PHIL Ní SHEAGHDHA, President of the Irish Congress of Trade Union (ICTU) will speak at the forthcoming Spirit of Mother Jones Festival.
Phil Ní Sheaghdha. Photo by INMO.
She will examine the role of the trade union movement in Ireland and the future of collective bargaining in the ever changing world of AI and the digital revolution.
Phil was born and raised in the West Kerry Gaeltacht and is a proud advocate for the Irish language. She trained as a general nurse at Jervis Street Hospital in Dublin and later completed a postgraduate specialisation in intensive care nursing at Kingston Hospital in London.
Phil has extensive international experience, having worked as an ICU nurse in Ireland, Australia, the UK, and at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York.
She joined the Irish Nurses & Midwives Organisation (INMO), in 1998 and went on to further her education, completing a Master’s degree in Industrial Relations, a Higher Diploma in Employment Law, and a qualification in Economics. Phil served as the INMO’s Director of Industrial Relations from 2008 to 2018, before being appointed General Secretary in 2018.
She is a strong and resilient advocate for her members. Phil has become one of the best known trade union spoke persons due to her regular media appearances and her cogent and factually informative arguments for her members who work in the front lines of the Health system in Ireland.
She is currently President of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), Ireland’s national trade union federation, and serves as one of two Vice-Chairs of the ICTU Public Services Committee.
Phil will speak on Thursday 23rd July at the Maldron Hotel Shandon at 2.30 pm. All are welcome.
Mother Jones celebrating her birthday on the 1st May 1930 at the Burgess Farm in Maryland.
Supporters of Labour and union activist Mother Jones are presently celebrating her “American birthday”, which Mother herself claimed was on 1st May.
Celebrating Mother Jones’ birthday in Chicago are Hector Arellano of the Bricklayers Union and Brigid Duffy as Mother Jones of Chicago. The photo is by the Mother Jones Heritage Project.
This coincides with May Day which is celebrated as workers day across the world and is based on the campaign for an eight hour day by labour unions in America in 1886.
SIPTU plaque at the Haymarket in Chicago.The Haymarket Incident in Chicago.
While the Haymarket incident took place on the 4th May, the subsequent execution of four innocent workers for the deaths of the policemen after a union meeting in Haymarket Square has been commemorated for the past 140 years.
Deeply influenced by the events at the Haymarket, Mary Harris repeatedly refers to the labour martyrs for the eight hour day in her writings and appears to have said later in her life that she was born on 1st May 1830 as part of her Mother Jones persona.
However records at the North Cathedral in Cork show that she was baptised on the first day of August 1837. So she was probably born on the 31st July as children in Ireland were baptised as early as possible after birth. Church records state that Mary Harris was baptised by Fr. John O’Mahony, her parents were Richard Harris and Mary Cotter and her sponsors were James Hennessy and Ellen Leary.
The North Cathedral of St. Mary and Anne, CorkCertificate of birth and baptism.
Of interest is that the baptism font used that morning almost 190 years ago still remains in use today in the Cathedral.
The original baptism font in which Mary Harris was baptised on the 1st August 1837.
So the annual Spirit of Mother Jones festival takes place in the Shandon Historic Quarter in late July to honour Mother Jones’s annual Irish birthday. All are welcome to the events and to attend the annual toast to Mother Jones using the best Irish whiskey at her Plaque in Shandon thus completing the second annual birthday celebrations of this remarkable woman.
The annual toast to Mother Jones at her plaque in Shandon.
In 2026 the dates of the Spirit of Mother Jones festival and summer school are from Thursday 23rd July until Saturday 25th July.
The Cork Mother Jones Committee is very sad to learn of the passing of Joan Goggin. Joan has attended all our festivals since 2012 in the persona and costume of Mother Jones. In that time, she endeared herself to the thousands of people, who have visited the Festival, and became a treasured part of the annual event.
Joan Goggin. Photo, courtesy of Andy Jay
“Joan has made a huge contribution to the Spirit of Mother Jones festivals and we are all saddened by her death. On behalf of everyone associated with this festival we wish to pass on our sympathy to her daughter Eadaoin and granddaughter Aoife who often accompanied Joan and to all her family. Her kindness and positive spirit will be sadly missed by all”
stated Festival spokesperson James Nolan.
Joan was an accomplished actor and singer and always stood up for social justice and the Labour movement. Her father Bill Martin was a branch secretary of the Transport union and she was extremely proud that Jim Larkin would often visit and stay in their house during his trips to Cork.
Joan leading the March of the Mill Children in Shandon in 2019. Photo courtesy of Claire Stack.
Joan in full Mother Jones outfit often joined in with pickets by nurses and other workers in Cork. Her hero was Cork born Mary Harris, whose activities on behalf of miners and workers in America led to her being renamed Mother Jones.
Joan Goggin with UK Trade Union leader, Mick Lynch at the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival. Mick’s father came from Bandon Road in Cork City, near where Joan was born. She referred to Mick as a “neighbour’s child”.Joan with Spirit of Mother Jones Award winner Arthur Leahy and Cork Mother Jones Committee 2025.Joan welcomes Lord Mayor of Cork, Cllr. Fergal Dennehy to the Festival 2025.Final performance by Joan at the plaque in 2025.
May Joan rest in peace! We will miss you dear friend.
‘Ní bheidh a leithéid arís ann’
Watch Joan above as she portrays Mother Jones visiting Cork in 1920.
A reminder from the Mother Jones Museum and Heritage Project Committee to join them for the annual St Patrick’s Day Parade in Chicago this Saturday March 14th2026.
Meet up at 11am at Columbus and Balbo.
All supporters of Cork born Mary Harris/ Mother Jones are welcome to join in the huge St Patrick’s Day parade.
According to Rosemary Feurer of the Mother Jones Heritage Project
“We always have a great time at the St Patrick’s Day parades in Chicago and this time we want to carry this great banner about Free Speech, a quote from Mother Jones. Come along and help us to spread the message about her.”
Mother Jones died at the Burgess farm in Maryland at 11.55pm on November 30th 1930.
Mother Jones at Lillian Burgess’ Farm. Left to Right: Mr. Burgess, Mother Jones and Burt Fowler.
Mother Jones and Lillie Burgess on Sept 16th 1930, just before Mother Jones died.
Her funeral was attended by tens of thousands of union workers. Father William Sweeney celebrated mass for the repose of her soul at St. Gabriel’s Roman Catholic Church in Washington on Wednesday, 3rd December 1930.
The casket was then placed on the Baltimore and Ohio train and was transported by rail following the route taken by the train bearing the remains of Abraham Lincoln to Springfield in 1866. From St Louis’s Union Station, the casket bearing Mother Jones was placed on the Wabash train to Mount Olive. It was taken to the Odd Fellows Hall in the town where it lay in state for a further three days. Thousands of miners and their families called to pay their respects.
Media reports state that up to 40,000 trade unionists and working people swamped the town over the three days in what was probably the largest gathering for a funeral of a woman trade unionist in history. Women could not ascend the formal male career ladder of trade unionism at the time and so Mother Jones remained a front line union organiser especially in the early 1900s.
The crowds of miners gather in Mt Olive.
Yet her leadership of miners, her fearless approach to union organising and her moral authority among working class people remained without parallel. Her fearlessness and courage had made her a legend, and so almost a decade after she took a back seat from union activity, when she was over 80 years old, her funeral provoked a massive response from workers everywhere.
They remembered, we remember too after ninety five years.
The reponse is probably best summed up by Fr. John Maguire
Father Maguire, a labour activist, spoke in his oration at the funeral of Mother Jones.
“Sometimes, she used language that a polite family journal could not print, sometimes she used methods that made the righteous grieve……But let it be remembered that she was, after all, human. Her faults were the excesses of her courage, her love of justice, the love in her mother’s heart. Today in gorgeous mahogany furnished and carefully guarded offices in distant capitals, wealthy mine owners and capitalists are breathing sighs of relief. Today among the plains of Illinois, the hillsides and valleys of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, In California, Colorado and British Columbia, strong men and toil worn women are weeping tears of bitter grief. The reason for this contrasting relief and sorrow is the same.
Mother Jones is dead!”
Author, Edward M. Steel editor “The Speeches and Writings of Mother Jones (1988 University of Pittsburg Press) in his afterword described the final public “birthday” appearance of Mother Jones on 1st May 1930.
“Although she had been confined to bed for weeks, on 1st May she summoned up the energy to move from her upstairs bedroom to a rocking chair under the apple tree in the yard (of the Burgess farm), where all day long she opened telegrams and letters, received visitors, reminisced with old friends, bantered with reporters, and presided over the cutting of the five-tiered birthday cake supplied by the bakers’ union.
Mother Jones with her birthday cake. Photo: Courtesy of Saul Schniderman.
Many labour leaders in their Washington HQ had conspired to make the day a success and Paramount sent a crew to film the festivities. When she spoke into their microphones, she probably addressed more people than she had in years of street gatherings and public addresses.”
Mother Jones.
The New York Times report the next day contains the longest quotation from her fiery birthday remarks:
Out on the lawn she faced the talking picture cameras, took a deep breath and a drink of water, and began an impromptu speech which brought loud applause and sent the nearby circling crows wheeling back to the woods. A dog enjoying a nap in the May sunshine jumped to his feet as the white-haired labor leader said in a ringing voice:
“America was not founded on dollars but on the blood of men who gave their lives for your benefit. Power lies in the hands of labor to retain American liberty, but labor has not yet learned how to use that power. A wonderful power is in the hands of women, too but they don’t know how to use it. Capitalists sidetrack the women into clubs and make ladies of them. Nobody wants a lady, they want women. Ladies are parlour parasites.”
Baptism Font at the North Cathedal in Cork where Mother Jones was baptised on the 1st August 1837. At the rear is St. Joseph the worker, a carving by Ken Thompson.Burial place of Mother Jones in Mt. Olive. Photo: James Goltz. Note: The Irish flag flies over her grave.
Later on in the day in a TV recording which still exists, she said in her singsong accent which betrayed her Cork roots:
“You know I am considered a Bolshevik, a Red and an IWW and a Radical. And I admit to being all they’ve charged me. I’m anything that would change moneyed civilization to a higher and grander civilization for the ages to come. And I long to see the day when Labour will have the destination of the nation in her own hands and she will stand as a united force and show the world what the workers can do.”
Mother Jones
In an earlier letter from Mother Jones dated November 12th 1928, she had made a special request to the miners of Mt. Olive.
“When the last call comes for me to take my final rest, will the miners see that i get a resting place in the same clay that shelters the miners who gave up their lives on the hills of Virden Illinois, on the morning of October 12th 1898. For their heroic sacrifice for their fellow men they are responsible for Illinois being one of the best organised labor states in America. I hope it will be my consolation when I pass away, to feel that I sleep under the clay with those brave boys.”
This Union Miners Cemetery was founded in Mt. Olive in 1898. As well as the Virden dead, many activists of the Progressive Miners’ of America (P.M.A) lie buried in this unique resting place. Among those who have been buried there recently include singer songwriter, and union activist, Anne Feeney, who performed in a concert at the 2014 Spirit of Mother Jones Festival in Shandon, Cork. In 1936, members of the Progressive Miners’ of America erected a large monument with two bronze statues and a 20 foot pillar over the grave of Mother Jones at its center. It was unveiled on the 11th October 1936 and more then 50,000 people attended the ceremony.
The Cork Mother Jones Committee announces that the 2026 Spirit of Mother Jones Festival will be held in and around the Shandon Historic Quarter over three days and nights from Thursday 23rd July until Saturday 25th July.
Bernie and Jane Sanders toast Mother Jones at the plaque.
According to James Nolan, spokesperson for the festival,
“We are happy to confirm that our 15th Annual Spirit of Mother Jones Festival will once again take place in the Shandon Historic Quarter in 2026.This inspiring festival is dedicated to trade union leader and social justice advocate Mother Jones, who was born Mary Harris in Shandon in 1837 and who has become an international symbol for human rights across the world.
This festival celebrates her life and achievements and supports the causes she fought for as the 100th Anniversary of her death in 1930 approaches.
The 2025 Spirit of Mother Jones Award was presented to Arthur Leahy. Included in the photograph is Cork’s own Mother Jones, Joan Goggin.
Organised by a voluntary committee, it remains open and free to all and attracts large numbers of visitors to our community annually.
We were overjoyed that US Senator Bernie Sanders came to Shandon in May to visit the community and walk the streets and in the footsteps of Mary Harris.
We acknowledge the practical support and encouragement of the Irish trade union movement and the assistance of the Cork City Council which enables the festival to produce a varied and challenging programme of events each year.We will announce participants and speakers over the coming months.”
Mexican Community Dancers accompanied by trade union leader, Mick Lynch at the Dance Cork Firkin Theater during the 2025 Festival.
The Cork Mother Jones committee is again inviting people to suggest ideas for topics at next year’s festival. These should relate to labour and trade union matters, its heritage and history, social justice and human rights issues. Potential speakers might also contact the committee if they feel they would like to address a related topic at the festival and summer school itself. Material must be relevant, interesting and challenging as debate and discussion is encouraged. All suggestions are considered by the voluntary committee and the closing date is 14th February 2026.
Don O’ Leary, community activist and fearless fighter for accessible and second chance education for young people, passed away today Friday 3rd October aged 68.
Don O’Leary speaking at the 2022 Spirit of Mother Jones Festival.
Don was the recipient of the 2022 Spirit of Mother Jones Award at an emotional ceremony on the 30th July 2022 in Shandon for his work with the Cork Life Centre. He was the first Cork man to receive this award for his tireless efforts and personal commitment to giving young people a second chance to acquire an education.
Don O’Leary with members of the Cork Mother Jones Committee and Rachel Lucey of the Cork Life Centre.Don O’Leary on Shandon Street waiting for the visit of Bernie Sanders to Nolan’s Butchers Shop.
Don O’Leary was thrilled to receive the 2022 Spirit of Mother Jones Award in recognition for his efforts to provide education for the youth of Cork. He was proud to receive the award as it was bestowed by the ordinary people of Cork. Among his other heroes were trade union leader, Mick Lynch and US Senator, Bernie Sanders, both of whom he met in Shandon during their visits to the community to honour Mother Jones.
The award citation presented to Mr. O’Leary contained the following:
“For his courage and determination to ensure that children and young people are not left behind by the Irish education system”
“For his advocacy of human rights and social justice especially in relation to the rights of children and their opportunities to progress to the best of their creative abilities and individual talents which contribute so much to a better community and world”.
Don O’Leary and Antoinette KeeganRachel Lucey, Don O’Leary and Sharon O’Neill.
Don O’ Leary with Caitriona Twomey.
James Nolan on behalf of the Cork Mother Jones Committee stated…….
“Don O’ Leary advocated tirelessly for giving young people a second chance in the education system which echoed the central belief of one of his heroes Mother Jones who also fought for the rights of young people to receive an education. We wish to express our sincere sympathy to the O’ Leary family on the passing of Don.”
Don O’ Leary receives the Spirit of Mother Jones Award for 2022 from James Nolan.
“The Organised Society and Role of the Labour Movement.”
The former General Secretary of the National Union of Rail,Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) Union, Mick Lynch returned to Cork to speak at the Spirit of Mother Jones festival 2025.
He spoke about the role of the Labour Movement in society.
Mick Lynch. Photo: Emma Bowell.
Thanks to JASE Media Services and after receiving many inquiries we are showing his entire talk which took place at the Dance Cork Firkin Crane.
Relevant, interesting and challenging are the criteria for presentations and lectures at the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival. Mick Lynch certainly delivered in this talk. We hope you will watch the video and listen to his ideas.
Mick Lynch: Photo: Angela Flynn.Joan Goggin and Ann Piggott with Mick Lynch. Photo: Emma Bowell.
Des Geraghty, Karan Casey, Mick Lynch and Ethel Buckley at the Cork Butter Exchange in Shandon.
Mick Lynch speaking at the weekly Gaza March in Cork City. Photo: Angela Flynn.Mick Lynch at the Mother Jones plaque.Mick Lynch with the Mexican Community Dance Group.
Cork piper Norman O’Rourke sadly passed away on Tuesday August 26th at St Finbarr’s hospital.
Norman O’Rourke at the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival.
Norman played his pipes at many events across Cork but for those of us associated with the annual Spirit of Mother Jones Festival, he will be remembered for piping in the Lord Mayor of Cork to the formal launches and official opening ceremonies of the festival.
Norman O’Rourke with the Lord Mayor of Cork, Cllr. Kieran McCarthy and Cork’s Mother Jones (Joan Goggin).
Norman learned to play the pipes in the 1950s with the Cork Volunteers’ Pipe Band which took part in commemorative parades throughout Ireland and played at all the major Gaelic Athletic Association matches during that period. To many, Norman was the face and image of Cork city and he proudly adorns a large banner on the Grand Parade having been chosen as the official piper of the Decade of Centenaries celebrations by Cork City Council, where he is viewed by the thousands coming and going in the City Centre. He used to joke how he kept an eye on all the parades and demonstrations gathered right underneath him for years.
A City Remembers. Norman looks down on the Grand Parade.
A proud follower of Cork hurlers he was so looking forward recently to the All-Ireland final this year but alas victory was not to be. He played with and supported St Vincent’s Hurling and Football Club. However he was regularly seen leading parades of excited children to their medal presentations on pitches at GAA clubs, the sound of his pipes being a magnet for crowds to gather. A lifelong republican he played his pipes at commemorations, parades and funerals where he was a familiar figure.
Norman O’Rourke plays at the baptism font, where Mary Harris (Mother Jones) was baptised on 1st August 1837 in the North Cathedral in Cork. His performance took place on August 1st 2012 at the inaugural Mother Jones Festival. Photo by Martin Duggan.
He played at festivals across the City and It was a great honour for the Cork Mother Jones Committee to have him come each year to do the honours for the Lord Mayor of Cork at our festival. Norman often returned to the festival events later with his wife Marie where he listened to the speakers and the music and he really enjoyed the songs and the craic of the Cork Singers’ Club. Possessing a vast knowledge of Irish history he had a repertoire of stories and funny incidents which he told with a warmth, sincerity and humanity. His admiration for the Cork girl who went on to become Mother Jones was total.
Norman O’Rourke in Shandon in 2012.Norman O’Rourke with Marat Moore in 2012.
He was extremely proud of his family and spoke of his love and support for them.
Norman’s beloved pipes may be silent for now but his warm heart lives on.
We offer our sympathy to Marie, his children and his family.
Norman O’Rourke with his good friend, Richard T. Cooke.Finbarr Archer with Norman.Norman chatting with Richard T. Cooke and Ann Rea on the Cork Mother Jones Committee at the Festival in 2024.
Norman pipes in the Lord Mayor of Cork, Cllr Dan Boyle accompanied by Cork’s Mother Jones to the Festival in 2024.
