The 2024 Spirit of Mother Jones Festival will be launched officially at the Maldron Hotel, Shandon, on Monday, July 1st. The festival will be launched by the Lord Mayor of Cork, Cllr. Dan Boyle at 1pm. The Lord Mayor will be piped to the hotel by Norman O’Rourke and accompanied by Cork’s Mother Jones (Joan Goggin).
Following the Lord Mayor’s formal launch of the festival, the Kalyna Ukrainian Community Choir will make a special appearance, performing a selection of Ukrainian and Irish songs. The Cobh Animation Team will also be present. Singer John Nyhan will then honour some old friends.
The magnificent 2024 poster featuring Mother Jones based on a painting by artist Lindsay Hand will be unveiled, as will the full programme of events for the three-day Spirit of Mother Jones festival, which begins on Thursday, July 25th, and continues until Saturday, July 27th.
Director Felipe Bustos Sierra, will appear on Zoom in a Q&A
Thursday morning 25th July at 10.30am at the Maldron Hotel, Shandon.
The Opening Event.
Felipe Bustos Sierra (director) is a BAFTA-winning Chilean-Belgian filmmaker based in Scotland. His first feature “Nae Pasaran” (2018) uncovered the true impact of the solidarity of Scottish factory workers for victims of Pinochet’s military coup in Chile.
Felipe Bustos Sierra.
As a result of the film’s research, the men involved received recognition from the Chilean government and a public monument was erected to commemorate their gesture 40 years later. The workers were presented with the Bernardo O’Higgins award, the highest honour the Chilean Government can give to non-citizens. O’Higgins had Irish roots in Co Sligo and was one of the founders of Chile..
Order of Bernardo O’Higgins Medal. Source: Wikipedia.
The film became, on release, the most successful Scottish documentary in UK cinemas. It was nominated for Best Documentary at the BIFA 2019 and won Best Feature Film at the BAFTA Scotland Awards 2018.
Speaker: Jack Lane of the Aubane Historical Society.
Venue: Saturday 26th July 2024 at 2.15 p.m Maldron Hotel, Shandon.
“The ‘All for Ireland League’ does not feature very much in the standard history of the country. Yet it was one of the most significant movements in our history. It was instrumental in nothing less than creating a social revolution in empowering the rural working class – the farm labourers – into a movement that satisfied their essential needs as a class. It is a very appropriate subject for this festival as it was always identifiable with Cork in its origins and successes. It has many monuments in the numerous Labourers’ Cottages that dot the local countryside.” Jack Lane.
Historian, Jack Lane.
Aubane Historical Society was founded by a number of local people in Aubane in North Cork in 1985. “It seeks to make available original and first hand accounts of various aspects of our history’. It has produced many publications and some of these are available from its website. See www.aubanehistoricalsociety.com
General Background note from Cork Mother Jones Committee:
The Irish Land and Labour Association (ILLA) was founded in the early 1890s in Munster to agitate for tenant farmers and rural labourers rights. Among its founders was Kanturk born D.D. Sheehan (later an MP from 1901 – 1918) who became its chairman. He placed a particular focus on the rights of farm labourers who lived in poor housing conditions, very often in mud and stone cabins almost unchanged since the Great Famine times.
Demanding land and houses for people along with fair wages, education and pensions, the organisation quickly commanded widespread support from rural workers mainly in Co Cork, but also in Limerick and Tipperary. Growing in power and influence, Sheehan’s ILLA demanded a housing programme for these long neglected rural labourers. Later, William O’Brien’s All For Ireland League from 1909, both largely based in Cork supported these demands. This substantial cohort of rural workers and labourers had been largely ignored by the Irish Party in favour of the tenant farmers who were availing of favourable land purchase schemes.
The Labourers Acts of 1906-1914 were influenced by this agitation and their implementation utterly transformed the Irish countryside when the local County Council created a massive programme of large scale public house building of rural cottages with attached plots of land. Tens of thousands of these cottages were constructed over the next decade especially in County Cork and throughout Munster and upwards of a quarter of a million low income people were housed in decent comfort.
Labourers Cottage known as Sheehans’ Cottages. (Wikimedia). (Osioni).
It represented an incredible achievement over a short period. The Government using the state institutions such as the County Councils to acquire the land,construct good quality and affordable houses to a number of designs and then house local families
One is left to wonder why the modern Irish state today with vastly more resources cannot resolve our housing crisis based on the very effective and practical housing template across rural Cork and other counties. A template of public housing sourced and implemented by the ILLA and the All For Ireland League over one hundred years ago.
Ann Piggott of the Cork Mother Jones Committee presents a Mother Jones portrait to Jack Lane, speaker.
Topic. The Future World of Work and the place of Trade Unions.
Speaker. A talk by Owen Reidy General Secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU).
Saturday morning 27th July 2024, 11:30 am at the Shandon Maldron Hotel, Cork.
Owen Reidy, the General Secretary of the ICTU has agreed to speak at the forthcoming Spirit of Mother Jones Summer School.
Owen is from Donegal and spent 18 years with SIPTU where he organised workers in the aviation, finance, contract cleaning and security services sections of industry.
Owen Reidy General Secretary of ICTU
He was involved in several industrial disputes including the Greyhound Lockout, the Luas dispute and disputes in CIE.
Prior to being appointed General Secretary of the ICTU in October 2022, he had responsibility for Northern Ireland as Assistant General Secretary since 2016.
According to James Nolan spokesperson for the Cork Mother Jones Committee
“We are so pleased that Owen Reidy, General Secretary of the ICTU has accepted our invitation to speak at the thirteenth Spirit of Mother Jones Festival. It is the first time the ICTU leader will address those attending the festival and it is a great honour for us to have the leader of the Irish Congress here in Shandon.
It just goes to show how important union woman Mother Jones, born in this very community has become to the Irish Trade Union movement”
Owen Reidy will speak on the topic “The Future World of Work and the place of Trade Unions” at the Summer School on Saturday morning 27th July at 11.30am. This will be of interest to all union members, union activists and workers generally. All are welcome.
Date and venue: Friday 26th July 2024 at 11.30am. Maldron Hotel Shandon as part of Spirit of Mother Jones Summer School.
John Barry is Professor of Green Political Economy and Co-Director of the Centre for Sustainability, Equality and Climate Action at Queens University Belfast. He is also Co-Chair of the Belfast Climate Commission. His last book was The Politics of Actually Existing Unsustainability: Human Flourishing in a Climate-Changed, Carbon-Constrained World (Oxford University Press).
John Barry at Climate Change Rally in Belfast in 2021.
John Barry is a father, a political activist, trades unionist, recovering politician and a member of the Sustainable Future Committee of the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.
What keeps him awake at night is the life opportunities and future wellbeing of his and other children in this age of the planetary emergency and intersecting social and economic injustices within and between countries. What also keeps him awake at night is the following question: why is it easier for most people to believe in the end of the world than the end of capitalism and economic growth? What keeps him awake during his day job is why higher education is continuing in a ‘business as usual’ manner while the planet burns, inequality increases, and militarisation and conflict within and between societies grows?
John Barry at Palestinian Demonstration Recently.
His areas of academic research include post-growth and heterodox political economy; the politics, policy and political economy of climate breakdown and climate resilience; socio-technical analyses of low carbon just energy and sustainability transitions; and the overlap between conflict transformation and these sustainability transitions.
This will be shown on Saturday 27th July at 3.30 pm at the Maldron Hotel, Shandon during the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival.
What happened at Orgreave?
Forty years ago on 18th June 1984, at Orgreave coking works near Rotherham in the north of England, the National Union of Miners (NUM) organised a mass picket of the miners in an attempt to stop production.
The Miners national strike had been underway for several months at this stage and there had been some minor confrontations between pickets and the police.
However on this occasion the police, adopting military style tactics, attacked the miners, they charged the miners on horses, used dogs to attack individual miners and savagely beat many with batons. Many miners were injured and dozens were arrested. The brutality displayed by the police was quite shocking. It was not a battle, it was a riot by the police. Dozens of miners were seriously injured and many still suffer effects to this day. Over 90 were arrested, however when an initial 15 were put on trial for rioting and unlawful assembly, the trial collapsed due to issues with statements from the South Yorkshire police ( who were also involved in the Hillsborough Disaster just over five years later.) Repeated calls for a public inquiry into the violence of the police on that day, some 40 years ago have been largely ignored by the British establishment.
The events at Orgreave left a very bitter legacy in miners communities and many commentators have since stated that something changed forever in Britain on that morning, in many ways it represented a display of the iron fist of Thatcherism. The miners strike lasted a year and resulted in defeat for the NUM and the end of the coal industry and their communities.
Photographer John Harris’s stark image of the policeman on his horse attacking Lesley Boulton as he swung a long truncheon at her head leaves an indelible memory in many people. She had earlier shouted at a policeman to get an ambulance for an injured miner, the policeman swung round his horse and charged at her. Luckily a miner behind Lesley pulled her back by her belt and the blow missed. (See top right photo on the 30th Anniversary banner below.)
For up to date news on Orgreave and the calls for a public Inquiry visit the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign at www.otjc.org.uk
The Cork Mother Jones Committee showed this film with the permission of Yvette Vanson at the 2014 Spirit of Mother Jones Festival, and again at the 2015 festival when General Secretary of the Durham Miners Association, the late Dave Hopper, who was present at the “battle” gave an eye witness account of the events.
Mick Treacy of Ballybeg, Mitchelstown, passed away on 27 May 2024, just five days short of his 86th birthday.
Mick Treacy at the Cork Butter Market August 2021.
Mick, his friend and fellow musician John Nyhan have sang at the Spirit of Mother Jones festivals from 2016 onwards. Many people have mentioned these unforgettable singing sessions at the Maldron Hotel when Mick and John performed the songs of Pete Seeger, Joe Hill, Ewan MacColl, mining songs, and the songs of the Spanish Civil War with power and passion in front of packed and appreciative audiences.
What some people present did not realise was that Mick, who was in his 80s, was regarded as a legend in folk circles in Britain and Ireland back in the 1960s. He sang and performed with many of the greats of the folk revival in that period. This unassuming singer remained deeply passionate about social justice and labour and campaigned actively for nuclear disarmament in Britain during that time.
Mick came to folk music by listening to The Weavers, Delia Murphy, Joe Lynch, Connie Foley, and Cork woman Margaret Barry in the fifties, and then the Skiffle movement in Britain, which Ken Colyer spearheaded. The revival of interest in folk song and music resulted in the growth of informal folk clubs in many large cities and towns across Britain and Ireland. Young aspiring ‘folkies’ flocked to hear singers and musicians who had been playing folk for a while as many Skiffle groups had embraced this new scene.
Mick went to England in late 1960 and became part of the whole folk revival, first listening to and then learning from Ewan McColl, Bob Davenport, Alex Campbell, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot and many more. By 1964, he was singing in Birmingham Town Hall in a fundraising concert for the West Midlands Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and later joined an Irish Group called ‘The Munstermen‘. This group comprised Mick Treacy, Mick Hipliss, Mick Lillis, Gerry Norris and Eamon Lowe.
Mick Treacy speaking at a CND rally at the Bullring (courtesy of Cherry Gilchrist).
This led, in turn, to the founding of the legendary Holy Ground Folk Club at the Cambridge Inn in Birmingham in April 1965. Over the next three years of its operation, weekly sessions attracted huge crowds excited at the prospect of hearing the performances of many of the great singers, such as Ewan MacColl and Joe Heaney. “The Munstermen” played and sang almost weekly at this club.
In 1967, Mick came to Dublin and sang in most of the great venues of the day, such as the Embankment, the Castle Inn, the Old Sheiling, and many of the local Folk Clubs, before returning to his native Mitchelstown, where he settled down, worked in the Dairygold creamery, and married Maura Haran, raised a family of three daughters, Róisín, Jennifer, and Carolyn, and contributed so much on a voluntary basis to his local community.
He has always been interested in the songs of working people, collecting many over the years. With the assistance of Brian O’Reilly in Studio Fiona in Fermoy and his many friends, he released “A Folk Anthology” in 1997, in which he sang and played the accordion and flute. He also released several CDs, including “At the Holy Ground Once More” and “The Road to Bandon.”
“Mick Treacy was a man of great knowledge of folk music and politics and possessed a tremendous intellect and made a huge contribution to the Spirit of Mother Jones festival”, stated his friend and fellow musician John Nyhan
John Nyhan and Mick Treacy at the Butter Market, Shandon, Cork, in August 2021.
Mick himself acknowledged that he felt “privileged to have shared the platform and stage with many pacifist and socialist poets, writers, singers and performers who shared his dreams.”. All involved with the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival feel very privileged to have heard Mick Treacy sing the songs of justice and freedom that were important to him and us.
Mick Treacy with his daughter Jennifer at the 2018 Spirit of Mother Jones Festival.
To Maura and his daughters, Roisin, Jennifer, and Carolyn, everyone associated with the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival offers our sympathy. Ní bheidh a leithéid ann arís.
Thanks go to author Cherry Gilchrist of Cherry’s Cache, who wrote about her visits to The Holy Ground affectionately and supplied two photographs of Mick Treacy.
Julianna Minihan will deliver a talk on the above topic on Saturday, July 27th, 2024, at 10:30 a.m. in the Maldron Hotel, Shandon.
Most of us take water totally for granted, and we never ask questions about where it comes from, how it is delivered to our homes and where it goes. Yet where there is no water, there is no life! It is the very lifeblood of the land and nature. It has been fought over; it has been dammed, polluted and disputed, politicised, and wasted; humans have failed to perfect the cycle of water. Clean drinking water may yet be the oil and gold of future generations, but whereas we can live without oil and gold, we cannot survive without drinking water.
Berwick Water Fountain on the Grand Parade in Cork.
In Ireland, the Environmental Protection Agency has been warning about the growing pollution in our rivers, lakes and seas. Growing controversy from 2013 to 2017 about the privatisation of water supplies and charging for water led to tens of thousands of citizens taking to the streets, arguing that access to fresh water is a basic human right. Uisce Eireann, previously Irish Water, a state-owned company, was established to take over the provision of water and wastewater services, which had previously been carried out by Local Authorities across Ireland.
Old water pump which delivered a public water supply to many communities.
The following is Julianna Minihan’s outline of her talk:
“This talk will outline the historical provision of water in Cork City 1760-1900, with some background information on the people of the city, public health, economics, and levels of poverty at the time. It will consider how the poor of Cork were affected by a part time and inadequate supply of water from a very few public fountains paid for by the City; and how 50,000 poor Cork people were dependent on contaminated water in the 1840’s. It will consider how just 900 houses owned by wealthy people had a private supply of water (which they paid for) in the 1840’s, and how that came about.
It will consider the supply of water to industry, and will briefly mention waste disposal, the cess collection business, the usefulness of market gardens for utilizing compost, and the importance of tidal flushing of the river twice daily. It will explain why the City once again took over the water supply around 1860, and why they had once sold shares to businessmen after 1765. It will provide some information on the people who benefited, the politics, economics, public health, and even the basic need for water for human survival involved in the 1800’s.”
In 1833, one fountain provided water (part-time) for the poor in Cork. It was located on Nile Street (now Western Road). At the time, the company was paying its shareholders 5% dividends, and they complained that the fountain for the poor was built at a great loss to them. They refused to allow other fountains without ongoing payments.
The weir by the water works, originally erected by Mr Fitton in 1765, was known as ‘the Bald Weir’ in an 1845 court case, taken by a mill owner when the height of the weir almost blocked the flow of water on the south channel of the Lee.
The Water Weir on the River Lee is close to the Waterworks.
Julianna Minihan will speak at the Maldron Hotel, Shandon, on Saturday, July 27th, at 10:30 a.m.
All are welcome.
The Dunscombe Fountain on Shandon StreetThe Dunscombe Fountain at Christmas.
The Dunscombe Testimonial Fountain above was donated by the Dunscombe family to Cork Corporation in 1883 as a drinking fountain representing an appropriate memorial for abstinence from alcohol. It disappeared in the late 70s, and Cork City Council say they do not know where it is. Would any reader know?
