Category Archives: Spirit of Mother Jones Festival 2023

What had the Brehon Laws to say about the Environment?

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As part of the ongoing debate relating to the climate change taking place (one we feel would have been embraced by Mother Jones, especially in view of her fight against the exploitation of labour by unregulated capitalism, which now in turn exploits the environment), we welcome Niamh Guiry who will discuss how insights from Ireland’s ancient past might assist Ireland developing a sustainable path to resolving its environmental issues. 

Niamh Guiry will speak at the Maldron Hotel Shandon on Friday morning 28th July at 10.30 am Conservation Insights from Brehon Law: Exploring Ireland’s Ancient Tree Considerations.

Niamh Guiry.

Many ancient cultures seemed to embody a multi-dimensional understanding of their local environment, recognising the practical benefits of healthy ecosystems as well as their more-than-human qualities. 

Delving into Ireland’s past, we find a legacy of environmental considerations, reflected in the legal, social, and cultural value the people of early Irish society bestowed upon trees. Exploring the Old-Irish tree list found in Bretha Comaithchesa (Judgements of Neighbourhood) of Brehon law, mythological stories, and the spiritual practices of the time, this talk discusses how we could use insights from Ireland’s ancient environmental considerations to strengthen our approach to conservation.

Niamh Guiry is a climate activist and PhD Researcher at the School of Law, University College Cork. Her PhD research explores the interrelationship between the 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, global environmental governance, and evolving patterns of international law-making. 

A member of Not Here Not Anywhere, a grassroots organisation campaigning to end fossil fuel exploration and the development of new fossil fuel infrastructure in Ireland, Niamh has a keen interest in biodiversity protection, climate justice, and environmental communication.  

Author and Rewilder Eoghan Daltun to Speak at 2023 Spirit of Mother Jones Festival.

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Eoghan Daltun will speak at the 2023 Spirit of Mother Jones Festival on Friday morning 11.30am about his recent book, An Irish Atlantic Rainforest: A Personal Journey into the Magic of Rewilding.

Eoghan was born in London, brought up in Dublin, lived in several countries and now resides on the Beara peninsula in West Cork. Sculptor and author Eoghan purchased the old Crowley farm of 33 acres with 40 acres of mountain commonage back in 2009. He talks of how the power of nature at Bofickil near Eyeries has regenerated the old woodland and helped to create a temperate rainforest on the farm.

Eoghan Daltun.

The Bofickil woods came about as a result of neglect rather than design. The original owner, Phllip Crowley was a copper miner who worked in nearby Allihies, later emigrated in 1909 to Butte, Montana to work in the copper mines and never came back. While other family members looked after the farm, wild native forest gradually became established and when Eoghan moved in a hundred years later, he provided the protection needed to enhance the natural progress of regeneration. Eoghan had become a conservator and rewilder.

Bofickil Wood

In his book he considers the state of nature in the wider context of the developing ecological crisis across the planet. He has some harsh comments to make about official European Union policy which destroys wildlife habitat and have become box-ticking bureaucratic exercises or fig-leaf solutions.

“….it financially penalises farmers who don’t remove existing wild patches on their land, while other schemes pay them to take token actions that are useless to wildlife. Strange as it might seem, what birds, bats, bees and everything else really need isnt boxes stuck on trees or fence posts, or piles of builders sand, but actual habitat.”  

Eoghan cites the influence of James Lovelock and biologist Rachel Carson. Lovelock developed the scientific theory of GAIA about how the Earth’s natural ecosystems sustain the world’s conditions which are conducive and essential to life on planet Earth. By coincidence, Lovelock, a British scientist, once lived about 25 kilometres back the road at Ard Carrig in Adrigole during the period in which he developed the hypothesis of Gaia. The stunning natural beauty and raw nature of the Beara peninsula may have influenced Lovelock as it does Eoghan Daltun. 

Eoghan Daltun appears at the 2023 Spirit of Mother Jones Festival on Friday 28th July at 11.30am at the Maldron Hotel in Shandon.  

Spectacular Launch of the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival 2023.

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Lord Mayor of Cork, Cllr. Kieran McCarthy launched the 12th annual Spirit Of Mother Jones Festival this morning at Shandon.

Accompanied by Mother Jones (Joan Goggin), the Lord Mayor was led into the Maldron Hotel, Shandon by Cork piper, Norman O’Rourke. The Lord Mayor praised the efforts of the Cork Mother Jones Committee, which through this annual festival ensures that the extraordinary life of Mother Jones spent in defending social justice, labour rights and fair play for all remains a vital and essential element of democracy to this day.

Lord Mayor of Cork, Cllr. Kieran McCarthy with Mother Jones and Norman O’Rourke.

The Cork Ukrainian Choir – Kalyna were our special guests at the spectacular launch and brought the gathering to its feet with several songs from their native land. Accompanied by the Lord Mayor himself, their beautiful version of “Danny Boy” brought a huge response. Folk singer Johnny Nyhan then gave a very poignant rendering of the anti-war song “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” which concluded amidst some tears and indeed when will some people ever learn?

Cork Ukrainian Choir – Kalyna.

The event was also graced by the attendance of the Cobh Animation Team and members of Cork Art Link. 

Cork Ukrainian Choir with the Cobh Animation Team

It was a memorable launch to the 2023 Spirit of Mother Jones Festival. Our thanks to all.

Bogdarra Piasetska (artist), Agata Kozlowska, Liz Cremin, Aaron O’ Connor, Joe Lyons and Olha Davydenko of Cork Art Link.
Cobh Animation Team members, Liz Forrest and Viv Hally.

The Cork Ukrainian Choir – Kalyna will again appear at the formal opening of the festival on Thursday 27th July at 1:00 pm. Do not miss them!

Cllr. Kieran McCarthy with a photograph of the portrait of Mother Jones (Lindsay Hand) following the presentation by Ann Piggott of the Cork Mother Jones Committee.

Spirit of Mother Jones Festival Programme 2023.

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The formal launch of the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival 2023 will be held at the Maldron Hotel on Monday, 3rd July 2023. The launch of the Festival will be performed by the Lord Mayor of Cork, Cllr Kieran McCarthy. We are delighted to present an interesting and challenging programme, which we hope remains relevant to all.

You can download the Festival poster here:

mother-jones-poster-23-4Download

All speakers, singers and musicians included in this programme are committed to attending the festival. Additional speakers and events may be included later. However, there may be late changes to the speaking times of a few speakers due to their commitments elsewhere, so we advise those attending to visit this website regularly to check for updates, which we will provide closer to the festival itself.

*Important Update – 10.07.2023:

Please note this is a revised programme of events. Speaker Mick Lynch is now listed to speak on Thursday, 27th July, at 4.00 p.m. at the Dance Cork Firkin Crane in Shandon. 

A documentary, “Secrets From Putumayo”, detailing the investigations by Roger Casement into the human rights abuses in the rubber extraction industry in Peru, will be shown on Saturday morning at the Maldron Hotel at 11am.    

You can access The Spirit of Mother Jones Festival 2023 Programme below by clicking on the download button.

spirit-of-mother-jones-programme-23-update-final-5-1Download

A Feminist Walking Tour of Cork City.

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Following the very successful Launch of the Feminist Walk Cork website at last year’s Spirit of Mother Jones Festival, we are delighted to announce the return of Maggie O’Neill to the festival for 2023.

http://www.feministwalkcork.ie/

The feminist walk of Cork (the first in a series of feminist walks created with community partners, staff and students at UCC)  celebrates the contribution of women to art, culture, society and the city. Along the route we will explore the role of women in addressing sexual and social inequalities, and building fairer, safer communities. 

Maggie O’Neill at 2022 Festival.

Following the legacy of Mother Jones, the walk writes women into the spaces and topography of the city and is facilitated by Maggie O’Neill and Conach Gibson-Feinblum.

Meet at 4.30 at the Maldron Hotel, Shandon on Saturday 29th July.  

Maggie O’Neill  is Professor in Sociology & Criminology at University College Cork, she has a long history of working with communities to create change, using arts based and participatory research methods. Maggie loves walking, walking as a way of doing research and as a teaching and learning method. She leads a walking module at UCC and is a member of the Walking Artists Network. Maggie has co-created a number of pedagogic walks.

Conach Gibson-Feinblum is a graduate of Criminology (BA) and Anthropology (MA) at University College Cork. She has a passion for feminist epistemologies, particularly Jewish feminism and worked as a research support to co-create the development of the feminist walk website and the feminist self-guided walking map.

Maggie O’Neill
Conach Gibson-Feinblum

The Banshee’s Kiss: William O’Brien MP and the All For Ireland League in Cork 1910-1918.

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On Saturday afternoon 29th July at the Maldron Hotel, Shandon, Patrick Murphy will speak about the split in Cork Nationalism in the early 1900s.

The emphasis for the past decade has been on the Revolutionary period 1913-1923 yet the story of constitutional nationalism and its unique and bitter conflict in pre revolutionary Cork is of interest.

William O’Brien MP. (Wikipedia).

In the present day, John Redmond Street and Great William O’Brien Street are busy thoroughfares located close together on the north side of Cork City, yet how many know about either Mr O’Brien or Mr Redmond or indeed how just over a century ago the vicious riots and violence which broke out between their passionate followers resulted in 90 admissions to the South Infirmary and North Infirmary (The present Maldron Hotel) hospitals on just one night in May 1910.

The Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), whose MPs attended Westminster was forever riven with rows and dissension even as it sought Home Rule for Ireland. Later the All For Ireland League (AFIL) founded locally in 1910 and led by Mallow born William O’Brien succeeded in winning eight of the nine seats available in the House of Commons for Cork in the subsequent general and local elections. Largely now based in the county of Cork it acquired seats on many local authority councils, taking control of Cork County Council, and the Cork Corporation.

Cork city and county witnessed pitched violent battles in many villages and towns yet both factions professed a nationalist outlook in supporting Home Rule, both had significant working class support and both leaders had little time for trade unions or socialism.  The AFIL urged cooperation between Catholic and Protestant through working together and mutual cooperation.

Then in 1914, Redmond and O’Brien advocated participation by their followers in the First World War as many of their volunteers went off to fight and die in the war, some young men and women stayed at home and began to work towards achieving an Irish Republic.

By 1918, the All for Ireland League was no more and the Irish Parliamentary Party was to follow soon afterwards.

Dr. Patrick Murphy was born in Cork and grew up in Ballyphehane. He attended Sullivan’s Quay school which he left at the age of 15 having failed the Inter Cert. His subsequent education was funded by the British taxpayer after he moved to England in 1984. He has a BA in social science, an MA in social history from the University of Nottingham and a PhD from the University of Liverpool with a thesis on the All for Ireland League.

Pat Murphy.

In 1993 he founded the Nottingham Irish Studies Group which runs courses for the local community in Irish history, Irish literature and the Irish language. He is also Chair of the Nottingham Irish Centre. His article ‘Class, Conflict and Conciliation: The All for Ireland League in Cork 1910-1918’ was published in Saothar 46, The Journal of the Irish Labour History Society (2021).

The Banshee’s Kiss: William O’Brien MP and the All For Ireland League in Cork 1910-1918.

Saturday 29th July at 3.15 pm at the Maldron Hotel, Shandon.

Salt of the Earth.

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The Cork Mother Jones Committee is proud to present the 1954 documentary Salt of the Earth at this year’s Festival. It will be shown on Thursday 27th July 2023 at the Maldron Hotel, Shandon, beginning at 11:00 am.

Salt of the Earth is the story of a strike which is based on a 1951 strike in New Mexico. 

Deemed “culturally significant” by the US Library of Congress,it is now preserved in the National Film Registry.

Source: Wikipedia.

On its release in 1954, the American Legion called for a nationwide boycott, it was denounced in the US House of Representatives, investigated by the FBI and the film set was attacked by vigilantes. As its writer Michael Wilson, director Herbert J Biberman and producer Paul Jarrico were all blacklisted in Hollywood in the McCarthy campaign against Communism, Salt of the Earth itself was also blacklisted and many cinemas refused to show it..

Due to financial constraints, a few professional actors such as Rosaura Revueltas as Esperanza Quintero (later deported to Mexico). Will Geer played the Sheriff, he was a socialist, a comrade of Woody Guthrie to whom he introduced Pete Seeger. (he is better known to Irish audiences as Grandpa in the Waltons). They were joined by miners from Local 890 of the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter workers. and their families in the cast. Juan Chacon who played Ramon Quintero was a union local official.

Rosaura Revueltas and Juan Chacon. Source: Wikipedia.

The blunt and austere realism of the strike is full on and direct in some emotional and powerful scenes. Crucially it embraces a unique feminist approach to union politics which was rare in the early 1950 cinema. The wives, family and widows of the miners rally to offer hope for the future of migrant workers.

The earlier efforts of Mother Jones to assist the Mexican trade unions and support the Mexican Revolution is especially relevant

In spite of production difficulties and the quality, this film remains long in one’s mind due to its honesty, its realism and the common human story of labour injustice it displays as the participants strive to tell the story of the union activists and the strike. 

Even the biblical origins of its title, Salt of the Earth did not prevent its condemnation in some quarters as communist propaganda. Yet its message lives on as a brave political statement in opposition to the rampant McCarthyism which prevented progressive film making, culture and the arts in America. That it survives and endures almost 70 years later is testament to the everlasting story of workers organising to fight injustice.

Salt of the Earth will be shown on Thursday morning 27th July 2023 at 11:00 am at the Maldron Hotel, Shandon followed by a discussion. Running time 90 minutes.   

Liz Gillis, author and historian to speak at the 2023 Spirit of Mother Jones Festival.

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She Carried Out All the Duties Given to Her in a Most Efficient Manner – Women in the Irish Revolution.”

As we approach the end of the Decade of Centenaries, Liz Gillis who is a prolific writer on the revolutionary years 1913-1923 will address the treatment of activist women during and after the period. Originally from Dublin’s Liberties, which she loves and promotes, Liz has highlighted the role of women during that era and has argued that they were fighting not just for freedom but also for real freedom with social justice at its very core.  

Liz Gillis

From Cumann Na mBan to the labour based Irish Citizen Army and onwards to the “Invisible army” of the Irish Republican Army, many of the women were often the public face of the resistance as the men risked immediate death if exposed. Conversely with the arrival of the new State, the men became more prominent and conservative in the Church dominated post Civil War politics of the era, while many of the radical women were rendered powerless and became invisible for decades. 

The 1916 Proclamation declaring an Irish Republic addressed to the people of Ireland (Ireland is described as “she”), is directed to “Irishmen and Irishwomen” and includes direct reference to Irish women in two later sections. The use of the pronoun “her” in reference to Ireland as feminine appears on ten occasions in the first two paragraphs of the Proclamation. The signatories certainly intended that Irish women should play an equal role in the Irish Republic.

Ms. Gillis’s book Women of the Irish Revolution, published in 2014, exposed the faces, achievements and sacrifices and treatment of hundreds of these invisible women  who served in the engine rooms of the revolution. The book contains a unique set of photographs which provide a human face to many of those heroes for the first time. The publication along with others which highlighted the essential work of the women made an enormous contribution to the belated, if often grudging State acknowledgement in recent years of their pivotal importance during the period. The new Free State meted out cruel and harsher treatment to them than the British forces had attempted during the War of Independence and over subsequent decades failed to provide pensions to many of the women activists. Even today there is very little recognition of the contribution made by these women in for example public space names or monuments by national or local government. 

Women of the Irish Revolution.

“They were the wives, mothers, sisters and girlfriends of the men who fought and died for Irish freedom and their story is one that needs to be told”

“Women of the Irish Revolution” Published by Mercier Press Cork 2014.

Liz is the author of several books and has championed the contribution of women for many years. She previously worked as a researcher for the RTE History Show and lectures at the Champlain College, Dublin. She has appeared in many RTE documentaries in relation to the revolutionary period and has recently authored The Hales Brothers and the Irish Revolution.

Liz will speak to the topic “She Carried Out All the Duties Given to Her in a Most Efficient Manner – Women in the Irish Revolution.”

Venue: Dance Cork Firkin Crane. Thursday evening 27th July 2023.  

Announcement: Spirit of Mother Jones Festival Dates for 2023.

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The Cork Mother Jones Committee is pleased to announce the dates for the 2023 Spirit of Mother Jones Festival.

Our 12th Annual festival will be held in and around Shandon in Cork City from Thursday 27th to Saturday 29th July 2023. All are welcome.

Thanks to our sponsors, the festival remains open to all free of charge. We are promising a very interesting selection of speakers and topics. Further announcements will appear regularly on this website and on the festival Facebook pages.

Hope to see you all and thanks to everyone for your support for this very unique festival.   

Mother Jones in 1909 enjoying a chat with her friend, Terence B. Powderly, whose family was from Co. Meath, Ireland. (Illinois Labor History Society).

Terence V Powderly (1849-1924) started life as a 13 year old railroad worker where he worked as an apprentice in a machine shop. Born in Pennsylvania, Terence’s people were from Co Meath in Ireland. 

Having joined the trade union movement, he became a moderate head of the Knights of Labor in 1879. This “Order”  grew to having about three-quarters of a million members by the mid 1880s, but subsequently went into rapid decline due the growing radicalism and militancy of the new trade unions and the oppression of the growing industrial corporations which treated workers very badly.

Powderly, who originally lived in Scranton in Pennsylvania went on to hold a number of government posts until his death in 1924. 

Mother Jones, although regarded as a radical became great friends with Terence and his wife Emma for several decades and stayed at their homes in Scranton and in Washington with them when visiting those cities.