Cumann na mBan

Cumann na mBan (‘the league of women’), the women's auxiliary corps to the Irish Volunteers, set up in 1914. Members were mainly white‐collar workers, artists, professional women, or women supported by relatives, but also included a significant proportion of working‐class women. Although an independent organization, its executive was subordinate to that of the Volunteers, which made Francis Sheehy Skeffington charge it immediately with ‘crawling servility’. Cumann na mBan membership included many feminists who angrily rejected Sheehy Skeffington's evaluation of their organization. But this early acceptance of a subordinate role helps to explain why women, despite the tireless dedication and radicalism which characterized Cumann na mBan, were to be so effectively marginalized in politics after independence.

The radicalism of Cumann na mBan came into evidence when the vast majority of members voted to stay with the Irish Volunteers after the Volunteer split in 1914. The corps played an active, though non‐combatant, role in the rising of 1916, in signals, first aid, and dispatch‐running, and it sustained one fatality, Margaretta Keogh, at St Stephen's Green. The surrender was delivered by a Cumann na mBan member, Elizabeth O'Farrell, a midwife from the National Maternity hospital.

From 1916 to 1918 Cumann na mBan were largely in charge of fomenting the cult of the dead leaders through commemorative events. They also raised money for prisoners, canvassed for the 1918 elections, and opposed conscription. During the Anglo‐Irish War they hid arms and other supplies, provided safe houses, helped run Dáil courts and local authorities, and produced the nationalist newspaper the Irish Bulletin. Most members opposed the Anglo‐Irish treaty. The rump who supported it called itself Cumann na Saoirse and included Ladies' Land League veteran and Free State champion of women's rights Jenny Wyse Power. At least 400 Cumann na mBan members were imprisoned during the Civil War. It was this organization which initiated the Easter Lily commemorations in 1926. In 1930–2 it was associated with a ‘buy Irish’ campaign and the foundation of Saor Eire, and was often attacked with ‘red scare’ tactics, as was the Fianna Fáil party it helped to elect. Cumann na mBan continued to be active, mainly on the republican left, but was affected by splits in the IRA as well as within its own organization.

Bibliography

Ward, Margaret , Unmanageable Revolutionaries (1983)

Caitriona Clear