Further reading S. McCoole, No ordinary women: Irish female activists in the revolutionary years (Dublin, 2003). S. McCoole, Guns and chiffon (Dublin, 1997). M. Jones, These obstreperous lassies: a history of the Irish Women’s Workers’ Union (Dublin, 1988). Joseph E. Connell is the author of Dublin in rebellion: a directory, 1913–1923 (Lilliput Press, 2006). By 1916 many members of the IWWU and the IWFL had joined the Irish Citizen Army or Cumann na mBan, and over 250 participated in the Rising itself. HI ‘Hitch your wagon to a star. Do not work for the right to share in the government of that nation that holds Ireland enslaved, but work to procure for our sex the rights of free citizenship in an independent Ireland.’ For some republican women, it was also becoming clearer that there were other issues besides votes for women and freedom from British rule, in particular the poverty endured by the Irish majority. Like other suffragists, they felt that women should not champion the cause of Irish independence if in an independent Ireland they remained disenfranchised. Nationalist women believed that women’s suffrage while Ireland remained under British rule would not liberate Irish women but would simply provide them with a voice in a parliament whose legitimacy they did not recognise. Republican women appealed to supporters of women’s suffrage to join their struggle against British rule. The Daughters of Ireland newspaper, Bean na hÉireann, editorialised: Concurrent with the suffrage issue was the need to protect the rights of women. The Irish Women’s Workers’ Union (IWWU) was launched on 5 September 1911, with James Larkin as president and his sister Delia as general secretary. Larkin decided that membership in the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU) was reserved to men, and the IWWU was formed on the principle that women workers needed their own union. The union claimed 1,000 members by 1912.

Nevertheless, that the women were as militant as the men was illustrated by the experiences of Roseanne (Rosie) Hackett. An employee at Jacob’s, she was one of the most militant in the 1911 strike, was locked out in 1913 and was unable to get employment thereafter. The Jacob’s strike was the first major industrial dispute involving women workers in the city. And in the Lockout of 1913, women from Jacob’s factory were described as amongst the most militant, and they utilised their organisational skills to run mass soup kitchens at Liberty Hall.