The revolutionary women’s movement, Cumann na mBan, was set up 100 years

Posted by Jim on April 6, 2014

The revolutionary women’s movement, Cumann na mBan, was set up 100 years
ago this week. It maintained the struggle for independence following the
Easter Rising and in 1921 became the first organisation to reject the
treaty which partitioned Ireland. Sally Richardson looks at their stand
for equality and unity.

The Easter Rising lit the touch paper of revolution, but in the
immediate aftermath it was left to women to prevent it from fizzling
out. Of the seventy-seven women arrested after the rising, all but six
(all Citizen Army) were released almost at once. While the men were
forced to pursue their further education at the University of
Revolution, Frongoch internment camp, the women were left to reorganize
and regroup.

If the Volunteers’ dependents’ fund provided a conventionally charitable
outlet for their activities, women also maintained the revolutionary
momentum with vigorous and imaginative propaganda campaigns. These took
several women to the United States, including Hanna Sheehy Skeffington
who got access to president Wilson to present him with a Cumann na mBan
petition.

The Conference of Women Delegates, set up in April 1917 by women
including Kathleen Clarke, Aine Ceannt, Kathleen Lynn and Helena Molony,
demanded adequate representation of women on Sinn Fein’s Executive not
just in the light of the Easter proclamation’s commitment to equality
and the women’s efforts during the Rising but also on account of ‘the
necessity of having their organized cooperation in the further struggle
to free Ireland and the advantage of having their ideas on many social
problems likely to arise in the near future.’

In other words, women’s inclusion was not only their right; their
contribution was of particular value, too. A Convention of Women
Delegates resolution affirming women’s equality within Sinn Fein was
passed at the Sinn Fein convention in 1917.

The General Election of 1918, in which Constance Markievicz was elected,
did not appear to be much of a triumph at the time. One seat in the Dail
seemed a pitiful harvest. Many women had assumed that their hard work
and commitment would automatically lead to nominations for winnable
constituencies. Markievicz’s nomination for the Dublin constituency of
St Patrick’s was followed only by that of Winifred Carney for a largely
unionist Belfast constituency which she had no chance of winning. Hanna
Sheehy Skeffington refused the equally unwinnable constituency of North
Antrim. Kathleen Clarke, then in Holloway Prison with Markievicz, found
her hopes of standing dashed by the machinations of Richard Mulcahy.

Sinn Fein were mindful of the impact that newly-enfranchised women could
have on the election and were prepared to use this in their publicity
(‘You can save Ireland by voting as Mrs Pearse will vote’). The
resulting landslide owed much to women’s efforts, although there was
anger at the lack of resources given to Markievicz’s campaign.

Cumann na mBan’s separate status gave it autonomy and gave the women the
chance of leadership. If it had been absorbed into the Volunteers it is
likely women would still have been confined to their traditional roles
and would have had no voice of their own. If, like the Irish Citizen
Army, the Volunteers had been established with the principle of gender
equality at the outset, perhaps more progress would have been made.
However, Cumann na mBan had grown in confidence; they aspired to be more
than just ‘animated collecting boxes’ and sought to ‘participate in the
public life of their locality and assert their rights as citizens.’

Looking through the records of this amazing period, one cannot help but
be struck by the modernity of these women. For all their studied
antiquarianism and the plundering of Ireland’s distant past for
inspiration, these women were very much of their own time. Many were
highly educated (three out of the six women in the Second Dail were
graduates). They earned their own living (and demanded equal pay); they
were independent minded, bold and confrontational; they were prepared to
defy convention and break rules. It was to warlike heroines such as
Granuaile and Maeve rather than more conventionally ‘feminine’ women
like Emer that they looked for role models.

According to IRA commandant Michael Brennan, the flying columns would
have collapsed without Cumann na mBan. “In despatch carrying, scouting
and intelligence work, all of which are highly dangerous, they did far
more than the soldiers . . . the more dangerous the work the more
willing they were to do it.”

They were anxious to prove their worth and determined to show that they
could share the dangers and responsibilties of war. If women accepted
traditional ‘women’s work’ and did it willingly and without complaint,
it was not because they ‘knew their place’ but because they were
prepared to do anything that needed to be done. If they weren’t given
the chance to fight, then they could still cook, launder, nurse and
carry despatches.

IRA memoirs are dominated by men’s activities, but women get some
positive mention. Tom Barry, while relegating Cumann na mBan to the
“sole purpose of helping the Irish Republican Army”, acknowledged that
they were “indispensible to the Army” and paid tribute to their work. If
women were given the drudgery of the armed struggle, at least they were
not taken for granted. It is worth mentioning that Barry’s wife, Leslie
Price, served in the GPO during Easter week while he was in Mesopotamia
with the British Army.

Women also set up a network and framework of safety and security for the
IRA to operate in. Housewives provided safe houses and went short
themselves to feed the Volunteers. Cork IRA man Connie Neenan’s mother
(a “fighting type”) and aunt were two of many who transported and hid
IRA weapons. Volunteers’ mothers gave much support, often in the absence
of or without the knowledge of their husbands. The ‘separate spheres’
culture that then still largely obtained meant that while fathers
usually involved themselves little in family life, mothers were often
close to their children and shared their subordinate position. Perhaps
this fostered the rebelliousness which they taught their children —
instead of the ‘slave mentality’ that Connolly so despised, these women
were transmitting rebellion down the generations.

Women’s hardline stance, evident before the Easter rising, continued
after it. Cumann na mBan members opposed the Treaty by a huge majority.
Women certainly stood to lose by a compromise settlement; it was clear
that their rights would only be guaranteed by a Republican victory. The
General Election of 1921 saw the election of six women to the Second
Dail. It is perhaps significant that strongly Republican Cork and
Limerick selected and returned women candidates (Mary MacSwiney and Kate
O’Callaghan). Republican strongholds — especially in urban areas — had a
more progressive attitude towards women.

These women all voted against the Treaty. It was remarked on (then and
ever since) that four had lost brothers, husbands and sons in the Easter
Rising and the Tan War; but the assumption that they were little more
than the mouthpieces for dead men was patently unfair. As Kate
O’Callaghan explained, she had been a separatist since girlhood. Mary
MacSwiney and Kathleen Clarke were also committed republicans of many
years’ standing.

The vote against the Treaty was lost in the Dail, but the women scored
an important victory in securing the franchise for all women over
twenty-one. The vote had been granted in 1918 only to women aged thirty
or over. Thus Irish women were fully franchised from 1921 onwards; Thus
Irish women were fully franchised from 1921 onwards; women in Britain
had to wait until 1928 before they got the vote on equal terms with men.

The occupation of the Four Courts by the anti-Treaty IRA — “Easter week
in reverse” as Desmond Greaves called it — echoed Easter week in more
ways than one. Women like Maire Comerford carried despatches under fire
and Linda Kearns risked her life tending the wounded. Though wishing to
share the discomfort and dangers equally with the men, the women were
disconcertingly treated with a rather touching chivalry and shielded as
much as possible from danger. On surrender, Comerford tore off the Red
Cross band placed on her arm by a priest.

Louie Bennett and Rosamond Jacob were among a number of republican women
who joined the campaign set up by feminists to oppose the First World
War that was to become the Women’s International League for Peace and
Freedom (the ‘Peacettes’ as the Daily Express derisively called them).
Irish women, at least, unlike feminist peace campaigners in Britain,
were able to oppose the war and conscription without accusations of
being unpatriotic. As the women at Greenham Common would find out,
objections to men’s right to kill one other without good cause brings
down opprobrium onto feminist heads.

If women tended to fill gaps left by men’s absence, or to do the work
men would not do, Ireland’s fight for freedom gave Irish feminists an
arena to continue to operate in which prevented the feminist movement
from fizzling out once the vote had been won. Often engaged on several
fronts at once, women played a vital role in bringing together the
different strands of the revolutionary movement: the military,
political, feminist and socialist causes were thus integrated.

Much had been achieved. The most progressive republican men had on the
whole been ready to treat women as comrades and to accept them as
equals. The conservatives who took power in the Free State did their
best to exclude women from public life and power. It was a cold climate
for a lot of men as well. But precedents had been set. Women’s voices
had made themselves heard. They still speak to us today.ted.