Due to unforeseen circumstances, Luke Dineen is unable to attend the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival 2024. Historian Gerard O’Rourke, will instead give a talk on his recent book, “Land War to Civil War 1900-1924 Donoughmore to Cork and Beyond” at 4:30 pm on Saturday 27th July 2024 at the Shandon Maldron Hotel. All are welcome.
See further details on the site.
Maldron Hotel Shandon.
Speaker: Luke Dineen.
2024 is the 150th Anniversary of the birth of Jim Larkin, who was born on January 28th 1874 in Liverpool.
Iconic photo of Jim Larkin, in O’Connell, 1913.
Jim Larkin founded the Irish Transport and General Workers Union in December 1908.
He was among the founders of the Irish Labour Party in 1912 and led the workers in the Dublin Lockout in 1913/14. He also helped to establish the Irish Citizen Army which played a prominent role under James Connolly in the 1916 Rising, Larkin spent from 1914 to 1923 in America. . On his return from America he was involved in a split from the ITGWU and the Workers Union of Ireland was formed. Jim Larkin was elected to Dáil Eiréann on three occasions. He died on 30th January 1947.
Luke Dineen, a regular speaker at the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival intends to “put a particular focus on what underpinned Larkin’s ideology – Larkinism as it was called at the time – and how significant this was for events in Cork (1909 lock out) and across the country”.
Luke Dineen speaking at the 2022 Spirit of Mother Jones Festival.
The Revolutionary period and the subsequent creation of the Irish Free State and later the Republic has given rise to some amazing family stories. Very few can surpass the story of Sean Dunne, a Trade Union organiser, mentored by Jim Larkin and later Labour Party TD.
Filmed in West Cork, this discussion with local historian and author Diarmuid Kingston reveals the account of the Ahawadda Ambush (located on the road to Ring outside Timoleague) on 10th May1920, in which three Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) lost their lives in an ambush. This was the greatest loss of life of old RIC members in a single ambush in West Cork during the War of Independence.
Among them was Constable Edward Dunne from Co Laois. He was 32 years old, married to Bridget Coppinger, a school teacher with two children. Their young son Sean, was born in December 1918 in Timoleague. Constable Edward Dunne was buried quietly in Raheen in Co Laois.
The Old Courthouse in Timoleague, where the bodies of the three RIC constables were taken following the Ahawadda Ambush.
Sean grew up in Waterford and Wicklow and in the late 30s was arrested and served time in the Curragh Internment Camp for Republican activities. He came under the influence of Jim Larkin and the Workers’ Union of Ireland and became one of the most effective union organisers in rural Ireland in the 1940s, founding the Federation of Rural Workers (FRW), which had up to 20,000 members at its height.
As its General Secretary, he organised countless strikes among rural workers and was instrumental in campaigning for and obtaining the weekly half day for his members in the early 1950s.
Later he was elected a TD for the Labour Party, when he was just 28 years old, and became one of the most colourful elected public representatives in the Dail. He had the record of being ejected from two parliaments, Dail Eireann and Stormont, as well as British Labour Party conferences.. Once labelled “an extreme communist” by Sean MacEntee,
Sean Dunne was described by one political correspondent as being “in daily conflict with Authority on cases of social justice, on the side of the lost nobodies of the world”.
Dunne was a serious and witty orator and had a sharp turn of phrase when required. When the Fianna Fail party which in government under Taoiseach Jack Lynch established a secretive business financial support group known as An Taca (1966-1969). Dunne led the charge when he compared the organisation to the “Costa Nostra”.
“I was supplied with a list of the Capo Mafiosi…..is that what one would call them, the captains of the Mafia?.”
He then named Charles J Haughey, the Minister for Finance as the leader of An Taca. It was devastating criticism and contributed to the decline of the business ‘clique’ which provided financial support to Fianna Fail.
He retained his republican views although his socialist principles remained undimmed. Very opposed to colonialism, Dunne was one of the very first to raise the appalling treatment and torture by the British army of the Kenyan people in their efforts to defeat the Mau Mau uprising in the early 50s.
With the aid of an extremely loyal working class support base he was elected to the Dáil in 1951 and 1954 elections but he ran into financial trouble and was declared bankrupt in 1956.
Sean Dunne married Cora Ryan in June 1956, Cora was one of eight children of Seamus and Agnes Ryan from Co Tipperary. The Ryans had initially set up the Monument Creameries in 1919 and had turned it into a very successful enterprise comprising 33 shops selling fresh foodstuffs around the Dublin area. The business was run by Agnes Ryan, following the death of her husband in the 1930s.
A subsequent appeal by Dunne to the Supreme Court was successful in November 1957, but it was too late to save his Dáil seat as he could not stand in the March 1957 election. Cora and Sean struck for London where they worked for 3/4 years before returning. Having burned many bridges with the Irish Labour Party, he instead stood and was elected as an Independent Labour TD, with the support of Labour party activists from all over Dublin. The Labour Party could not ignore his support of their own members and he was readmitted to the party in 1963 and he was re-elected to Dáil Eireann in 1965 and 1969.
His famous Leabhar Ballyfermot which he always carried contained the details of his constituents’ problems. Trade union organiser, writer, playwright, orator, Irish speaker and campaigner for social justice, this west Cork born politician died suddenly following the General Election in 1969.
His funeral at the Pro-Cathedral was attended by President Eamonn De Valera, Taoiseach Jack Lynch, Fine Gael Leader Liam Cosgrave and the Cabinet and thousands of workers.
He had travelled a very long road in life and his virtual State funeral was in stark contrast to that of his father who was buried quietly in a graveyard in Co Laois almost 50 years earlier.
Brendan Corish gave his graveside oration.
“Sean Dunne’s death has robbed the Labour movement of one of its strongest personalities, the working people of Ireland of one of their most formidable defenders and Dail Eireann of one of its most able parliamentarians.
His entry into politics coincided with his long and bitter struggle to organise the rural workers of Ireland into a trade union and establish their entitlement to just wages and humane conditions
His identification with the causes of the defenceless and lower paid sections of the community were legendary, springing from his youth and his association with Big Jim Larkin under whom he served his trade union apprenticeship.
Sean Dunne lived a full life, became a legend in his own lifetime, a privilege given to few men”
Sean Dunne born in Timoleague in West Cork on 18th December 1918, died on 25th June 1969, aged 50. Son of an RIC father and teacher mother. Active Republican. Imprisoned and Interned. Labour and Trade Union organiser. General Secretary of the Federation of Rural Workers (FRW) Elected to Bray Town Council and Wicklow County Council. Elected to Dail Eireann 1948 Labour Party TD Dublin County. Elected to Dublin County Council Re-elected to Dail Eireann 1951 and 1954. Elected Alderman to Dublin City Council Elected to Dail Eireann Independent Labour TD 1961 Re-elected to Dail Eireann Labour Party TD 1965 and 1969. Freelance Journalist. Playwright and Orator. Achieved the Half-Day for rural workers.
In this film documentary discussion with Diarmuid Kingston, we look at the Ahawadda Ambush and we examine the subsequent life of Sean Dunne T.D. Diarmuid is the author of Beleaguered (A History of the RIC in West Cork during the War of Independence) and has written extensively on the period. The film will be shown during the forthcoming Spirit of Mother Jones festival and forms part of our contribution to Cork Commemoration 1920-23.
Bucolic dreams of some politicians and the sentimental views of the Irish countryside idyll by writers masked the growing community tensions between the multi-acre farming class which had purchased their farms and the many rural landless labourers and their families who existed in poverty..
Yes Ireland was now free as in the “Irish Free State; but it became a very cold place for those who did not fit in with the new conservative vernacular of church, education and land ownership. And all that really mattered in rural Ireland was land, land and land!
For those men who did not emigrate and found work with farmers or in the agricultural co-operatives, Sean Dunne by organising them into a trade union and by organising strikes, helped to provide many labourers and rural workers with a semblance of class allegiance and in the radical few his activities encourages the stirrings of a radical political identity in the 40s and 50s.
Social issues began to be raised and discussed by emboldened elements of the unionised workforce in the rural bastions of smug conservatism. Unfortunately it took another generation of their sons and daughters who survived the emigration culls and their subsequent movement to urban Ireland to join in the transformational changes in Irish society and its supporting institutions from the 1980s onwards. Sean Dunne had helped to light the fire!
Update: On Saturday August 13th 2022, relatives of the three RIC men killed at the Ahawadda Cross ambush of May10th 1920 unveiled a memorial to remember the events outside Timoleague on that Monday afternoon.
Originally postponed due to Covid-19, the dignified ceremony took place in the presence of a gathering representing families on both sides of the ambush. Following a blessing of the monument, local historian Diarmuid Kingston gave an account of what took place on the nearby road.
Constable Edward Dunne, the father of labour and union activist Sean is listed among those who died on that day. Perhaps one day, the people of Timoleague will erect a monument to one of their famous sons!
Historian, Diarmuid Kingston alongside the plaque.The large attendance present.
Site of the Ahawadda Ambush.
The Grave of Charlie Hurley at Clogagh Cemetery. Hurley led the ambush at Ahawadda Cross and was later killed on the 19th March 1921 in a confrontation with the British Army.
Padraig Yeates is an acknowledged authority on the history of the 1913 Dublin Lockout, a major industrial dispute which pitted Dublin’s employers led by William Martin Murphy against more than 20,000 workers, led by Big Jim Larkin, who were sacked for their membership of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITG&WU).
1913 can be seen as the beginning of the struggle for Irish independence in the twentieth century, or the swansong of the British labour movement in what became the Irish Free State. It reflected the militant syndicalist movement in Britain and across the industrialised world, exposing the growing divisions within nationalist Ireland in the process.
It was a naked class conflict, pitting Irish workers against Irish capitalists with both sides receiving support from their counterparts in Britain. But above all it was a dispute about the nature of Irish society. The victory of the employers in alliance with the established churches, and especially the Catholic Church, provided a foretaste of the conservative consensus that would prevail after independence.
Padraig Yeates
Police baton-charge on striking workers in Sackville (O’Connell) Street, Dublin, August 1913
Padraig will be delivering a keynote lecture on the Lockout at the Spirit of Mother Jones at the Firkin Crane theatre, Shandon, Cork at 7.00pm on Wednesday, 31st July 2013. All are welcome and there is no admittance charge.
William Martin “Murder” Murphy, notorious employer’s leader
Big Jim Larkin, ITGWU leader and nemesis of the employers of Dublin
Women and children with food parcels sent by British trade unionists
