The formal Launch of the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival 2022 will take place at the Shandon Butter Market Garden on Friday 1st July at 1pm.
Our eleventh annual festival takes place from Thursday 28th July until Saturday 30th July and contains a full programme of events, both indoors and outdoors.
Spirit of Mother Jones Festival 2022 Poster.
According to Jim Nolan of the Cork Mother Jones Committee
“We will have over 20 events ranging from talks and lively discussions, to walks and exhibitions, to presentations of awards and toasts as well as singing, poetry and music.
We wish to thank our sponsors in particular the Cork City Council, the SIPTU trade union, the ASTI Trade union and IFUT. With their assistance, it is possible to maintain the festival freeand open to all.
Highlights will include the screening of the Shandon Area History Group/Frameworks Films documentary‘Ordinary Women in Extraordinary Times’ at the Dance Cork Firkin Crane Theatre on Friday night.
Of special interest this year will be the visit of Antoinette Keegan, whose two sisters Mary and Martina diedin the Stardust Fire tragedy in 1981. Christine her mother and John her father were instrumental in establishing the campaign of the Stardust Victims to seek justice for their loved ones over the past 40 years. Antoinette was will be presented with the 2020 Spirit of Mother Jones Award in person on Friday afternoon 29th July at 3pm.
We hope the people of Cork will come along and show their support to the victims and survivors of the Stardust tragedy in their efforts to attain justice.
After two years in which the festival went online, we are very much looking forward to meeting people again, whether they are regulars or dropping in for the first time to the festival, all will be welcome at Shandon.”
All events are free and all are welcome. (But come along early)
It is with very great sadness that we learned of the sudden death of Liam Cahill, journalist, author, civil servant and trade unionist.
Liam attended the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival in 2019 and spoke on the 100th anniversary celebrating the Limerick Soviet.
Liam Cahill and Mike McNamara at the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival 2019.
He appeared on Thursday Aug 1st along with his great friend Limerick Union man Mike McNamara, following a screening of the 2015 documentary, The Limerick Soviet in which he had participated.
His 2019 publication “Forgotten Revolution: The Limerick Soviet 1919, a threat to British Power in Ireland”, which was an updated, revised and enlarged edition of his original 1990 book on the soviet, formed the basis of Liam’s talk.
Photo of Liam Cahill with the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins in 2019. Photo: Barry Cronin, courtesy of Liam Cahill.
This important book unearthed the incredible story of revolutionary events in Limerick which lay almost undisturbed for almost 70 years and it quickly sold out its print run.
Limerick Soviet 1919.
Liam claimed he wrote it originally to try to answer an important and still relevant question, “why were our grandmothers and grandfathers – even our great grandparents – more radical in their politics than my generation?” It is unclear if he found the answer but the Limerick Soviet is no longer forgotten.
President Michael D. Higgins with Liam Cahill. Photo: Barry Cronin, courtesy of Liam Cahill.
Liam was extremely generous with his time and his advice to members of our committee and during his Cork talk he praised the role of Cobhman and trade union leader Jack Dowling, (long championed by Cork Mother Jones Committee member John Jefferies) who played a key role in the organisation of the Limerick Soviet.
Liam was a political correspondent with RTE and during 1990 worked in Brussels as Government press spokesperson for the Irish Presidency of the European Union. However his contribution to the Irish Trade Union movement was enormous. Apart from being a full-time official of the Federated Workers Union of Ireland, he spent time on the executive councils of the NUJ and the PSEU as well as chairperson of the RTE Trade Union Group. He wrote widely on Irish Labour history. He had a huge interest in sport, especially the Gaelic Athletic Association. His internet forum, An Fear Rua was legendary and original in the early 2000s before twitter and WhatsApp with wide ranging and often heated discussions taking place on the many issues around Gaelic games under the paternal hand of Liam. The trade union and Labour movement has lost a great friend in Liam.
The Cork Mother Jones Committee and friends wish to extend our deepest sympathy to Liam’s children, Susan and Eoin.
Woody Guthrie (1912-1967) highlighted the suffering of the rural poor and dispossessed in depression and dust storm America of the 1930s.
His many songs provide the backdrop for many of the reality of ordinary American life outside of the glamour of Hollywood and big City dreams.
Guthrie openly supported the trade union movement and promoted left-wing causes for several decades and campaigned on social justice issues while his battered guitar proudly displayed the message “This Machine Kills Fascists”.
During the 50s he along with thousands of others experienced the cancelation culture of the communist witch hunts of Joe McCarthy. (McCarthy of Tipperary and Galway heritage was publicly praised by some Catholic bishops in Ireland.)
Travelling incessantly when younger, his songs chart the daily lives of a hidden class of drifting migrant labourers and poor farmers driven from their lands and jobs by exploitation and natural disasters and faced with poverty, hunger and death.
His autobiography, ‘Bound For Glory’ published in 1943, which has sold millions of copies, brought his life’s work and ideas to a wide audience.
Woody played and sang with many of the great artists such as Sonny Terry, Cisco Houston, Leadbelly and Pete Seeger.
The song collector Alan Lomax also recorded Woody for the Library of Congress.
Many regard his composition ‘This Land Is Your Land’ as the alternative anthem of North America.
There is some debate about the words of two of the original seven verses which were critical of the political situation and are rarely sung these days but may still be just as relevant.
As I went walking I saw a sign there And on the sign it said “No Trespassing”. But on the other side it didn’t say nothing, That side was made for you and me.
In the squares of the City, In the shadow of a steeple; Near the relief office, I’ve seen my people. As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking, Is this land made for you and me?
His many songs include ‘Ye Shall Be Free”, ‘John Henry’, ‘Tom Joad’, ‘Pastures of Plenty’, ‘So Long It’s been Good to Know Yah’, ‘Vigilante Man’, ‘ I Ain’t Got No Home’, while the Dust Bowl Ballads contains some of his finest work. He died after contracting Huntington’s Chorea, a degenerative disease.
Poster from Kilworth, Co. Cork gig in 2012.
His son Arlo Guthrie with Marjorie Greenblatt (Mazia), is a well known folk singer and has visited and played gigs in Ireland and in Cork many times.
John Nyhan with Arlo Guthrie
The story and songs of Woody Gurthrie will be told by John Nyhan, Mick Treacy and friends at the Maldron Hotel, Shandon on Friday night 29th July from 9.30, all welcome. Not to be missed.
FREE IMAGE- NO REPRO FEE. Photo By Tomas Tyner, UCC.
Dr Angela Flynn is a lecturer in the School of Nursing and Midwifery in UCC. Having worked as a nurse in the NHS in London, she returned to Ireland in 1999. She was shocked at just how unfair and inequitable the Irish health system was and was taken aback by the stark two-tiered system.
Over half the population of Ireland pay for private health insurance because they know that should they need to see a consultant or have scheduled surgery they will languish on waiting lists if they stay as public patients.
Angela decided to examine the history of the Irish health care system that led to this inequity for her PhD, and she used Noel Browne’s Mother and Child Scheme as one of the case studies. She has published a number of papers from this research. Now in 2022, on the 25th anniversary of the death of Noel Browne, Angela will discuss an imagined world where his scheme had been successful and explore the potential health system we could have had.
Background.
Noël Browne was born in Waterford on 20th December 1915. He died in Connemara on the 21st May 1997.
A quarter of a century has passed since the death of Noël Browne, the most controversial Minister for Health in Ireland’s history. His courageous account of early life and a political career of over 40 years can be found in his autobiography ‘Against The Tide’ published in 1986. Written with a rare honesty and integrity, it portrays an often heartbreaking account of the ‘precarious survival’ of early family life against the backdrop of the deathly poverty, illness and the sheer awfulness of daily experience for many poor people in the new Irish State. His earliest memories of witnessing the savagery of the Irish Civil war ensured his abhorrence of violence.
Both parents, Joseph (1923) and Mary Therese (1929) died of tuberculosis (TB) and many of his seven siblings contracted the killer disease, Noel who also had TB was one of three to survive, while his sisters Annie, Eileen, Una and Jody, his brother all eventually succumbed.
Official figures show that from 1921 to 1950, 114,000 Irish people died of the disease. Scarcely an Irish family remained untouched and many families were completely wiped out.
Browne was fortunate to be “adopted” by the Dublin surgeon Neville Chance and his family who ensured Noel gained entry to Trinity College and eventually became a doctor.
He realised quickly that the only way to change Ireland’s disastrous health system was to become directly involved in political action. Browne, by now a committed socialist was elected to Dail Eireann in 1948 as a Clann na Poblachta TD. The Clann, led by Sean McBride with ten TDs joined a Coalition government. To the surprise of many he was appointed Minister for Health on his first day in the Irish parliament.
The Tuberculosis (TB) Scheme was based on a 1946 White Paper produced by Dr James Deeny the Chief Medical Officer of the Department of Health while Dr Jim Ryan’s Health Act of 1947 and the Health (Financial Provisions) Act 1947 gave a legal and financial basis for a no means test principle for the health care of Mothers and Children. Dr Noel Browne to his everlasting credit ensured the treatment of TB was fully implemented. He also acknowledged that his authority for the Mother and Child Scheme arose from that Health Act of 1947.
He commenced a massive hospital construction project, free X-ray screening for tuberculosis patients and set in motion systems to eliminate tuberculosis with the aid of Streptomycin. The blood transfusion service was set up.
Browne set a frenetic pace within the department, he was indeed a man in a hurry witnessing the immediate and positive impact of the National Health Service (NHS) introduced by the UK Health Minister Aneurin Bevan in July 1948.
Unprecedently and uniquely for a politician, he decided to actually implement the health reforms contained in the Irish 1947 Health Act, fully aware that he would “only have one crack at it”. However his proposal to introduce free medical care for children under 16 and their mothers in order to reduce child mortality which became known as the Mother and Child Scheme was vigorously opposed by the Catholic Hierarchy which it described as ‘the free-for-all Mother And Child Scheme’ and Irish Medical Association (I.M.A) which condemned it as ‘the socialisation of medicine’.
Browne refused to concede to the concessions demanded by the Church and the establishment and once he lost the support of his leader in Clann na Poblachta, Sean MacBride who requested his resignation he was eventually forced to resign on 11th April 1951.
Now a political outsider, he never regained access to political power again to drive positive structural change in the health system.
Later many of the changes Browne had helped to introduce made a real difference to ordinary people and the arrival of vaccines and new drug treatments helped to reduce significantly the death rate. This fell by half within a few years and was down to 15% of the 1940 levels by 1960. The death sentence of a TB diagnosis was no more.
While aspects of his health scheme were eventually put in place, his initial opportunity to construct a NHS type universal health care system for Ireland was lost and the two tier private and public health system remains in place.
Noël Browne. Source: Houses of the Oireachtas.
Noel Browne remained in politics, moving in and out of various political parties, marginalised by those in the political power, ignored by others, always controversial, passionate from the back benches, sometimes caught up in roundabout arguments of the Left yet adored by many radicals as an uncompromising advocate for the social justice and a universal free health system.
John Horgan’s book Noël Browne, Passionate Outsiderportrays this complex man in a warts and all analysis with empathy, understanding and some criticism.
Browne’s love story with Phyllis Harrison, was told by Phyllis in her publication Thanks For The Tea, Mrs. Browne – My life with Noel.
Written with love and affection, sadness and struggle, courage and quiet passion, Phyllis describes their life together as “a stormy passage” and the difficulties they faced through over fifty years of married life. The couple even tried farming, an episode described with some humour in an Amateur Farmer’s Journal. Browne was originally informed that he had six months to live when they married back in 1944, he again suffered a relapse after his appointment as Minister and occasionally ran his department from his sick bed.
Noël Browne retired from politics in the early 80s, daughters Ruth and Sue raised, he and Phyllis moved to an isolated cottage in Connemara on the west coast of Ireland where he wrote his memoirs Against The Tide, which became a best seller. Some former political colleagues received blunt assessments of their actions and when coupled with a gripping narrative, the book remains a very rare and raw account of Irish life and politics.
Former Labour Party Minister for Health, Barry Desmond in his memoir “Finally and InConclusion” discussed Noel Browne in a chapter “An icon Revisited”. He acknowledged that Browne emerged with “considerable credit” but strongly criticised “Against the Tide” for some aspects of its personal criticisms of some individual politicians on the left in Ireland, especially in the chapter The Left in Ireland.
Historian Joe Lee in Ireland 1912-1985 Politics and Society has described Noel Browne’s career as among “the personal tragedies of recent Irish politics”.
While admitting that he brought “idealism, energy and ability to his task” and accepting that “his vision was generous” and decent which would have argued well for his ideal health service, he added that “his talents were largely squandered as the rest of his public career was to be passed in growing frustration and rancorous recrimination”.
Did Noel Browne indeed underestimate those in the political game “protecting their privileges, their pockets and their power”? JJ Lee suggests he did but that Browne exacted sweet revenge in “Against the Tide” as he became the first former Minister to publish detailed memoirs with portraits of his colleagues “etched in vitriol” which consigned that Costello government to the opprobrium of many observers.
However did Noel Browne really underestimate the extent of Church opposition to his scheme to provide free assistance to mothers and their children?. Many of the Cabinet were members of the secretive right wing Catholic Knights of St. Columbanus. These included Richard Mulcahy, (Minister for Education) Sean Mac Eoin,(Minister for Justice) Joe Blowick (Minister for Lands) and William Norton (Minister for Social Welfare and leader of the Labour Party 1932-1960). Even Taoiseach John A. Costello had been a Knight. Brendan Corish, Labour party leader from 1960-1977, was appointed Secretary of the Department of Local Government, was also a Knight.
Browne was criticised by several commentators for destroying records on his departure from his Department relating to the Mother and Child Scheme however his actions were more understandable if one considers that the conservative Knights were also well represented both across the higher echelons of key Civil Service departments where they controlled general policy and promotion networks within their departments, and in the medical professions, where they controlled medical appointments to hospitals. Did Noel Browne ever really stand a chance?
Yet if Bill Norton’s planned Social Welfare Bill and Sean Mac Eoin’s effort to legislate to solve adoption issues both failed to pass the McQuaid veto on legislation, then Browne must have realised that his chances of legislating for the Mother and Child scheme without a means test passing the “commandos” of the Knight of St Columbanus were also negligible.
Browne also strongly opposed the violent activities of various Republican groups and challenged their basis for espousing socialism or social democracy. His views on contraception, censorship, abortion and homosexuality and his savage attacks on the Catholic Church, while prescient of later social battles, alienated many potential allies in the Labour Party and the Left generally.
His successful efforts to end the scourge of TB and his exposure to a new generation of Church control of the State remain his major achievements.
But his passionate dream of providing access to a decent health service for all citizens of the Republic of Ireland based on need remains to be achieved.
‘He lies in the clean sandy soil by the Atlantic shore, where he liked to sit every afternoon, seagulls and screaming curlews flying above him’
Phyllis Browne.
On Saturday afternoon 30th July at 2.30 Angela Flynn will discuss the Mother & Child Scheme, imagine if it had been successful and explore the potential health system we could have had.
Eve Telford is a singer of traditional folk songs as well as her original compositions. She sings traditional Irish songs, and also Welsh, Scottish and English songs.
Eve Telford
In her singing of traditional songs, one can sense her deep-seated connection with the old folk singers who have passed on.
She is currently recording an album of Child ballads learnt from the singing of Irish Travellers, with her partner, the singer and musician Jimmy Crowley. She has been booked for folk festivals in Ireland and Britain, such as Cork Folk Festival and Whitby Folk Week, both solo, and as a duo with Jimmy Crowley.
Her original songs are inspired by the wellsprings of world mythologies, indigenous rights, a proximity to the natural world, and a commitment to political protest.
Eve was born in Adelaide, Australia, and grew up in Japan, Tasmania, England and Wales, before finding her home in Co. Cork, Ireland. She believes that her early exposure to different cultures, as well as the absence of television and screen-culture in her childhood contributed vastly to the development of her folk psyche.
Jimmy Crowley has been a regular at the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival since the very beginning of the event.
Jimmy Crowley with Richard T. Cooke
His collection of ballads and his singing style has appealed to generations of people everywhere but especially on Cork’s North side. Many of his songs represent working class traditions and gatherings.
Jimmy began singing in the late 60s and he formed Stokers Lodge. The group became regulars in the folk clubs around Cork city.
By the early 70s he had begun to write his own material and revived the art of the ballad maker.
His songs feature local Cork customs, sports and drinking. Draghunting, road bowling and hurling appear as well as local features such as Quinlans Pub in Blackpool, the Lee Road and The Boys of Fairhill.
The Boys of Fairhill Album and Songs from a Beautiful City.
While serving his time to a cabinet-maker he learned a popular song in 1920s Cork called simply Boozing.In Johnny Jump Up he sings of a cider so strong from being stored in old whiskey casks that it represented a passport to heaven. Jimmy sings of Katty Barry, Mother Jones, Mick Barry the bowler, Father Mathew and Jack Doyle.
The words of many of over 140 of these ballads are contained in his great work Songs From The Beautiful City, published by the Freestate Press in 2014. Jimmy has made an inestimable contribution to the preservation of traditional Cork ballads.
Jimmy loves playing at the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival and one should not miss his performance with Eve Telford on Friday 29th July at the Shandon Maldron Hotel.
Jimmy and Eve will sing at the Shandon Maldron Hotel from 1 to 2pm for a lunchtime concert on Friday 29th July.
All are welcome, but please come in good time to guarantee a seat.
Jimmy Crowley and Mick Moloney in 2015 at Cork City Library at the launch of Songs From a Beautiful City.
Note:
Mick Moloney was born in Castletroy, Co. Limerick. He joined up with Donal Lunny and Brian Bolger in 1966 to form the Emmet Folk Group, where he sang and played the banjo and mandolin. Later this group became The Emmet Spiceland (after Mick had left). In the late 60s he and Paul Brady joined the Johnsons, with Adrienne and Lucy Johnson whose father had a pub in the village of Slane, Co Meath. The Johnsons had a string of hits including arrangements of The Travelling People, The Tunnel Tigers, O’Carolan’s Concerto and The Wind in My Hands. Mick went to America around 1973 and played traditional songs and collected roots music. In 1993 he was awarded a doctorate in folklore and music from the University of Pennsylvania. Mick played, sang, taught and amassed a vast collection of songs and tunes during his lifetime. He was professor of Music at New York University. Sadly he was found dead at home in Greenwich Village on 27th July 2022.
As 2022 signals a return to real festival events, we are happy to announce that Luke Dineen will once again speak at this year’s Spirit of Mother Jones Festival.
Labour and trade union historian Luke has appeared at many of our festivals and is one of the most popular contributors.
He brings to life the often forgotten history of the trade union movement in Cork and its proud contribution to bettering the lives of ordinary people.
Dr. Luke DineenLuke receiving a presentation from Ann Piggott of the Cork Mother Jones Committee.
Luke, who was awarded a PhD in labour history from UCC will speak on the “Cork General Lockout of 1923”.
The end of the Civil War in May 1923 encouraged the Cork Employers’ Federation (CEF) to demand wage reductions across a wide range of workplaces in the city. Discussions and negotiations with the unions failed to resolve the issues and by July 1923, the ITGWU dockers were on strike. The employers insisted on wage reductions of up to 25% and further reductions in workers allowances which the unions refused to accept.
On 20th August 1923, most businesses in Cork closed, the Cork Lockout had begun, over 6000 workers were either on strike or locked out by their employers.
It was part of a wider effort by employers in other cities and towns across Ireland to bring about wage cuts.
Despite large marches, sackings, mass unemployment and growing signs of serious shortages of food and coal stocks, John Rearden, a solicitor and secretary of the CEF refused to compromise and the impasse dragged on in the city.
Recently elected TD and UCC Registrar Alfred O’Rahilly acted as arbitrator in the dispute and agreed a resolution with Trade Union leader Jim Hickey.
Alfred O’RahillyJames Hickey
Most workers went back on reduced wages by mid November and while at the end of the day, both sides accepted compromises, the trade unions suffered most as the lockout used up much of their financial resources in strike pay, Payments to strikers by the ITGWU were almost £24,000 representing 15% of all the union’s expenditure for 1923. Membership fell to a third of its 1923 level by 1928. Employers still retained the right to hire and fire at will.
The final result of the 1923 Cork Lockout set the Cork trade union movement back many years. On a political level, the new Free State government had clearly signalled to the trade union movement, that it no longer needed to encourage their support in the new independent Ireland. The Irish government instead aligned with the new state already established business class, whose pragmatic rapprochement with the changed political order reflected the inherent conservatism of the real victors in the Irish Civil War. Labour would have to wait again!
Luke Dineen will speak at the Shandon Maldron Hotel at 11.30 am on Saturday 30th July. All are welcome.
Sources:
Article by Luke Dineen ‘Class War in Cork’: The Cork General Lockout of 1923′ in Saothar 46. (Journal of the Irish Labour History Society 2021).
Article by Francis Devine, The Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union in Cork City and County 1918-1930. (Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society Volume 124, 2019).
