The women of Cumann na mBan have been commemorated at both national and local level with books, conferences, plays, television programmes and community-based activities taking place throughout the Decade of Centenaries. The history of northern women, however, has been much more difficult to uncover and much less celebrated.
The digitisation of the Military Services Pensions Collection has provided researchers and families with a huge amount of information on the revolutionary period. It has also given us, at long last, an invaluable opportunity to map women’s involvement in the northern counties, although the additional obstacles experienced when it came to making their claims highlights the unsympathetic environment in which they lived.
IRA officers in the Second Brigade, North Antrim, compiling a list of their main activities for the Military Services Pensions Board, emphasised “the overwhelming hostility of the Imperial population, which embraced over 80% of the inhabitants of our area. Our men ran grave risks in being even identified with an extreme National movement.”
Elizabeth Delaney, O/C of the West Belfast branch of Cumann na mBan, wrote to the board to explain the difficulties she and many other women were experiencing in finding IRA officers to substantiate their claims: “Situated, as we are in Northern Ireland, with a hostile censorship, it is very difficult to procure these statements, as most of the people who could vouch for my active service are now living in Eire.”
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In writing Rebel Women: Cumann na mBan women in Belfast and the Glens of Antrim I deliberately chose to concentrate on Co Antrim: Protestant, mainly Presbyterian, with a Catholic population of 20 per cent. It has been said, with understatement, that one had to be brave to be an active republican in Belfast. In 1920 alone, almost 650 houses and business premises were destroyed and 8,000 people forced out of their homes while between July 1920 and June 1922, 78 women (mainly from Belfast) died in violent incidents directly related to the conflict.
There were two areas of significant republican activity in the county: Belfast and the Glens. As waves of Scots Presbyterians migrated to Antrim in the 17th century, the native Irish were pushed into the remote Glens or survived on a small coastal area in the far north-east. Those who fought there were fighting for their survival – small enclaves of nationalists existing in a hostile hinterland.
The timeline of activities in struggling in against the imposition of partition differs significantly to the chronology of the 26 counties. In the north, two defining events were the “northern offensive”, orchestrated by Michael Collins, which briefly united pro-and anti-Treaty sides in the north in fighting the imposition of partition, to be followed, inevitably, by the “big round-up” of May 1922. This saw the introduction of the Special Powers Act, the outlawing of republican organisations, mass internment and an exodus of many thousands fleeing across the border.
I have been able to construct at least partial accounts of the lives of more than 50 women, members of Cumann na mBan or attached to the IRA, through supplementing the pension applications with census information and other archival sources, and with the enthusiastic and very welcome support of a number of families.
Working-class women, the majority of whom were textile workers, formed the backbone of the organisation, but there was a huge variety of backgrounds. What all had in common was considerable bravery as they carried guns through road blocks, hid armaments in their homes, despite constant raids, stood outside during curfew hours, guarding men meeting or sleeping inside, or wearily walked miles through the countryside or up hills, carrying clothes and food for men on the run, terrified that a lorry load of B Specials might be lying in wait around the corner.
Through these pages we encounter women like Nora Quinn, pushing 11 rifles, six revolvers and a load of ammunition buried under bedclothes in a handcart as she travelled through the New Lodge Road and the city centre to her home in Dover Street.
Former stitcher Teresa McDevitt, working in the milliner’s section of a department store, hid arms and ammunition in her workplace, delivered arms to the men of the Active Service Unit and spirited them away afterwards.
Bridie O’Farrell, a friend of Maud Gonne (and, using the stage name Margaret O’Gorman, a leading figure in the Ulster theatrical world, playing in London and New York), was a member of Belfast Cumann na mBan from its inception. She remained active until the end of the Civil War, dying in poverty in 1936. Shops in West Belfast closed as her vast funeral cortège made its way to Milltown Cemetery - the ultimate tribute to her status a cordon of 13 RUC men at her graveside.
Una McCrudden lived with her sisters and widowed mother in the wealthy and mainly Presbyterian neighbourhood of the Upper Newtownards Road in East Belfast. A bookkeeper, her firm’s offices in High Street became a recognised dispatch centre for the Belfast Brigade Intelligence Section. During 1920-21 the family home acted as a meeting place for the Brigade, while the Belfast Boycott committee also met there, their literature typed up by Una’s sister Eibhlín. Mrs McCrudden hid arms under the floorboards in her kitchen. In understated language Una testified that they “suffered much through the hostility of their neighbours”. The family eventually moved south, where the sisters found work in the civil service.
Nellie O’Boyle, a handkerchief stitcher, was one of a group of women to evade military and police cordons when carrying rifles in golf bags to Belfast men on the run who were forming an Active Service Unit in Cavan. When the unit was ambushed, with one man killed and three captured, Nellie was sent back to make funeral arrangements and to contact the prisoners. Fighting for the anti-treaty forces, she was arrested and imprisoned in Kilmainham.
Rose Black, in her 40s, a former tailor, was custodian of the Belfast finances and “principal special courier” for the Antrim Brigade. She also acted as guide for the men from Cork No 1 Brigade sent north to kill DI Oswald Swanzey in retribution for the murder of Tómas MacCurtain, Lord Mayor of Cork. She was tried by court martial in July 1921 and given a five-year sentence. In February 1922 she was served with an internment order by the northern authorities, despite the fact her eyesight had deteriorated so much she was almost blind.
In the Glens, women formed branches in Ballycastle, Cushendall, Dunloy, Glenravel, Loughguile and Glenariffe. In that remote part of the county, they travelled long distances through hilly countryside to deliver dispatches and arms, storing supplies in dug-outs on family farms, helping to make explosives in remote outhouses, and always there as providers of beds, clean clothes and food.
IRA officers travelled constantly, evading the security forces, knowing that there would be lookouts posted so they could meet, strategise and rest in comparative safety. Mary Scally pushed her child in a pram full of guns before the attack on the Torr Head Coastguard Station. Seventeen-year-old Annie McGarry lost a thumb and two fingers when there was an explosion while she was removing explosives to safety.
As republicans attempted to escape following the failure of the May Offensive, it was the women of the Glens who cared for them in the hills, bringing food, dry clothing and intelligence on the whereabouts of the security forces, before escorting them to the safety of the border. On one occasion Katie McCarte faked a wedding party to fool the Specials.
There are many more experiences within these biographical accounts. And there are still many more that we do not know about. For example, Annie Ward, O/C for Belfast Central, who refused to apply for a pension as she refused to accept the legitimacy of the Irish Free State.
Rebel Women breaks new ground, but it is only a start. There also needs to be more research covering women in the other counties in the north.
Margaret Ward is Hon. Senior Lecturer in History, Queen’s University of Belfast and author of Rebel Women: Cumann na mBan women in Belfast and the Glens of Antrim
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