‘In spite of the general disturbance’: Protestant women’s organisations and the Irish Civil War

This paper considers the work of two organisations, the Mother’s Union and the Girls’ Friendly Society, during the Irish Civil War. It provides a glimpse into the lives of publicly active Protestant women in Ireland, and an insight into the impact of the Civil War on their work. Through this, it reflects on the nature of women’s public lives - as documented by them. 


Many valuable studies of the Irish Civil War with a women’s history focus have concentrated on the activities of republican women, assessing the extent of their participation in politics and armed struggle. There is room for greater exploration of the activities of women who were not engaged in either. This paper considers how the disruption of Civil War conflict increased the need for safeguarding and vigilance work. Collating membership information, holding meetings and collecting monies were all made increasingly difficult by the ongoing violence and its resultant infrastructural disruption. Nonetheless, the overwhelming trend arising from the minutes and reports of both societies is a sense of positivity in the face of adversity and a focus on continuing work despite difficulties. This paper will discuss that resilience and argue that whilst Protestant emigration had some impact on membership numbers, the societies managed to maintain their activities and even expand in some areas.


Susie Deedigan is a final year PhD candidate at Queen’s University Belfast. Her doctoral project is the first comprehensive study of female experiences of political imprisonment and state responses to female subversion in Ireland during the Second World War, or Emergency. She is more broadly interested in women’s and gender history with a particular focus on activism, labour and associational culture and histories of imprisonment and institutions. At QUB, she is a lecturer in twentieth century Irish history and works in Special Collections and Archives digitising and cataloguing twentieth century political collections. She is also currently a member of the Executive Committee of the Women’s History Association of Ireland. 

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