole generation of To organise Irish women in the furtherance women would never have developed the self- of that objective. confidence which eventually enabled them to To assist in arming and equipping a body of hold their own in organisations composed Irish men for the defence of Ireland. of both sexes...(and that)..while they were To form a fund for these purposes to be fully aware of the realities of women’s op- called the ‘Defence of Ireland Fund’.10 pression... they saw their priority as the win- ning of political independence from Britain Criticism of Cumann na mBan was and the fight against women’s oppression as voiced from within the ranks of the suf- secondary, to be tackled when the national fragist movement from the outset. In the revolution had been won’.8 pages of the suffrage newspaper the Irish Citizen, Cumann na mBan were referred to as ‘slave women’ and ‘handmaidens’ to the Irish Volunteers. Hannah Sheehy Skeffin- 6Smith,B. Changing Lives: Women in European History since 1700, D C Heath, 1989, p383 7Unmanageable Revolutionaries. Dr Margaret Ward. Kerry. Brandon Book Publishers.1983. P70-72 8ibid. p. 86-87 9See Senia Paseta youtube.com/watch?v=NxKEd4ijApA 10The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, Volume 5. Women and Politics 1860-1918 edited by Angela Bourke. NYU Press. New York. 2002 p104

32 gton at one stage dismissed them as be- The woman question - which ing little more than ‘animated collecting side were they on? boxes’. In their defence, Mary Colum, sister of the poet Padraig and member of the Ard The Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) Comhairle (executive), defended Cumann or Home Rule Party (either name is used) na mBan saying that they had ‘...decided comprising those Irish members of the West- to do any national work that came within minster Parliament was anti-feminist. They the scope of our aims...... we are not the did not admit women as members. In 1912 auxiliaries or the handmaidens or the camp it happened that they held the balance of followers of the Volunteers—we are their al- power in the British Parliament at a time 11 lies.’ when legislation which would have granted By 1915, despite on-going criticism of the limited suffrage to women was proposed. Irish Women’s Franchise League (IWFL), They voted against it. Home rulers wanted Cumann na mBan now ‘ran lectures, classes all other questions set aside until Home Rule in first aid, signalling and rifle practice, was granted. Women were barred not only lessons in cleaning and loading rifles and from the Irish Parliamentary Party as mem- small arms.’12 bers, but even from attending meetings, to stop them standing up and demanding at- We know quite a bit about the mid- tention to women’s suffrage. dle class women involved in Cumann na mBan, and why wouldn’t we? These were The Irish Volunteers was a military the women who had at least one maid to organisation established in 1913 by a num- free them from housework and childcare so ber of nationalist groups which included they could attend meetings, and accept the members of the Gaelic League the Ancient leading roles that required time and money Order of Hibernians and Sinn Feín, and, to fulfil. They were the women for whom secretly, the Irish Republican Brotherhood education and the confidence of their class (IRB). It was ostensibly formed in response meant that they would address meetings, to the formation of the Ulster Volunteers in act as spokespersons, write letters to the 1912 who opposed Home Rule. As a mili- newspapers, network for the cause etc., and tary organisation it did not include women thereby become recognised and noted. Less in its ranks and outfits like the Ancient Or- is known of their working class sisters. Hav- der of Hibernians, and to a lesser extent Sinn ing someone to mind their children, the pre- Feín, were deeply conservative on social is- carious nature of the job if they had one, sues, including rights for women. By mid- money for transport, having the confidence 1914 the Irish Volunteers had a membership to speak in public, all these presented chal- of 200,000 but split over party leader John lenges for working class women that their Redmond’s commitment to the British War middle class sisters would never experience. effort, with the smaller group retaining the But stories of their courage and commitment name of ‘Volunteers’ - later to become the come to us through the course of the Rising (IRA). Cumann na itself. For many, the detail of their lives is mBan was the women’s auxiliary group to not known to us; they remain the unsung the all-male Irish Volunteers. heroines of the struggle. The role of women Sinn Feín (SF) founded in 1908 by in the revolution remains under-researched Arthur Griffith, did not oppose the demands but two relatively recent histories (by his- of women in the way that the IPP did. SF torians Sinead McCoole13 and Liz Gillis14) was not actively anti-feminist and eventu- provide considerable biographical informa- ally admitted women as members and onto tion for some of the women involved. the executive but women’s suffrage was ‘was 11Haverty, Anne. 1993. : Irish Revolutionary. London: Pandora 12Clarke, K. Revolutionary Woman, O Brien Press . Dublin 1997. p50. 13McCoole,S. No Ordinary Women. Irish female activists in the revolutionary years 1900-1923. O Brien Press. Dublin 2008 14Gillis,Liz. Women of the Irish Revolution. Mercier Press 2014.

33 never one of Sinn Feín’s priorities’15 Arthur were now vested in the Irish Citizen Army Griffith himself had little time for the fem- (ICA), set up to defend strikers against the inist cause (as well as showing great hostil- police during the Lockout. ity to the labour movement. At the time of the Dublin Lockout in 1913, Griffith called In the preceding years, for activists in for the strikers to be bayoneted, and SF de- both the nationalist and suffragist move- nounced the boat which brought food aid ments, it was becoming ever clearer that from the British labour movement to the there were other issues besides votes for locked out Irish workers, because its cargo women and freedom from British rule. was made up of non-Irish goods). In particular the appalling conditions of poverty were evident at every hands turn, The socialists. Connolly and Larkin and not all of which could be blamed on the gave the most commitment and support to Brits. A campaign to extend the 1906 Act women’s demand for the vote, and more in Britain to Ireland, whereby poor children besides, through the unions, the ITGWU could be fed in school, had been supported and IWWU, and through the Irish Citi- by both Inghinidhe and the suffragists, and zen Army (ICA). In his analysis of cap- they extended this work to actually feeding italism, Connolly described women’s posi- children themselves. Cooperation between tion: ‘The worker is the slave of capital- the two camps was at its height by the time ist society, the female worker is the slave of the Lockout when soup-kitchens and sup- of that slave.’16. He was widely recognised ports for the strikers’ families were an essen- as a champion of women’s rights. Fran- tial part of the struggle. Connolly’s influ- cis and Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, founders ence on the best radicals drew them to the of the Irish Women’s Franchise League, de- Irish Citizen Army and they self-identified scribed Connolly as ‘the soundest and most as socialists. The ICA involved both sexes thoroughgoing feminist among all the Irish at all levels - in the ranks and the lead- labour men’17 Connolly argued forcefully in ership. As the time for armed insurrec- support of women’s rights, and urged the tion approached Markievicz was appointed labour movement to actively take up the a member of the seven-person Army Coun- demand for equality. He gave clear class cil, Dr held the rank of lieu- reasons for supporting the call for votes for tenant and was in charge of the medical women. Writing in the suffragists’ newspa- section, and Madeleine ffrench-Mullen (her per, The Citizen, he says ‘It was because partner) was a sergeant. It is notable that women workers had no vote they had not the none of these were working class women - safeguards even of the laws passed for their whereas the men were entirely working class. protection because they were ignored. They Historian Phillip Ferguson makes the point had women working for wages on which a that the fact ‘...that such women were wel- man could not keep a dog. Men’s condi- comed in the ICA, and readily accepted as tions, bad as they were, had been improved officers, is indicative of the lack of gender because of the vote’.Irish Citizen, 13 Nov and class narrow-mindedness of Connolly 1912 Connolly brought in the key question and Mallin and the working class rank-and- of women as workers, and in so doing was file’18. These women had declared for the both the champion of the oppressed - women workers in the Lockout, the struggle which - and of those suffering capitalist exploita- as Ferguson remarks ‘had played the key role tion - the workers. His could cut in bringing together the most militant sec- across false antagonisms. By 1913, Connolly tions of both women’s groups and organised had returned to Dublin and his efforts at labour’. The ICA was the only organisation building a Marxist organisation in Ireland that drew together the strands of revolution- 15Haverty, Anne. 1993, As above. P52 16Connolly, Selected Writings, Monthly Review Press, 1973, p191 17Haverty, Anne. 1993, As above .p105 18https://theirishrevolution.wordpress.com/2011/08/31/women%E2%80%99s-rights-and-the- national-struggle-1916-1922/

34 ary nationalism, anti-imperialism, women’s carrier between the GPO and City Hall un- emancipation and militant trades unionism til City Hall was taken. After the surren- and united them in struggle. The record der, she dodged arrest and re-emerged in of the ICA members in action bears testi- the War of Independence, where she again mony to their revolutionary courage, com- acted as dispatch-carrier between various mitment and principles. The tragedy of the fighting units all round the country, some- ICA is that although it punched way above times transporting arms and explosives at its weight, it was too small to effectively great personal danger. She took the anti- build resistance to the reactionary forces Treaty side, was arrested for her anti-Treaty that came to dominate in the aftermath of activities and went on hunger strike. After the rebellion. 16 days she was released.

Mollie O Reilly Maud Gonne

Mollie O Reilly was from Gardiner St. When she was 9 years old she went to Lib- Maud Gonne, founder of Inghinidhe na erty Hall to learn Irish dancing, where she hEíreann was an extraordinary woman by first heard Connolly speak. She was en- any standards, and not least for her revolu- thralled. During the Lockout (she was then tionary zeal and her upper class background. aged 11) she ran messages between Connolly She was the daughter of a of- and the strikers, collected money and helped ficer - privileged, educated, beautiful. Fa- run the soup kitchens for strikers depen- mously the muse of WB Yates, she told him dants. She hid guns from the illicit his unrequited love for her would fuel his art shipment in her house - unknown to her loy- as a poet and the world should thank her for alist father! By the time she was 14 she rejecting him! was an ICA and IWWU member. Connolly She first became involved in political ac- sent for her the week before the Rising. He tivism by championing the cause of Irish po- asked her to be the one to hoist the green litical prisoners in Britain, and in the strug- and gold flag over , which she gle for tenants’ rights in the Land League did with great pride. When the Rising was in the 1880s, believing, not unreasonably, called a week later, Mollie marched with the that ‘the Irish masses would rally around the ICA to take the Castle then, falling back cause of national freedom only if they be- to City Hall, she operated as a dispatch- lieved it would guarantee them permanent

35 possession of the farms they tilled’19. She subsequent events, a role that was to cost her became convinced of the importance of mo- health and hasten an early death. She fa- bilising women into the struggle for Irish in- mously offered pre-revolutionary fashion ad- dependence, since ‘without the participation vice (to whom it might apply): ‘Dress suit- of her women, Mother Ireland was going into ably in short skirts and strong boots, leave battle with one arm tied behind her back’20 your jewels in the bank and buy a revolver.’21 The organisation she helped found, In- She and Maud Gonne both were actors ghinidhe na hEíreann was committed to fos- on the stage of the newly founded Abbey tering Irish culture, nationalism and anti- Theatre - an important institution in the British imperialism. They were deeply in- Irish cultural revival of those years. She volved in social issues and have a proud campaigned with the suffragettes in Britain record of support for the poor and for work- along with her sister Eva Gore Booth. Eva ers struggles. Although she was in France and her partner, a working class woman at the time of the Rising itself, Maud Gonne Esther Roper, were very prominent in the was one of the most formidable forces in rev- suffragist movement in Manchester. They olutionary nationalism in the build-up to in- worked to unionise female flower-sellers, cir- surrection and in the resistance to the re- cus performers, barmaids and coal pit-brow pression in its aftermath. workers. Eva was later to come to Dublin to campaign for Markievicz’s release when she was imprisoned for her part in the rising. In 1909 she founded Na Fianna Eireann, a sort of paramilitary scouts group for boys and girls, who trained in the use of weapons and whose creation Pearse reckoned as be- ing as important as the creation of the Irish Volunteers. She was jailed for the first time in 1911 for speaking at a 30.000 strong Irish Countess Constance Markievicz Republican Brotherhood demonstration or- ganised to protest against George V’s visit to Ireland. During this protest Markievicz Countess Constance Markievicz handed out leaflets, erected banners, partic- (Con) was another brave and flamboyant ipated in stone-throwing at pictures of the rebel, a traitor to her upper class back- King and Queen and attempted to burn the ground and uncompromising revolutionary giant British flag taken from Leinster House, for most of her life. She attended her first eventually succeeding. meeting of Inghinidhe na hEíreann in 1908 She worked tirelessly during the Dublin wearing a ball gown and diamond tiara - Lockout - organising food kitchens in Lib- having just come from a function at Dublin erty Hall for the strikers and their depen- Castle. The Inghinidhe were not impressed dents. Much of the funding for this came by a countess in full regalia, but she was, as from the sale of her jewellery. During the much by their anti-British imperialism as by rising she was appointed second in command the fact that they weren’t impressed! This to Mallin in Stephen’s Green and then the debut was as far removed from her subse- College of Surgeons, shooting a policeman in quent contribution to the struggle as can the head and fatally wounding him. After be imagined. She turned her back on her the Rising she was sentenced to death but privileged background, threw herself whole- her sentence was commuted. She served the heartedly in building Inghinidhe, and later longest jail term of all the women arrested - Cumann na mBan, joined Connolly’s ICA, it would not be for the last time. She was and played a heroic role in the rising and elected in 1918 for Sinn Feín. This made her 19Levenson, Maud Gonne, Cassell & Co., 1976, p44 20Quoted in Levenson, as above, pp169-170. 21Haverty, Anne. 1993. As above

36 the first woman elected to the British House ney, including women of principle who re- of Commons. Later she became the sec- fused State recognition or died before their ond woman in the world, (after Alexandra story was eventually told? Kollontai in Russia, following the Bolshevik The Rising itself began with great con- Revolution) to hold cabinet rank in govern- fusion due to the havoc caused by coun- ment - the Daíl of 1919. She opposed the termanding orders for its commencement. Treaty in the Civil War, experienced more But there was the added complication that arrests and hunger strike, and though she seemed, as Margaret Ward argues, to typify joined Fianna Fail, it was in 1926 at its in- the attitude to women, particularly in the auguration. She did not live to see what ranks of the Volunteers - they forgot to tell it would become. When she died in 1927, the Cumann na mBan!24 Hurried dispatches it was in a public ward ‘among the poor - were sent all over the country with new or- where she wanted to be’22. Her old comrade ders for the Volunteers, but nobody mo- Dr Kathleen Lynn was in attendance. bilised the women who were ’left in a state of total bewilderment’25 ‘...[I]t’s an indica- The Rising tion of the women’s determination to fight, that so many did eventually take part. For The months leading up to the rising saw them in particular, the first day was a day increasing debate and contact between the of chaos, of searching for outposts, asking to most revolutionary nationalists - the Volun- be allowed to join and, occasionally, of be- teers (those who split from the majority Irish ing turned away.’26 About 60 of the women Volunteers over the question of support for ’out’ in 1916 were members of Cumann na the British War effort) - and the suffrage mBan. None of these women took an active movement, and a discourse on gender equal- part in the fighting, their role being confined ity began to become commonplace.23 The to nursing, cooking and dispatch carrying, insurrectionary movement drew in the best all of which, especially the latter, was dan- and most militant women fighters among na- gerous and courageous work, done as it was, tionalists and the best fighters for women’s under fire. Communications with the leaders rights. in the GPO and other garrisons were main- Estimates of the numbers participating tained largely through the efforts of these in the Rising are put as about 90 women women. Not only did they carry messages, out of around 3000 overall. The evidence but supplies of food and ammunition hidden for the women’s involvement is the records in their clothing, and it was they on whom of the 77 female arrests after their surrender, responsibility fell for sourcing the food - in- applications to the Military Service Pension, cluding holding up vans and commandeering statements with the Bureau of Military His- the contents. tory collected in the 1950s, and other mil- itary archives. But these sources may miss A handful of bemused citizens of Dublin out on women and men whose stories are not would have heard Pearse read the Procla- captured in this way. How many veterans of mation outside the GPO, shortly after the 1916 refused to have anything to do with a Rebels occupied. Few would have known its State that sold them out and murdered their contents in advance, or that it was addressed comrades? How many refused to seek or ac- to ‘Irishmen and Irishwomen’, or that it cept a pension from ‘Free-Staters’ on prin- was then, and remains, a powerful reference ciple? The author of this article knows of point to refute the claim that the Rebels at least one - her grandfather, Barney Mur- ignored women’s rights; and while not ex- phy who fought in the Four Courts in 1916. plicitly a socialist document, it claimed ‘the How many others might there be like Bar- right of the people of Ireland to the own- 22Deputies, Nicola MnaŃa HEíreann: Women who Shaped Ireland. 1999 Cork: Mercier Press Ltd. p. 171. 23Dr Margaret Ward https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMV4MrJls2M 24Margaret Ward. 1983. As above, P107-108 25As above. p108 26As above. p109

37 ership of Ireland’ , and contained a guaran- prisonment. She was subsequently released tee of ‘religious and civil liberty, equal rights and returned to Scotland to write a memoir and equal opportunities to all its citizens’. of her activities entitled ‘Doing My Bit For Connolly had insisted on that pledge, and Ireland’. told Hannah Sheehy-Skeffington shortly be- Forty women, including Winnie Car- fore the Rising that the rest of the signato- ney, entered the GPO with their male coun- ries had agreed to its inclusion27. Hannah terparts, though not all these women were had also been chosen to be one of the five to remain. Winnie did. She had been sent person executive of a civil provisional gov- for by Connolly as his right-hand woman. ernment if the rebellion was to go on for any They had met through activi- length, but she had not been told of this, ties when Connolly was in Belfast; she was at this stage. Hannah, as a pacifist, did not in charge of the women’s section of the Irish directly take part in the Rising but she and Textile Workers’ Union in Belfast. Winnie other women of the IWFL were seen carry- had remained North, working as a TGWU ing sacks of food and other supplies to the organiser till she received the call, and down garrison in the College of Surgeons28. she came with her typewriter and a Web- The women of the Irish Citizen Army ley pistol. She remained at Connolly’s side had a different experience to their sisters in till the end, typing up Connolly’s dispatches Cumann na mBan. They were 30 in all, and and dictating his final orders. She had re- assembled, along with the men, on Easter fused to leave him despite being ordered to Monday and were told by Connolly they evacuate the building with the injured. were all now members of the Irish Repub- By Easter Monday night, women insur- lican Army. Their roles were allotted in ad- gents were established in all of the major vance, and they were armed on the day. A rebel strongholds throughout the city, bar group of nine women and ten men marched one, Boland’s Mill under the command of off to take ; they failed and De Valera. He steadfastly refused, in defi- resorted to taking City Hall instead. Dr ance of orders from Pearse and Connolly to Lynn later went to City Hall, to attend Sean allow women fighters into the Boland’s Mill Connolly, hit by a snipers bullet and badly garrison. One Cumann na mBan member wounded. who fought in the Rising, Sighle Bean Ui The diary of Douglas Hyde gives an in- Donnachadha later remarked, ‘De Valera re- sight into events; he mentions a priest telling fused absolutely to have Cumann na mBan him that at the Stephen’s Green there had girls in the posts... the result, I believe, was been ‘a good many women’ and that they that the garrison there did not stand up to ‘shot as well as the men’. This may have the siege as well as in other posts’. been due to the efforts of Margaret Skin- Constance Markievicz, initially had nider, a 23 year old Glasgow school teacher the job of delivering medical supplies round and friend of Markievicz through suffragist the rebel-held posts. She reportedly cut circles. She had joined Glasgow Cumann na quite a dash - at 48 years of age, dressed mBan, and the ICA as well as the Glasgow in full Cumann na mBan military uniform rifle club, where she learned her marksman- , a big hat bedecked with Ostrich feath- ship. She and Markievicz had regularly got- ers perched jauntily on her head and bran- ten together to smuggle arms and explosives, dishing a revolver. She had had consid- as well as to practice shooting. She arrived erable success commandeering vehicles to by bicycle and managed to join the garrison be used as barricades. When she reached at the Royal College of Surgeons. She was Stephen’s Green Mallin appointed her his shot and wounded seriously, later to be im- second in command, explaining that the prisoned and sentenced to death by the mil- countermanding orders fiasco had left him itary authorities. She went on hunger strike short of men. She relished the opportunity and her sentence was commuted to life im- to fight by all accounts. She shot a police- 27R.M Fox, Rebel Irishwomen, Dublin and Cork, 1935. p140. 28Margaret Ward https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMV4MrJls2M

38 man in the head, killing him. Along with Byrnes30 and they seemed to have planned other female fighters, including her friend ceilis, even in the thick of a Rising! Rose pre- , she demanded that sented the surrender of herself and twenty they be allowed to bomb the Shelbourne Ho- one other women to the British. A subse- tel to dislodge snipers there. Mallin refused quent account of that surrender - held at on the grounds that the risks were too great. Military Archives - comments, ‘The women According to contemporary accounts, they of the garrison could have evaded arrest but insisted that the proclamation gave them they marched down four deep in uniform equal rights as the men, and that included along with the men. An attempt was made risking their lives, as the men did. Mallin to get them to sign a statement recanting relented and a number of women were shot their stand but this failed. McNamara who en route to the Shelbourne, with Skinnider led the contingent went to the British officer badly injured. in charge and explained they were part of As well as Margaret Skinnider’s serious the rebel contingent and were surrendering wounding, there was one fatality among the along with the rest’. women, Cumann na mBan member Mar- As the Rising ground to a halt under a garetta Keogh who was shot dead outside ferocious British onslaught, women all over the South Dublin Union attempting to help the city surrendered with their male coun- a wounded Volunteer. It’s surprising more terparts. Countess Markievicz surrendered women were not killed or seriously wounded, in the manner in which she had fought,with given the nature of their duties, the daring great panache, shaking the hand of each of and the courage they showed during those her comrades one by one, and kissing her re- five days. There were lucky escapes; one volver before handing it over. She and the woman had the heel of her shoe shot off; other women held in Kilmainham were later another had her bicycle tyre punctured by to experience the horror of the sound of their a bullet - she was riding it at the time. male comrades being shot, one by one. Not all the women’s experiences were The women arrested were taken to Kil- colourful or dramatic and some recount vivid mainham Gaol; all but five were released af- recollections of fear and loneliness. One ter a relatively short period of time. The participant in Jacobs biscuit factory recalls: five were all members of the ICA. Some ‘...the sound of footsteps, an occasional clat- were sentenced to death. Those who were ter as a rifle fell, there was an eeriness about went on hunger strike and succeeded in hav- the place; a feeling of being cut off from the ing their sentences commuted to life im- outside world...’29 prisonment. Eventually, they were released. The rebel garrison at City Hall was sur- Dr Kathleen Lynn, one of the five, subse- rendered to British forces by Dr. Kathleen quently went on to found St. Ultan’s Hospi- Lynn, the only officer present. At first, the tal in Dublin’s city centre where she initiated British refused to take the surrender from a Ireland’s first immunisation programme for woman; they just didn’t know what to do; children. Her life-long partner was fellow nothing in handbook covered it! This hap- revolutionary and ICA member Madeleine pened at various garrisons throughout the ffrench-Mullen. city. Initially, the British military authori- Pearse selected nurse Elizabeth Farrell, ties simply asked the women to ‘go home’. one of the last three women remaining with They refused and were arrested and taken the GPO rebels, to present the surrender to Kilmainham with the rest. to the British authorities. Accompanied by Similarly with Rose McNamara, the a priest and three soldiers she brought the officer in command of the Cumann na mBan order to surrender to the insurgent posi- detachment at the Marrowbone Lane Dis- tions throughout the city. She stood next to tillery. Here there were five sets of sisters Pearse as they made the declaration of sur- including the Cooneys, the Quigleys and the render. Though partly obscured by Pearse, 29Maire Nic Shiubhlaigh, The Splendid Years, Dublin. Duffy. 1955. p174-76 30Sinead McCoole. No ordinary women. P 31

39 she may be seen in a press photograph taken work, and the treatment meted out by the at the moment of the surrender. The ap- British authorities, helped galvanise the la- parent removal of her figure in subsequent tent sympathy among the population for the versions of the photograph has given rise to rebel stand. speculation. The explanation we suggest is On the first anniversary of the Rising, that reminders of the role played by women commemorative masses were held all over did not suit the agenda of those who came the country. In Dublin women took on the to ‘inherit’ the revolution - better that they job, outwitting the authorities, of hanging should be airbrushed from history. the flag on all the posts held by rebels dur- ing the Rising. Against the wishes of the ITGWU officials, and He- After the Rising lena Moloney hung a banner from Liberty Hall which read ‘James Connolly - mur- The immediate aftermath of the Rising saw dered 12th May’. Militancy, inspired by the Dublin in ruins and the organisations that events a year earlier was taking hold, despite had made the Rising in disarray. 16 leaders those who wanted to keep a lid on it. The were executed; 1,800 interned; 77 of them remnants of the various strands of nation- women. Although Sinn Feín as a party had alism regrouped under the banner of Sinn not participated in the Rising, it was called Feín to contest the election in 1918, and the Sinn Feín Rising by the authorities and swept the board. Women had been granted the press; with its dozen or so councillors the vote (in line with Britain), and their and its newspaper, it would have been the franchise was instrumental in the Sinn Feín only separatist organisation known to the victory. The fantastic period of workers’ administration in Dublin Castle. struggle that swept the country 1918-1921 It fell to the women of Cumann na (see C. Kostik article in this journal) saw mBan to deal with the immediate practi- women participating at levels hitherto un- cal needs after Easter week - the tasks of known. For instance in Buttevant in Cork, re-establishing communications and looking a strike by farm labourers was joined by a after the dependents of those killed and im- sympathy strike among creamery workers, prisoned, and they did so with great com- who were joined in turn by the majority of mitment and efficiency. servant girls in Buttevant parish striking in Kathleen Clarke, widow of Tom, sig- sympathy with the men; whereupon the em- natory to the Proclamation, had been left ployers relented and conceded major wage the remainder of the funds from the Repub- demands.Kostick, C. Revolution in Ireland: lican rebels to disperse as needed, around Popular militancy 1917-1923. Pluto Press. £3000. This was supplemented by collec- London. 1996 . p113 Women fought the tions that became an on-going campaign Black and Tans and made it possible for over the next months and years. Kathleen the guerrilla army of the IRA to continue herself had not only lost her husband but to function. They refused to be overlooked also her brother in the Rising, had three in terms of contesting elections, with varying young children to look after, and, in the degrees of success. course of the Rising had miscarried the preg- Tom Coonan summarises the gains nancy that she had kept hidden from Tom, women made: not wanting to worry him. She was very ill following the miscarriage but insisted on In the years that followed, working to support the prisoners dependents women played a high profile role to ‘stop her from going mad’, as she said in the fledgling Republic. Six herself. But it was not only fundraising; women deputies were elected to the women mounted a propaganda offensive, the first Dial of May 1921. Forty rallying people to meetings and demonstra- three women were also returned tions that lauded the aims of the rebellion, to borough and district councils. proclaimed the role of the participants and Kathleen Clarke, the first fe- argued for the need for a Republic. Their male Lord Mayor of Dublin was

40 elected in this period. Women in January 1923 and opened up also served as judges in the Sinn Kilmainham Jail as a detention Feín courts between 1919 and prison for ‘suspect’ women32. 1921. All of these developments for women (were) revolutionary The counter-revolution was well and when compared with the lot of truly underway. women elsewhere in Europe at The mythology of 1916 that became cen- the time.31 tral to the emerging identity of the state contained little or no reference to the ac- The vast majority of women activists tivities of the Irish women who participated opposed the Treaty, including Cumann na in the rising. The gains women had made mBan and all the known ICA members. But were slowly rolled back with a series of Acts the tide of counter-revolution was rolling in by the new government, restricting their as the Civil War played out. The new ‘Free access to work, removing them from civic State’ gladly accepted the stabilising effect roles (jury duty), targeting unmarried moth- of the Catholic Church’s endorsement, and ers and creating a framework for punishing with it the bishops’ view of the appropriate those who were ‘recidivists’ . The Free State position of women in society. Women were completely banned divorce by closing off all blamed for fomenting the Civil War, and loopholes that might have made dissolution anti-treaty revolutionary activities, already of unhappy unions possible, and introduced well outside the prescribed gender roles of rigid censorship laws and restrictions on op- the time, were now deemed not only ‘un- portunities for men and women to socialise seemly’ by a deeply conservative Irish estab- publicly. Finally the constitution of 1937 lishment but also a significant threat to the extinguished the last light of freedom for security of the state. Coonan summarises: women when it copper-fastened their tradi- tional role as homemakers and mothers. The A London newspaper at the State had in the bishops, agents for control, time, The Sunday Graphic and they rewarded their loyalty with mea- published an article carry- sures that enforced a Catholic fundamen- ing the headline ‘Irish Gun- talist ethos. The ‘special position’ of the women Menace’ which described Catholic Church in De Valera’s new consti- Irish women as ‘trigger happy tution was mirrored in the ‘no position’ for harpies’. In a pastoral letter women. The rights they had won just 20 issued in October 1922, the years earlier when they fought for both the Catholic hierarchy in Ireland Republic and their own rights, were wiped urged all women to desist from out. revolutionary activities. The Minister for Home Affairs de- Comment on women’s rights scribed the female activists as and the Rising ‘hysterical young women who ought to be playing five fingered Hannna Sheehy Skeffington, feminist, social- exercises or helping their moth- ist and by this time fervent nationalist said ers with the brasses’. Slowly but ‘...the Rising was the only instance in his- surely, the women were deterred tory that I know of where men fighting for from continuing in their dissi- freedom, voluntarily included women’33 She dent activities as greater num- compared the Rising to the Russian Rev- bers were arrested and interned. olution of 1917, and Kollontai with Con- The government of the Free stance Markievicz. Dr Margaret Ward re- State banned Cumann na mBan marks on how unique it was, not only the 31Conan, T., (2006): The Forgotten Role of Women Insurgents in The 1916 Rising available at http: //arrow.dit.ie/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1048&context=aaschmedart 32as above. 33D, Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000 London, 2004, p. 217).

41 role played by women in the Rising itself, olutionary Marxist perspective is difficult to but also the commitment to equality in the overstate. He combined socialist theory and Proclamation of ‘religious and civil liberty, practice, bringing together in struggle, as equal rights and equal opportunities for all circumstances permitted, the most progres- its citizens’. She suggests it would likely not sive elements, male and female, in the fight have been that way were it not for the strug- for liberation, under the banner of the ICA. gle of women in the years preceding the rev- They were at most 10 percent of the fight- olution when Irish feminists fought for the ing forces that Easter week; had they been rights of women to be recognised and where more, their legacy would have been harder radical nationalist women engaged in debate to suppress and ignore. One hundred years with their colleagues on these issues34.I later - we have a duty to shout about it. would like to add that role of Connolly’s rev-

34Margaret Ward, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMV4MrJls2M

42