“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.
The Red Flag Festival takes place in County Meath from Friday 30th May to Sunday 1st June 2025. The Festival celebrates the life of Jim Connell, known as the man who wrote The Red Flag.
Jim was born in Kilskyre, County Meath in 1852. He worked as a casual docker in Dublin, however he was blacklisted due to his efforts to unionise the workers in Dublin’s docklands. Connell emigrated to London in 1875, and became a staff journalist on Keir Hardie’s newspaper, “The Labour Leader”.
Inspired by the London Dock Strike, Jim wrote the Red Flag in 1889. It quickly became an anthem of the International Labour Movement and is sung each year at the British and Irish Labour Party’s annual conferences. His life and work for trade unions and the promotion of social justice is celebrated in his home place at this festival. He is honoured at Crossakiel, Co Meath by a magnificent monument.
Jim Connell died in 1929, and he is buried in London.
A very interesting 2025 Festival programme of events takes place over the weekend and full details can be obtained at info@redflagfestival.com. All are welcome.
The Cork Mother Jones Committee is sad to announce the passing on Thursday 10th April 2025 of our great friend Anne Scargill following a long illness with Alzheimer’s disease.
Anne was a lifelong community activist in the North of England.
She was a co-founder of the Women Against Pit Closures (WAPC) who took a key part in the struggle in defence of their mining communities during the Miners Strike in 1984/85. Later she remained active on social justice issues alongside her great friend Betty Cook for over 40 years and took part in the occupation of the Parkside coal mine over the Easter weekend in April 1993. This underground sit-in required extraordinary courage, made international news and highlighted the dreadful treatment of the mining communities after the strike was long over.
Anne Harper was born on the 12th October 1941. Her background was totally connected to coal mining.
“I was brought up in the heart of the Barnsley coalfield with my mam, dad and sister Joan in a terraced row in Barugh Green. There was a pub called the Phoenix at one end of the row and a Co-op at the other. My dad was Elliott Harper, a coal miner from a big family of colliers in Gawber. My mother was Harriet Hardy from Skelmanthorpe near Huddersfield.”
From Anne & Betty United by the Struggle. 2020
Anne Harper met a young trade union and political activist Arthur Scargill in Barnsley when she was 18 when he visited her father who was also a trade union man. They married in 1961. In their book with Ian Clayton, Anne describes their life and adventures as the union activist Arthur rose in the ranks of the National Union of Miners (NUM) to eventually become the president of the powerful NUM. She traveled extensively and experienced life in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. She attended the World Social Forum in Mumbai, traveled to Australia and visited Cuba where she encountered Fidel Castro. She met Hortensia Bussi, the widow of Salvador Allende in Cuba also.
Anne second from left supporting the Greyhound Bin workers strike in Dublin in 2014. Courtesy of J Thomson.
She remained very proud of the way, her then husband, Arthur led the miners and proud of the women who joined in at the pickets, at the food kitchens and the marches. She also noted that as the men marched back to work at the end of the strike, many women had been changed by their activism during the strike. Anne began to spend time with women’s activist groups. Taking inspiration from the Greenham Common women, the WAPC organised several pit camps outside mines to highlight the mine closures by the Tory government, Anne spent a year in the Grimethorpe pit-camp. She even sat in a camp outside the Tory party offices and the Department of Trade in London. And like Mother Jones, she was arrested on several occasions, once placed in a van prison cage and strip searched! She became even more determined to continue picketing and did so up and down the country wherever she was needed..
Anne and Betty at the County Hotel balcony, Durham Miners Gala 2014.
In recent times Anne accompanied by her friend Betty Cook, she visited the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival in Cork in 2014 and 2015 and returned in 2019 to take part in the March of the Mill Children recreated in Shandon that year.
Anne and Betty with their Daughters of Mother Jones banner at the March of the Mill Children in Shandon in 2019. Courtesy of Claire Stack.Left to Right:. Anne Scargill, Spirit of Mother Jones Award recipient 2019 Louise O’Keeffe and Betty Cook.
Anne and Betty spoke at the festivals and sang Mal Finch’s great anthem ‘Women of the Working Class’. She enjoyed signing the visitors book in the Cork City Mayoral Office in the presence of the Lord Mayor of Cork, Chris O’Leary in 2014.
Anne Scargill signs the visitors book, at Cork City Hall in the Lord Mayors Office in 2014. Cllr Chris O’Leary, Lord Mayor of Cork and Betty Cook look on. Courtesy of J. Thomson.
The women marched each year in the huge Durham Gala and proudly carried their ‘Daughters of Mother Jones’ banner along the parade route. Anne was just so happy to be amongst mining community friends. She also visited Jonesborough in the Appalachian mountains to meet up with the Daughters of Mother Jones colleagues such as Marat Moore and Libby Lindsay.
Durham Gala.
With a glint in her eye, Anne loved to tell funny and hair raising stories about her activities. Laced with wit and shrewd and perceptive observations,she certainly did not stand on ceremony in the presence of the famous or those charged with upholding the law if she felt she was right. Her humour was ever present and her positive energy radiated through her activism. She always knew which side she was on and followed passionately in the footsteps of her hero, Mother Jones!
Ní bheidh a leithéid ann arís.
To Anne’s daughter Margaret and family we extend our sympathy and also to Betty Cook, her great friend and colleague in activism, and to her many comrades. May she rest in peace.
Mother Jones is remembered for many things, for her bravery, her resilience, her support for the unionisation of all workers especially women, her leadership of the March of the Mill Children and so much more.
March of the Mill Children. Shandon 2019. Photo: Claire Stack.
And yet her enduring spirit remains relevant and very much alive across the world mainly as a result of a simple sentence addressed to poor miners standing in a dark field in West Virginia, over 120 years ago… According to her autobiography, Mother Jones went to speak one night to a mining town in the Fairmont district in West Virginia.
Daughters of Mother Jones at the Durham Gala.Photo: Courtesy of Mother Jones Heritage Project, Chicago.
She discovered that the meeting was to be held in a church. On entering she discovered that the priest was collecting money from the union miners presumably for the rent of the church in which the meeting was taking place.
‘I reached over and took the money from the priest. Then I turned to the miners. “Boys , this is a praying institution. You should not commercialize it”
She led the union miners out to a nearby field, in front of a school and held the meeting. Pointing to the school, she advised them to hold their meetings at the school declaring
” Your organisation is not a praying institution. It’s a fighting institution. It’s an educational institution along industrial lines.
Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living!”
Source: The Autobiography of Mother Jones, Chapter V1 War in West Virginia. Charles H Kerr Publishing Company. Page 41.
Those profound words of Mother Jones at a little town in Fairmont, West Virginia in 1902 remain so powerful that over 120 years later they continue to echo through history wherever union members and people gather to fight for justice and human rights.
It’s been uttered by presidents, on banners in the US Congress, printed on posters, written on plaques and walls in union halls, quoted by trade unions across the world and by social justice and human rights organisations in countless articles….it has become a rallying call for many especially during Covid, and recently at Palestinian support demonstrations, imprinted on awards, painted on union banners at strike picket lines.
Demonstration by Jewish union members against the genocide in Gaza.
The President of Ireland, Michael D Higgins in paying tribute to the front line workers quoted it to praise and generate public support for their brave efforts to combat Covid-19 in April 2020.
Source: US Department of Labor.
Organisations from Oxfam to Greenpeace, many peace and justice organisations and the Justice for the Stardust 48 Campaign have repeated this battle-cry. Its global reach stretches from the New Zealand Professional Firefighters Union (NZPFU) to SIPTU (formerly the Irish Transport and General Workers Union of Connolly and Larkin) in Ireland and to the Washington State Nurses Union.
The New Zealand Professional Firefighters Union on International Workers Memorial Day.Washington State Nurses Association.
The front page of the New York Times (23rd April 1972) contained the quote. when reporter George Vecsey described the pop art wall posters with a picture of Mother Jones when he visited Appalachia. A few days later a “Mother Jones Day” organised by Miners for Democracy took place in Pursglove, West Virginia. It was addressed by Kenneth “Chip” Yablonski, son of murdered union leader Jock Yablonski who urged the miners to reclaim democratic control of their union, the UMWA, in which Mother Jones was one of its first organisers under then President John Mitchell.
The New York Times 23rd April 1972.
Variations of the cry such as “mourn the dead” or “remember the dead” rather than the original “pray for the dead ” are also used. A wonderful documentary written and performed by Kaiulani Lee called Fight Like Hell: The Testimony of Mother Jones has been produced. Controversially, the growing use of the phrase “fight like hell” by the Right has increased in recent times. We must reclaim those passionate words, which reflect the communal ideas of Mother Jones, first spoken back near Fairmont all those years ago to the union miners gathered at the dead of night in that field.
Source: Library of Congress.
Historian Elliott Gorn in the introduction to his book, Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America mentioned that the words “Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living” are all that most people know of Mother Jones.
As long as her words resonate as a call to action wherever in the world people struggle for social justice then Mother Jones lives on.
The Mother Jones Foundation annual dinner was held at Springfield, Illinois on Saturday evening 12th October last. The Foundation is the longest established organisation which promotes the work of Mother Jones and is dedicated to educating and raising awareness about labour history.
Mother Jones Foundation Dinner 2024. Photo: Mike Matejka.
The large attendance at the 2025 event heard guest speaker, author Hamilton Nolan speak of the power of the trade union movement to practice democracy, “a union is not a special interest, a union is a training school for democracy”.
Solidarity Forever. Photo: Mike Matejka.Solidarity Forever: James Goltz is on the right hand side. Photo: Mike Matejka.
Nolan called on trade unions to organise millions of working people into the movement and to just go out and organise. While union membership has dropped dramatically in the past decades, there has been a recent resurgence in numbers, in activism and in the fight against inequality.
Author: Hamilton Nolan with Joann Condellone of the Mt. Olive Cemetery Committee. Jim Alderson is in the red shirt. Photo: Mike Matejka.
Sunday October 13th saw a further large attendance gather under a sunny blue sky for the annual Miners’ Day at the Union Miners’ Cemetery outside Mt. Olive where Mother Jones is buried.
Miners Parade Arriving at Mt Olive Cemetery 2024. Photo: Mike Matejka.
Miners Day commemorates the tragic events of October 12, 1898, when union miners confronted the Chicago-Virden Coal Company at Virden over the arrival of strike-breakers. During a subsequent gun battle at the local railway station, a total of thirteen people died, eight miners and five company guards and some 40 miners were wounded.
Union Miners Cemetery at Mt. Olive, Photo: Mike Matejka.
However when Mount Olive town refused to allow some of the miners to use the cemetery, the miners purchased land just north of the town. The Union Miners Cemetery was thus established and remains the only union-owned cemetery in America. For the past 125 years people have gathered annually to remember those Virden miners.
Joann Condellone, a founding member of the Mother Jones Museum in Mt Olive and of the Perpetual Care Associaton of the Union Miners Cemetery welcomed all to the ceremony. The opening speaker, Tim Drea, the Illinois AFL-CIO President spoke of the vital contribution immigrants had made to the American Labour movement. Mary Harris was herself an immigrant from Ireland.
President of Illinois AFL-CIO, Tim Drea. Photo: Mike Matejka.
Highlight of the day was the appearance of Cecil Roberts, President of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) who spoke of the huge work which the union had contributed to ensuring pensions and health care for the miners. He called for a just transition for the communities impacted by the reduction and phase out of coal due to climate change.
President of the UMWA, Cecil Roberts speaking in Mt. Olive Cemetery. Photo: Mike Matejka.
President Roberts, whose great Grandmother Ma Blizzard was a close friend of Mother Jones and whose family supported the miners during the infamous Paint and Cabin Creek strikes in West Virginia during the “Coal Wars” of 1912-1914 gave an account of the impact on miners and their families and solidarity of those who fought for justice in those struggles.
Cecil Roberts with Joann Condellone. Photo: Mike Matejka.
In a prescient observation, President Roberts also recounted the burning of the miners’ union tent village by the Colorado National Guard and Mine company militia and the massacre of the women and children and men at Ludlow in Colorado one hundred and ten years ago. Many of those killed in Ludlow were immigrants from Greece.
Cecil Roberts with UMWA comrades: Photo: Mike Matejka.
He then concluded by quoting Mother Jones who spoke in her autobiography of the “dark story” of coal, and asked how in order for “life to have something of decency, something of beauty – a picture, a new dress, a bit of cheap lace lace fluttering in the window – for this, men who work down in the mines must struggle and lose, struggle and win.”
Loretta Williams as Mother Jones: Photo: Mike Matejka.Dale Hawkins as General Alexander Bradley. Photo: Mike Matejka.
The Daughters of Mother Jones at Mt. Olive Cemetery. Photo: Mike Matejka.
Loretta Williams and Dale Hawkins in period costume transformed into Mother Jones and union leader, English born “General” Alexander Bradley for the proceedings, while Wildflower Conspiracy provided music and union songs. Loretta attended the Spirit of Mother Jones festival in 2018. Wildflower Conspiracy sang the Children of MotherJones written and first performed by the late Cork singer/songwriter Pete Duffy at the 2014 Cork festival.
Wildflower Conspiracy: Erin O’Toole. Photo: Mike Matejka.
“Those in power showed her no sympathy In her fight to set the children free.
She lies in Mount Olive Illinois But Mother Jones’ true spirit never dies.”
Cecil Roberts, Dale Hawkins and Loretta Williams then honoured the miners of Virden by placing a wreath on the Virden miners grave.
Gathering at the Grave of Mother Jones, Sunday October 13th 2024. Photo: Mike Matejka.
The Cork Mother Jones committee wishes to thank Mike Matejka of the Illinois Labor History Society for permission to use some of his photographs. Our gratitude also to James Goltz of Mt Olive, a regular visitor to Cork, for all his assistance. We send our good wishes to Nelson Grman who has been involved with the Union Miners Cemetery Perpetual Care Committee for many decades.
Thursday 25th July 2024 at 2.30 pm at the Maldron Hotel Shandon.
Adrian Kane
Adrian Kane first became active in trade unions in his early twenties while working for Bord na Móna. He has worked for SIPTU as a full time union official since 1995. Adrian is a graduate of the National College of Industrial Relations. He also attended University College Dublin and Keele University where he studied Employment Law and European Industrial Relations. He is the author of a recent book “Trade Unions” published by Cork University Press.
“Trade Unions”, Adrian’s analysis of internal trade union politics casts a sometimes critical eye over how trade unions structures are organised. As he has spent nearly 30 years operating in the front lines of industrial relations he is in a strong position to present his case. He also focuses on the vital debate as to how the trade union movement should operate in the ever changing world of work in the new digital economy. He will pose the question as to how trade unions are going to attract workers to become union members especially in the gig and digital economies. Adrian outlines the changes to the culture structures that might be required to join and discusses the possibilities and opportunities for an enhanced role for the trade union movement in the future world of work.
Trade Unions by Adrian Kane, Published by Cork University Press.
All are welcome to attend the meeting and take part in the discussion.
Historian Anne Twomey of the Shandon Area History Group will discuss the contribution of Margaret Goulding Buckley to the fight for Independence and her lifelong activism in representing women workers in the Irish Women Workers Union (IWWU) and her role as President of Sinn Fein.
Anne Twomey.
Anne will speak at the Dance Cork Firkin Theatre on Thursday 25th July.
Anne describes the career of this extraordinary Cork woman:
Margaret Goulding Buckley
“Margaret Goulding Buckley was a woman of many parts: teacher, trade unionist, civil war internee, journalist, political commentator and author, and the first female leader of an Irish political party.
Born in Cork on July 28th, 1879, Margaret lived her early years on Winter’s Hill near Sunday’s Well. Her nationalism was honed in her home where her parents were ardent Parnellites. In common with many young nationalists of her day, Margaret developed a keen interest in the cultural revival movement in the early 1900s. In 1901 she joined Terence MacSwiney’s Celtic Literary Society in Cork and took part in numerous shows and plays in the City’s operatic & dramatic societies. In 1903 Margaret cut her political teeth when she protested against the Royal visit to Cork by King Edward VII & Queen Alexandra.
Around this time she was also a founding member of An Dún in Queen Street, a theatre and meeting hall that became central to Nationalist political gatherings in Cork City. Margaret was also a founding member of the Cork branch of Inghinidhe na hÉireann ( Daughters of Ireland) a precursor of Cumann na mBan. Margaret also trained and practised as a teacher on the Northside of Cork City.
1906 was a turning point in her personal life as she married Patrick Buckley from the Marsh area of Cork city. Patrick worked in the British Civil Service in Dublin where he was employed by the Inland Revenue & Customs.
Margaret and Patrick set up home in Howth in Co. Dublin but her politics became more radical and republican. She was also drawn into the Trade Union movement around the Dublin Lockout 1913. Around this time Patrick’s health deteriorated due to TB .Following the death of Patrick, Margaret moved to Marguerite Road in Glasnevin, and lived there for the rest of her life.
Patrick’s death devastated her and she threw herself into political and social issues. She came to the attention of the Dublin female activists in Inghinidhe na hEireann and later was involved in the founding of Cumann na mBan in Dublin. Margaret also joined Sinn Fein in its infancy. Margaret was involved in the reorganising of Sinn Fein from 1917 to 1919. She was an active member of the Sinn Fein Courts in Dublin, earning praise from Austin Stack for her administration of the court.
By 1916 Margaret had joined the Irish Women Workers Union with responsibility for domestic workers where she became active in fighting for good wages and fair conditions as a quid pro quo for good service, in an area of employment that was notorious for its exploitation and servile conditions imposed on mainly female employees. Margaret became Secretary to the Irish Branch of the Women’s Federation.
Over the years she built up great trust among female trade union activists and became very effective in negotiating, recruiting and organising for the IWWU. In 1920 Margaret opened an office of the IWWU in North Great George’s Street.
She wrote extensively on the organising of Domestic Servants and worked valiantly to remove the “skivvy” and “ slave labour” image associated with the job. She sought for mutual respect between “Mistress” and “worker”, declaring that
“This is as it should be, it is only an accident, or perhaps the result of a system which makes one woman a mistress and the other a maid”
Her interest in how women were treated in the state developed during the treaty and Civil War where she was deeply concerned about prison conditions for women and set up the Womens Prisoner Defence League in 1922. Margaret campaigned against the Treaty and allowed her home and trade union office to be used by the anti treaty side. Eventually she was arrested and spent time in 3 different jails,
Mountjoy, Kilmainham and the North Dublin Union. Her eye witness accounts and her own experiences of female imprisonment form the basis of her book The Jangle of the Keys, published in the 1930s. The book highlights the tough regime faced by female prisoners during the Civil War and she outlines the level of physical and verbal abuse faced by the women. She helped expose a darker side to the Civil War that went largely undocumented until the recent decade of commemorations.
During the 1920s and 1930s Margaret remained active in trade union politics and in Sinn Fein. She also supported herself through her journalism where she wrote under the pen name Margaret Lee, in a nod to her home county!. Her many articles were used to hold the Free State government to account for poor social legislation, workers employment rights, employers abuse of the Social Insurance Schemes, bad agricultural practices, emigration. Though she remained friendly with De Valera, she refused to leave Sinn Fein and join Fianna Fail, unwilling to accept the oath as an empty formula to enter the Dail.
Margaret clashed with DeValera and the 1930s Fianna Fail Government over employment legislation that she saw would be prejudicial to women in the workplace, making them second class citizens to males when it came to payment, social insurance, equal job opportunities. Similarly in 1937 she reacted negatively to Bunreacht na hEireann ,DeValera’s constitution, saying it treated Irish women as “half-wits” and campaigned against its adoption as the new constitution of the state.
Politically wise, Margaret was appointed President of Sinn Fein in 1937, the first female to lead a political party in Ireland. She remained leader until 1949. Her role was really to maintain the party’s existence in the new state, given that its membership had gone to Fianna Fail by the 1930s in great numbers. Its continued abstentionist policy towards the new Dail made Sinn Fein a marginal party with limited resources to survive; nevertheless Margaret’s leadership steadied the ship and ensured its continued existence albeit on the fringes of Irish politics for as long as its abstentionist policy applied.
Margaret retired from politics in 1950 and from her trade union activities in 1958.She was, in many respects, an undaunted spirit working tirelessly for Irish working women’s rights in a country that owed its independence to women like her and yet they had been completely ignored in the social fabric that shaped the new independent state.
It would be others through the 1970s and future decades that would advance her fight to the next level. Margaret Goulding Buckley died in Dublin in 1962. She requested that she be laid to rest in her home by the Lee. Her wish was granted and Margaret was buried in St Finbarr’s Cemetery with full honours rendered by Sinn Fein.”.
Anne Twomey appears with historian Liz Gillis on Thursday evening 25th July at the Dance Cork Firkin Crane. The meeting begins at 7pm. Anne is a member of the Shandon Area History Group. Anne’s book, Ordinary Women in Extraordinary Times contributed hugely to our understanding to the active role of women in Cork during the War of Independence.
Liz Gillis and Anne Twomey
Now that the Decade of Centenaries is over, (it ceased in 1923), the question of what became of the revolutionary women on both sides of the Civil War upon the formation of the Irish Free State. Both speakers will discuss.
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.
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.
Radio Telefis Eireann (RTE), the Irish public broadcaster has reported that recent Oscar winner Cillian Murphy from Cork will star in and produce the film adaptation of Mark Bradley’s book, ‘BloodRuns Coal: The Yablonski Murders and the Battle for the United Mine Workers of America. (UMWA)
The report states that Murphy’s latest film project will concentrate on the terrible dark tale of corruption in the UMWA trade union in the 60s and early 70s under the leadership of Tony Boyle and the murder of the Yablonski family.
Yet during the long history of this great union, it has provided a beacon of hope and inspiration to hundreds of thousands of American union miners and their families over the past 130 years and had a unique Cork link in the connection with Mary Harris (Mother Jones), who was appointed the union’s first female organiser.
Founded in January 1890, the UMWA went on to become the largest, toughest and most powerful trade union in the history of the troubled American Industrial relations. Men such as Michael Moran, John McBride and Richard Davis along with thousands of miners forged the reputation of solidarity in this proud union.
Mary Harris was appointed a UMWA organiser in the late 1890s and from then until the early 1920s, she spent more time organising miners than any other group of workers. She became part of a large group of tough male union UMWA organisers, many of whom were Irish. Following the Lattimer Massacre in 1897 in which 19 miners were killed, John Mitchell, just twenty eight years old of Irish immigrant parents became the fifth president of the UMWA. He succeeded Michael Ratchford from Co Clare, who as president was the first to notice the organising ability of Mother Jones and hired her to become a UMWA “walking delegate”. John Mitchell later appointed her as a paid organiser in 1901 to try to unionise the difficult West Virginia coalfields.
John Mitchell, President of the UMWA, 1898- 1907
Over the next decade, Mother Jones became the most active, colourful, and outstanding union organiser during a period of violent industrial unrest which saw the UMWA call several national coal strikes to seek decent wages, safe conditions and shorter working hours. Mother Jones was directly involved in numerous strikes from Pittsburg, to West Virginia, to Arnot in Pennsylvania, to Colorado where she unionised thousands of miners as the UMW grew into the strongest and most diverse union in America. Later Jones played an active part in the Coal Wars in West Virginia and Colorado from 1912-1914 in which dozens perished in the brutal pitched battles between the miners and militias along with private detective firms paid by the mine owners.
Fred Mooney and Frank Keeney., officers of the UMWA in West Virginia.UMWA Banner. Source. James Goltz,
In July 1902, as a result of her union activities, Mother Jones was described in court as “the most dangerous woman in America.”. Later she fell out with President John Mitchell but each retained a great respect for each other. Today a large monument of John Mitchell stands in Scranton in Pennsylvania, the hometown of President Joe Biden. Very soon Mother Jones will have her own monument in the city of Chicago.
Monument to John Mitchell in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
In recent years the UMWA union membership has been much reduced due to the decline of the mining industry but it is now actively organising among other workers including the public sector.
The current president of the UMW is Cecil Roberts, who is the great-grandson of Ma Blizzard.
Cecil Roberts. Source (Wikipedia).
Ma Blizzard was a fearless union activist in Cabin Creek, West Virginia, and a great personal friend of Mother Jones during the Coal Wars. Her son Bill Blizzard was a miners leader at the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921.
Ma Sarah Blizzard.
President Roberts in a beautiful Proclamation, presented by James Goltz from Mt Olive, Illinois to the Cork Mother Jones Committee in 2014 expressed “special thanks and recognition to the remarkable annual Spirit of Mother Jones Festival for keeping her Irish Spirit alive in her birthplace in County Cork, Ireland, in the Shandon area of Cork City”.
James Goltz from Mt Olive with the UMWA Proclamation to Cork at the 2017 Festival.
Proclamation to the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival from President of the UMWA, Cecil Roberts in 2017.
Speaking about Mother Jones, the UMWA Proclamation continued,
“We loved her and still love her. We call her the Miners’ Angel. Only an angel could have endured all of the suffering, hate and obstacles that the industrial masters hurled at her as she valiantly fought for the dignity, economic security and safety for mine workers and their families.”
extract from the Proclamation to the Spirit of mother jones festival from cecil roberts, president of the umwa.
The connection of the UMWA to Cork continues as we look forward to Oscar winning actor, Cillian Murphy playing the part of Chip Yablonski as he seeks justice for his coal mining father.
Delegate Badge to the 100th UMWA annual delegate conference in 1990, held in Miami, Florida.
