The Women of Cumann na mBan, After The Revolution

Ireland’s republican women’s organisation, Cumann na mBan or the Women’s Council, was founded in 1914 to work alongside the militant nationalist Irish Volunteers. It was active throughout the Easter Rising, the Irish War of Independence and took the anti-treaty side during the Irish Civil War. However, by the period of the Second World War (or Emergency, as it was known in independent Ireland), historians agree that the organisation essentially existed only in name. Its activity and public presence had significantly declined in the decades immediately following the revolution and it was struggling to recruit a new generation of activists.

Nonetheless, as this talk will explore, Cumann na mBan maintained its traditional role in support of the Irish Republican Army’s (IRA) activity through propaganda, communications, welfare for prisoners and their dependents and the provision of safe houses in the decades after the revolution and particularly during the Second World War. It also challenged its status as an auxiliary to the IRA in this era – re-asserting its right to act independently.