The Cork Ukrainian Choir yesterday opened the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival with a stunning musical performance. The Lord Mayor of Cork, Cllr. Kieran McCarthy accompanied them on “Danny Boy”. It was a wonderful occasion from a fantastic choir.
The 2023 Spirit of Mother Jones Award was presented yesterday to Mick Lynch by James Nolan at the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival in Shandon in front of a capacity at the Dance Cork Firkin Crane.
10:30 a.m. Niamh Guiry.
11:30 a.m. Eoghan Daltun.
1:00 p.m. Jimmy Crowley & Eve Telford.
2:30 p.m. A Sense of Wonder (Rachel Carson)
4:15 p.m. Mother Jones and Her Children.
5: 15 p.m. Mother Jones: America’s Most Dangerous Woman.
7:00 p.m. Mary Crilly (at Dance Cork Firkin Crane)
9:00 p.m. Tribute to Victor Jara.
9:30 p.m. Songs of Protest: The Folk Music Revival.
11:00 a.m. Salt of the Earth. (1954) Film – Maldron Hotel.
1:00 p.m. Official Opening by the Lord Mayor of Cork, Cllr. Kieran McCarthy and the Cork Ukrainian Choir. Maldron Hotel.
2:30 p.m. Mavis Ramazani – Maldron Hotel.
4.00 p.m. Mick Lynch – Dance Cork Firkin Crane.
7:15 p.m. Anne Twomey & Liz Gillis – Dance Cork Firkin Crane
9:30 p.m. The Cork Singers’ Club. – Maldron Hotel.
The Cork Mother Jones Committee is pleased to announce the recipient of the 2023 Spirit of Mother Jones Award.
It has been awarded to UK Trade Union leader Mick Lynch and the RMT.
The award will be presented to Mr. Lynch at a meeting at the Dance Cork Firkin Crane on Thursday 27th July at 4:00 pm as part of the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival.
Mick Lynch with strong Cork roots was appointed General Secretary of the National Union of Railway, Transport and Marine workers, (RMT) in 2021 and has led the fight to defend his members’ working conditions and pay as well as trying to protect the public and community services.
James Nolan spokesperson for the Cork Mother Jones Committee stated
“We believe that Mick Lynch by his direct action, solid analysis, straight talking and plain speaking in defence of workers and union rights, has won him widespread support and respect among working people.
His precise fact based arguments and his eloquence in his media performances in the face of Tory Party opposition in the UK in relation to the support for public services such as the Railways, the National Health Service and public services, has ensured admiration and support from among many people as they recognise the validity of his comments.
With Cork roots in the city centre, Mick Lynch continues to represent the fighting rebel spirit and tradition of his fellow Cork emigrant, Mary Harris, known as Mother Jones, who in earlier generations fought for social and trade union justice.
The Cork Mother Jones Committee is proud to honour the Cork diaspora which leads the fight for the living”
This is the eleventh Spirit of Mother Jones award, the last British trade union leader to receive it was the late Dave Hopper of the Durham Miners Association who did so in 2016.
Previous recipients include Gareth Peirce, Ken Fleming, Mary Manning, Fr Peter Mc Verry, Louise O’Keeffe, Antoinette Keegan, Catherine Coffey O’Brien, Ann O’Gorman, Maureen Considine and Don O’Leary.
Mick Lynch is the General Secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime & Transport Workers (RMT) since May 2021.
Among his predecessors at the RMT were Bob Crow, who was a regular visitor to Ireland and Mick Cash who had Irish roots.
Mick and the RMT have been to the forefront of the defence of workers’ pay and conditions in the UK privatised rail sector. The union has also organised the opposition to the closure of tickets offices at railway stations justifiably arguing that this discriminates against the older, weaker and non tech savvy people.
Over the past few years Mick’s appearances on television have guaranteed enormous media interest as he systematically and forensically destroyed the arguments of political commentators, the right wing press and Tory MPs who argued against workers’ pay increases.
The YouTube clips of these debates are widely viewed by many.
All the while he exposes the large payments to company directors and investors of dividends/profits from the privatised railroads instead of these monies being invested in modernising the rail infrastructure. He talks of the poor treatment of workers, bad working conditions and safety issues and the poor quality service endured by the travelling public.
His straight talking approach and his grasp of the relevant facts has gained him huge support.
Mick argues that there should be no divisions in the working class and attempts to pitch groups of workers against each other must not be tolerated.
He argues that it is “this broader umbrella of class politics inclusive of workers of all kinds, that best deprives the political right the opportunity to pit working class people against one another”. In this Mick echoes the views of Mother Jones who stated that “We must stand together; if we don’t there will be no victory for any of us.”
James Connolly is his political hero. US Senator, Bernie Sanders came to London recently to support the RMT.
At the Durham Miners Gala in July 2022 where Mick was a key speaker at the Big Meeting, he announced to the large gathering,
“We’re back. The working class is back. We refuse to be meek, we refuse to be humble and we refuse to be poor anymore”
Jackie Lynch, Mick’s dad was born in Cork city centre in 1922, and the Lynch family lived on Cork’s Bandon Road near Warrens Lane. He emigrated to London in 1941. His mother, Ellen Morris was from Crossmaglen, Co. Armagh. Mick, one of five children, was born in 1962 in Paddington, London and trained as an electrician. When back in Cork, he calls to Turners Cross, to support Cork City.
Mick Lynch is scheduled to speak on Thursday afternoon at 4:00 pm at the Dance Cork Firkin Crane.
Please note in view of capacity issues, it is first come, first seated.
Peter Foynes of the Cork Butter Museum will conduct a walk through the historic birthplace of Mary Harris on Saturday morning 29th July 2023 beginning at 9.30 am at the Maldron Hotel. All are welcome.
Shandon was at the heart of the city food trade in the 18th and 19th Century. Cattle were bought and sold and slaughtered around the area for export. The Committee of Merchants (1769-1925) conducted the butter trade here and Cork butter was exported from here all over the world. The wealth of the city was largely derived from these exports.
While the existing portico in the Butter Exchange building dates from 1849, the building and those nearby were extremely busy places when Mary Harris was a young girl.
It was a period of Church building and renovation. The Cathedral of St. Mary and St Anne (North Cathedral) where Mary Harris was baptised was reconstructed in the 1830s after a fire. St. Mary’s Dominican Church on Pope’s Quay was built in the late 1830s. The Church of St Anne, home of the Shandon Bells dates from the early 1700s and was by the 1840s a local landmark, indeed the bells were added in 1847. Other local landmarks familiar to Mary Harris include the Civil Trust Building (1730s) Skiddys Home (1719) and the North Infirmary (1710) site of the present day Maldron Hotel where many of the Spirit of Mother Jones events are held each year.
The Shandon Historic Quarter contains some of the network of streets familiar to Mary Harris and while in 1750, 23 streets and passageways were connected to Shandon Street itself, some still remain as they were in the 1840s.
The area is ideal for walking, so join Peter on Saturday 29th to learn of the home of Mother Jones and a present day local vibrant community.
Then later that day at approx. 4:30 p.m., Maggie O’Neill will conduct a Feminist Walking Tour of Cork City. Meeting point at the Maldron Hotel, Shandon.
Showing on Saturday 29th July at 11:00 am at the Maldron Hotel, Shandon.
This is a documentary about Roger Casement (1864-1916) and his work as a British Foreign office diplomat to expose human rights abuses in the rubber industry in South America. His efforts to exposed human rights injustices in the Congo and Brazil, and later when he joined the Irish fight for freedom makes him one of the most extraordinary revolutionaries of the period.
In 1910, the British Consul General in Rio de Janeiro, Roger Casement, undertook an investigation into allegations of crimes against indigenous communities committed by the British-registered Peruvian Amazon Company.
Secrets from Putumayo tells of the barbaric treatment of the native peoples in Peru and Brazil which he discovered there and which he exposed to a shocked public. Basically, cruel slave labour conditions were an ongoing feature of the rubber industry in the Amazon rainforest, it was “a real green hell.” Shocked by his discoveries, and despite a heavy personal toll, Casement was determined to bring awareness to the British of their own colonial atrocities by revealing the appalling human cost of the rubber industry.
This documentary is narrated by Stephen Rea who reads disturbing excerpts from his journal, while archival images leave a lasting impression on a viewer. Listening to the stories of the native people whose ancestors suffered at the hands of these savage colonial corporations who plundered the resources on the lands of indigenous tribes makes one question how much the operations of some multinationals and governments have changed in over a hundred years.
Today the exploitation continues as these modern companies exploit the rare metals, resources, environment and fish of native peoples across the world as we stand by. Roger Casement was the equivalent of the canary in the mine of human rights. His reports exposing the treatment of indigenous people deserve a wider audience. Secrets from Putamayo will go a long way to achieving this recognition for an extraordinary man.
After 1913, Casement’s efforts on behalf of the new independence movement in Ireland are reasonably well known. He abandoned the British empire after his retirement to help the Irish Revolution. However he paid the ultimate price when the British government ensured his execution for treason against the empire on the 3rd August 1916 some three months after the 1916 leaders were executed.
Roger Casement was arguably one of the world’s first global human rights activists.
Our thanks to everyone who has made the showing of this film possible at the Spirit of Mother Jones festival.
The Spirit of Mother Jones festival and summer school contains challenging and relevant talks and interesting discussions but it also includes singing, music, poetry and some walking.
The Cork Ukrainian Choir will perform at the opening by the Lord Mayor of Cork. After their stunning performance at the Festival launch earlier in the month……..do not miss them!
The 2023 festival again features the Cork Singers’ Club whose unique tradition of singing songs without musical accompaniment has ensured that singing songs for enjoyment to an appreciative audience remains a living cultural idiom of communities all over Cork. Come and enjoy this unique experience in the company of the Cork Singers’ Club which has rendered songs of unions, workers’ lives, freedom and social justice at the opening night of the Spirit of Mother Jones festival for the past 12 years.
Legendary Cork ballad and folk singer Jimmy Crowley accompanied by Eve Telford will perform at lunch time on Friday 28th. Jimmy has been involved with folk music in Ireland and abroad for six decades and has released many important folk albums. From his time on the Cork folk club scene to Stokers Lodge, his song-writing to his solo albums to his Opus Mór; Songs From a Beautiful City (The Free State Press 2014), Jimmy has made an enormous contribution to preserving Irish ballads. He has submitted well over 1000 songs to the Songs of Cork column which appears each week in the Evening Echo since 2002. Eve Telford sings traditional folk songs from Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales. Born in Australia, her original songs are inspired by the wellsprings of world mythologies, indigenous rights, the natural world and political protest.
Friday evening sees a Cork tribute to Chilean folk singer, guitar player and socialist, Victor Jara who was murdered by the Chilean military dictatorship, some fifty years ago on 16th September 1973. The tribute is organised by John Nyhan, a versatile musician and singer who has been associated with the Spirit of Mother Jones festivals and has spent many years in the folk and bluegrass music worlds.
John and his friends will continue later with the theme of the evening and play a selection of the songs of protest associated with the Folk Music revival. A memorable evening of music and songs is awaited.
Traditionally, each festival concludes with a toast to Mother Jones at the plaque. This year we will be joined by Cork singer songwriter, Martin Leahy whose song “Everyone Should Have a Home’ has become the theme track of the current housing crisis in Ireland. Each week for a year to May 2023, Martin travelled to Dublin to sing this song outside Dail Eireann to remind the politicians entrusted with solving this human tragedy of their responsibilities to enable people seeking a place to call home are facilitated to do so.
“It’s a basic human right to have a dignified place to call your own”
Well known to many of us in Cork, Mary Crilly is the Co-Founder and CEO of the Sexual Violence Centre Cork (SVCC).
Formerly known as the Cork Rape Crisis Service, the SVCC was founded on International Women’s Day in 1983, and has two main aims:
To work towards the elimination of sexual violence in society.
To provide the highest quality of services to victims of sexual violence.
The centre provides a range of confidential and free-of-charge supports and services to the survivors of rape, sexual assault, and child sexual abuse. A dedicated and active campaigner, last year Mary was honoured with the Freedom of Cork in recognition of her work.
Thanks to Mary’s tireless grit and determination to establish and sustain the centre, the SVCC has helped tens of thousands of people who suffered rape, sexual violence, domestic violence, and other horrific experiences over the years in Cork.
Mary was awarded the Freedom of Cork City in June 2022 and enrolled in the Roll of Freedom “in recognition of her unstinting support and advocacy for survivors of sexual violence over four decades”
We look forward to Mary speaking to us at the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival 2023 as she will share her experiences of 40 years of work in Cork city, talk about how far we have come, and what we can all do towards eliminating sexual violence.
Mary will speak at the Dance Cork Firkin Crane on Friday evening 28th July at 7:00 pm. All are welcome to come along.