Did my relation take part in the Irish Rebellion?

QMy great uncle, Joseph English, was born in Renfrew, Glasgow, on 12 May 1882. He signed up to fight fi in November 1914, claiming on his h attestation papers to have served six s years in the Royal Irish Rifles and four f in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. H In January 1915, he was w discharged as “unfit for further military m service” and died in 1918.

His attestation papers (pictured) are stamped “POLITICAL”. Was he involved i in the Irish Rebellion? Dee D Drinkwater

ADocumenting involvement in Ireland’s revolutionary period (1912– 1922) 1 is challenging. Republicans were acting a against the British government, which w made secrecy paramount, and little l contemporary documentation was created c or kept. Most Irish sources for this period were created decades later and are based on recollection.

Special Branch in Scotland Yard was keeping tabs on active Republicans in Ireland and Scotland. There are collections such as CO 904, Colonial Office files, in The National Archives (TNA) at Kew that include police reports and lists of suspects. Some of this material is on Ancestry ( ancestry.co.uk) and Findmypast ( findmypast.co.uk). If Joseph was identified as political, someone in the War Office (WO) likely received a report, and further investigation at TNA is warranted.

Also, the Irish Military Archives ( military archives.ie/en/home) has digitised and published the Irish Republican Army nominal rolls, the Military Service Pensions Collection and the Bureau of Military History witness statements. The rolls only list membership in 1921 and 1922, but the pensions applications have been indexed by name, and the witness statements are fully searchable. The applications and witness statements, although authored in the 1930s and later, contain valuable lists of active members. Finally Republican newspapers for the period are available on the subscription website Irish Newspaper Archives ( irishnewsarchive.com). Nicola Morris