'If you want to walk round Ireland, or any other country, dress suitably in short skirts and strong boots . . . and buy a revolver." – Countess Constance Markievicz was making a speech to the Women's Franchise League in October 1915 when she brandished one of her most infamous lines.

The newly released tranche of files from the Military Service Pensions Collection 1916-1923 shows that a significant number of women in Ireland took heed of Markievicz and made an active contribution to the eventual foundation of the Irish State.

“Fifty years before the present Defence Forces talked about getting women into the Irish Army, Michael Collins was already doing it with the IRA of the War of Independence,” Patrick Brennan, Military Service Pensions Collection project manager said at a briefing in Cathal Brugha Barracks, Dublin, this week.

There are ample accounts, in the files, of Army pensions – granted and not granted – to the dependents of those wounded or killed on active service from 1916-1923 but it is the awarding of military pensions that is of particular interest as they are paid to those who played an actual military role during those years

According to Brennan, membership of Cumann na mBan, the "organisation of women founded to advance the cause of Irish liberty", is not the best indicator of receipt of pensions in this second tranche of files. Rather "the contact and say-so of senior IRA officers is more important". However, the legislation provided that pensions could be paid to members of the organisation and it is apparent that this was the course followed in this tranche of files.

Cécile Gordon, archivist at the Military Archives of Ireland, says that some 350 files relating to 176 female pension applicants are being released, to add to the 260 files that were released in January.

These relate to applications made under the Military Service Pensions Act, 1934. As Gordon points out, “qualification for a pension for any woman under the Act of 1924 made it virtually impossible for women to meet the criteria. Cumann na mBan was not an organisation covered by the legislation”.

Activities

By the 1934 Act, however, Cumann na mBan was listed as a qualifying organisation, but the types of activities that qualified an applicant, that is “activities of a military nature”, still disqualified many women who had been routinely involved in Cumann na mBan core activities, such as first aid classes, collections for prisoners’ dependants, drilling and care and cleaning of weapons, for example.

The 1934 Act also removed the need for “National Army service” thus allowing anti-Treaty activist-men and women to apply for pensionable service.

Many of the tasks women had assumed from 1916 to 1923 included keeping safe houses for IRA purposes, keeping and hiding arms, moving arms and explosives and providing food, shelter and clothing for IRA columns and active service units. Of the 176 pension cases investigated and released this week, 166 were for members of Cumann na mBan who were found to have been actively engaged in these activities.

Writing in 1939 about the need to consider moving the goalposts for “Qualifying Service” to open up the State’s military pensions chest in a more inclusive way, John McCoy, formerly commander of the IRA’s 4th Northern Division and member of the advisory committee, wrote: “It would be unwise to adopt a standard of service for the women less exacting than what will be applied to men who are classed as ‘key-men’. On the other hand it would be most ridiculous to expect women to have taken part under arms in engagements with enemy forces.”

Advocacy

McCoy’s advocacy of the value of “carrying dispatches”, “houses used for IRA purposes” and “care of arms and dumps” by women was taken into account when the applications were considered by the referee and advisory committee set up under the Acts of 1934 and as amended in 1949. The Acts were now much more amenable to pension claims from women who had been active between 1916 and 1923. Gordon cautions about drawing conclusions, though, “until we have finished our work”.

“There are still many, many women’s files in our boxes in the collection awaiting attention. We’re finding them every day, some more startling in the service they have provided to the independence movement. The role of women during this period is finally getting increasingly redefined and new voices ought to be heard.” To paraphrase Constance Markievicz, a consciousness of women’s “own dignity and worth” is finally being seen and recognised.