“We called ourselves the Irish Ladies’ distress committee”: Irish republican women in Britain, 1916–1923

Abstract

ABSTRACT Irish Republican women in Britain formed a vital network which provided their counterparts in Ireland with weapons, intelligence, and shelter for when they travelled across the Irish Sea. Far from being auxiliary, these women were an essential part of republican operations and blurred the boundaries between the “male” IRA and the “female” Cumann na mBan. Yet strikingly, few historians have examined this network of female republican activism, despite the availability of digitised sources such as the Military Service Pension Collection. This article seeks to remedy this oversight by using this collection to examine the role of republican women in Britain, highlighting the overlapping nature of men and women’s activities, while also drawing attention to the unique circumstances of acting in a clandestine organisation within the country of the enemy.