Doing my Bit for Ireland

A first-hand account of the Easter Rising

Whether by gun or words, Margaret was committed to an Ireland in which everyone was valued for their contribution, and were not discriminated against for gender or class. (from the Introduction by Kirsty Lusk). Published in the UK for the first time in this landmark Easter Rising centenary edition, with introduction and footnotes by Kirsty Lusk, Doing My Bit For Ireland is Margaret Skinnider’s eyewitness account of Dublin’s 1916 Easter Rising. The Easter Rising was a key event not just for socialists and nationalists in Ireland, but also for women and supporters of women’s suffrage. Coatbridge-born to Irish parents, schoolteacher Margaret Skinnider risked her life in armed combat for a nation that she claimed in her heart as hers despite her early life in Scotland. Despite serious gunshot wounds during battle, Margaret was later refused an army pension on the grounds that they were only to be awarded ‘to soldiers as generally understood in the masculine sense’. Providing an unusual and much needed female perspective on rebellion and battle, Doing My Bit was written in the USA in the two years following the Rising, and was published only in the States before going out of print. With this edition, Skinnider’s lively and informative voice is made audible again, 100 years after she took part in the rising which led eventually to the partition of Ireland.