Private lives and public personas: female participation in the IRA during Ireland's War of Independence, 1919-1921

While much work has been completed to date on the Cumann na mBan organisation - its structure, its membership and its achievements - a significant contribution to advanced Irish nationalism was made by women who acted outside the confines of that group. This thesis examines the activities of women who were not members off Cumann na mBan but who were recognised as IRA Volunteers, members of GHQ Intelligence or even members of Active Service Units. Drawing on sources from the Military Service Pension files, the court martial files of women who were arrested and sentenced, and the Colonial and War Office records in the National Archives in London, it interrogates the data to establish that not only did the women themselves consider themselves to be members of the IRA, but in some cases, the British authorities in Ireland viewed them as such. The fact that recently released state documents acknowledge that women were members of Oglaigh na hEireann on active military service during the War of Independence, is itself revolutionary. No such claims were made by the women themselves outside the confidential confines of the pensions board. In fact, most of them remained remarkably tight-lipped about their activities during this period. This work argues that their experiences during the conflict - of raids, arrests, assaults and imprisonment - ultimately led to silence and secrecy. Their stories never became part of the narrative of Ireland's War of Independence, instead they retreated under the cloak of Cumann na mBan and a more 'respectable' female experience of revolution. These women have not been written out of history - they were never written into it. This thesis will suggest, that they were, in fact, complicit in their own anonymity