Using new archival sources and information from some of the relatives of these forgotten activists, in her new book Rebel Women, Margaret Ward gives us a compelling account of the courageous contributions of over fifty women who were members of Cumann na mBan, or who were attached to the IRA between 1914 and 1924 in County Antrim. The book focuses on members of the Belfast branches and of branches in the isolated communities of the Glens of Antrim. Throughout this period of conflict and partition, women played an essential role in the republican movement. Not only did they organise arms dumps, shelter men on the run, hide money and documents, provide weaponry for operations, care for the wounded and organise effective communication systems, they also paid the price in terms of raids and imprisonment.

Dr Margaret Ward is Honorary Senior Lecturer in History at Queen’s. She is a feminist historian, with a particular interest in the contribution of Irish women to political movements in the 20th century. A graduate of QUB, Margaret has taught feminist history at Queen's, the WEA, the University of the West of England and Bath Spa University. She was assistant director of Democratic Dialogue 2000-5, and director of the Women’s Resource and Development Agency 2005-13.  Amongst her many publications are Unmanageable Revolutionaries: women and Irish Nationalism (1983), biographies of Maud Gonne and Hanna Sheehy Skeffington and edited works (with Louise Ryan), Irish Women and the Vote: Becoming Citizens and Irish Women and Nationalism: Soldiers, New Women and Wicked Hags; and Hanna Sheehy Skeffington: suffragette and Sinn Féiner, her memoirs and political writings (2017), and now Rebel Women: Cumann na mBan in Belfast and the Glens of Antrim, 1914-24 (Beyond the Pale Books, 2023).

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