The Treatment of Militant Anti-Treaty Women in Kerry by the National Army during the Irish Civil War

Abstract

The Treatment of Militant Anti-Treaty Women in Kerry by the National Army during the Irish Civil War Mary McAuliffe (bio) On 2 november 1922 a short article entitled "The Lot of Women in Tralee" was published in Poblacht na hÉireann (Republic of Ireland), an anti-Treaty newspaper. It took notice of the reports in the daily press of the "arrest by F.S. [Free State] troops of 10 Tralee girls" on 10 October. It was evident, the author noted, that "the Dublin Guards have failed to terrorise the women of Tralee into foreswearing their allegiance to the Irish Republican Army by breaking into homes at midnight, dragging them from their beds, painting their bodies, and heaping upon them every outrage and indignity that only the mentality of the Dublin Guards is capable of devising."1 The National Army had landed at Fenit near Tralee on 2 August of that year. Attacks on and arrests of anti-Treaty Cumann na mBan women began soon afterward and were reported in various mainstream and anti-Treaty newspapers.2 Poblacht na hÉireann was founded by Liam Mellows, Frank Gallagher, and Erskine Childers in 1922 to disseminate propaganda for the anti-Treaty side. The paper was published in broadsheet format to make it easy to paste onto walls (mainly the work of militant women), where it could be easily and widely read. The newspaper does not seem to have survived past June 1923, but during its lifespan it included many articles on the activities of militant republican women and on the violence committed against [End Page 72] them by the National Army. Although Poblacht na hÉireann generally "detailed the anti-Treaty position in a mainly level-headed and often quite sophisticated manner," this newspaper article about the experience of republican women in Tralee contains both fact and hyperbole.3 Cumann na mBan women had indeed been arrested in Tralee. As the Evening Echo reported on 31 October, "ten very active girls of [the] Cumann na mBan organisation were arrested in their homes in Tralee." This occurrence, it stated, was "a new departure," and the women were lodged in Tralee Female Prison.4 Yet in this report there is no mention of the assault on their bodies with paint or of any other indignities that might have been heaped upon them during the arrest. The writer of this Poblacht na hÉireann article was here conflating the experiences of different groups of militant women in Kerry at the hands of the National Army. This essay focuses on the treatment of militant anti-Treaty women by the National Army during the Irish Civil War. Concentrating on the experiences of women in Kerry from August 1922 to the end of 1923, it explores the anxieties and misogynist ideologies that provoked harsh, gendered, and sexual mistreatment of women as well as both its immediate and subsequent impact on militant and non-militant women in the Irish Free State. Gemma Clark, the leading historian of everyday violence in the Civil War, asks, "How distinctive were women's interactions with the Irish Civil War, and—a connected question—how useful is a gender framework for understanding these violent and transformative years in Irish history?"5 While Clark asks this question mainly about female noncombatants, she does acknowledge that "combatant" is a contested and ambiguous term "in civil war generally," and that "women played militant roles during Ireland's conflict specifically."6 In the context of such specificity this essay will consider the distinctiveness of militant anti-Treaty women's interactions with violence inflicted by Free State soldiers. As Françoise Thébaud acknowledges, looking at war through [End Page 73] "women's eyes means analyzing the place of women in wartime societies," including "their political involvement or choices."7 Furthermore, if we consider the importance of gender as "a useful category of historical analysis" (as Joan W. Scott has argued), then a study of the Civil War through a gendered lens "poses questions about all forms of sexual hierarchy [and] produces a more complex picture."8 As Scott also notes, a gendered lens will provide "new perspectives on old questions," "redefine the old questions," and "make...