Launch of Spirit of Mother Jones Festival Cork 2021.

The official launch of the tenth annual Spirit of Mother Jones Festival will be held in University College Cork on Thursday 14th October 2021 in conjunction with the UCC Department of Community and Civic Engagement and Community Week.

Mona Polacca.

 
The Cork Mother Jones Committee is also delighted to collaborate with The Center for Earth Ethics in New York for a special Zoom event hosted by University College Cork later that evening  at 5pm local time on Thursday 14th October featuring an interview with Mona Polacca, a Native American spiritual elder from Arizona. All are welcome to register for this event.

Details of the talk. 
https://www.ucc.ie/en/civic/open/communityweek/thursday/spirit of motherjones/

To register for password;  
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEld-iurDkpHNx9gIxo1TRQjAZieP-304Pj

According to James Nolan of the Cork Mother Jones Committee.

We are very happy to work with the UCC Department of Community and Civic Engagement and The Center for Earth Ethics in New York to help bring this outstanding and interesting event to Cork.

We hope it will attract a large audience of young people and students to the ideas and thoughts of the Native American community as to the way we are treating the Earth. Mona Polacca will explore our connections to Mother Earth and the Environment from a Native American perspective. We wish to thank University College Cork for its cooperation to present this relevant and challenging discussion, which will be repeated later at the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival  in November.

The tenth Spirit of Mother Jones Festival will be held from the 25th November to 28th November and it will be largely available to all as it will be shown on Cork Community TV (see www.corkcommunitytv.ie). We are optimistic (subject to the Covid-19 provisions at that time) to have a number of live events in and around Shandon during the period.

Among the topics which will be discussed at this year’s festival will include an account by UCC historian and author, Donal Ó Drisceoil of the life and death of Cork republican, trade union organiser and socialist Tadhg Barry of Blarney Street who was killed on the 15th November 1921, just over 100 years ago.

In addition,  historian Anne Twomey will discuss the life of Muriel MacSwiney in an interview “Muriel MacSwiney….an Unlikely Rebel”. From the Mother Jones archives, Richard T Cooke will introduce the late Dr Sean Pettit’s presentation about his beloved Cork to the festival on 29th July 2016.

Many other talks and documentaries from the last nine years of Mother Jones festivals will be shown on Cork Community TV over the weekend. The full programme of events will issue later”.

For further information see www.motherjonescork.com.

Mother Jones Visits Shandon, before Christmas 1920.

We imagine if Mother Jones visited Shandon, before Christmas 1920. During this time Ireland’s War of Independence was raging, and much of Patrick’s Street in Cork had been recently burned down by the Auxiliaries. The funeral of Terence McSwiney, Lord Mayor of Cork, who died after a 74 day hunger strike in Brixton prison had taken place through the streets of Cork, a few weeks earlier. Mother Jones, (Joan Goggin) visits her former home near Shandon and walks around the deserted streets, where she played as a child (Aoife Delaney). She recalls her childhood memories where she, her mother (Eadaoin Delaney) and her family had once been happy prior to the Great Famine and the emigration of her family to Canada.

The Spirit of Mother Jones Festival 2020

The full Spirit of Mother Jones Festival 2020 programme from Friday 27th November 2020 to Monday 30th November 2020 is now available. All events are free to view on Cork Community TV and everybody is welcome over the course of the weekend. We hope that you enjoy the 2020 programme.

Friday 27th November


3:00 p.m. The Dynamic Role of Labour Unions in the Wake of Covid-19 and
the Safe Keeping of Front-Line Workers”
A Partner Event with University College Cork Civic Engagement and the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival
Speakers: Phil Ní Sheaghdha (INMO), Ann Piggott (ASTI), Dr Edward Lahiff (IFUT)
Co-ordinated by Dr John Barimo.
Click Here for direct webinar access at the time of the event.
7.30 p.m. Introduction by Cllr Joe Kavanagh, Lord Mayor of Cork
“What Did the Women Do Anyway?”
A discussion with Anne Twomey of the Shandon Area History Group


Saturday 28th November


11.00 a.m. Tadhg Barry Remembered
Documentary film by Frameworks Films in collaboration with the Cork Council of Trade Unions.
2:30 p.m. “Ahawadda to Dáil Eireann: the amazing story of Sean Dunne, union organiser”
Discussion with historian Diarmuid Kingston
3:30 p.m. “And the World Turns Away” Discussion with Peadar King
7:00 p.m. “Cork Burning” A power point presentation by Michael Lenihan
8:00 p.m. An evening with Jimmy Crowley at the Firkin Theatre
Sunday 29th November
Mother Jones Festival Archives
11:00 a.m. 2:30 p.m. 4:00 p.m.
8:10 p.m.
“The story of Hillsborough” with Margaret Aspinall (2013) “Error of Judgement” with Chris Mullin (2015)
“One Woman’s Fight for Justice” with Louise O’Keeffe (2018)


Sunday evening with the Cork Singers’ Club

(Zoom and live on Cork Singers’ Club Facebook page)
If anyone wishes to participate email John Murphy
dublinhill6@gmail.com


Monday 30th November
Mother Jones Commemoration Day: 90th Anniversary
3:00 p.m. 4:00 p.m. 7.00 p.m.
8:00 p.m.
“Ellen Cotter and Inchigeela in the 1800s” by Joe Creedon (2019) “The story of Mother Jones” by Professor Elliott J Gorn (2019)
Mother Jones and her Children
Documentary by Frameworks Films
“Shandon in the time of Mother Jones”
Narrated by Kieran McCarthy
8:30 p.m. Mother Jones: America’s Most Dangerous Woman By Rosemary Feurer
8:45 p.m. “Mother Jones visits Shandon in 1920”
With Joan Goggin
9:00 p.m. The legacy of Mother Jones. Tributes to Mother Jones
Times and Link at http://www.corkcommunitytv.ie or Virgin Media 803 on the box. Check the schedule on Cork Community TV for final times and repeats.


(Full programme and times on http://www.motherjonescork.com and Facebook)

Just Imagine if Mother Jones Returned to Shandon

The Cork Mother Jones Committee will show a short film of Mother Jones visiting Cork  100 years ago in December 1920 at the Spirit of Mother Jones Virtual festival (Friday Nov 27thto Monday Nov 30th).

There is no evidence that Mary Harris/Mother Jones ever did return to Cork city where she was born in 1837 and left after the Great Hunger in the 1840s.

However for the purposes of the imagination, we imagine Mother Jones visiting her childhood home and streets in Shandon just before Christmas 1920 after the burning of Cork City.

Taking the lead role is actress Joan Goggin know to all as Cork’s own Mother Jones. Joan’s family, especially her Dad had an involvement in the labour/trade union movement for many years and the famous union leader Jim Larkin sometimes stayed in their house when visiting Cork.

The film also features a series of flashbacks to the 1840s where Joan is joined by her daughter Eadaoin Delaney who plays the role of Ellen Cotter, Mary Harris’s mother. Joan’s granddaughter Aoife plays a young Mary Harris skipping on the streets of Shandon.

In a remarkable twist of faith, in her soliloquy at Shandon, Mother Jones recalls her only son named Terence who was born in 1865, but who tragically died in the Memphis yellow fever epidemic in October 1867 and  acknowledges Cork’s Lord Mayor Terence MacSwiney who had died a few weeks earlier in October 1920.

This short film entitled Mother Jones Returns to Shandon was filmed in and around the Streets of Shandon by Frameworks Films. 

All events will be streamed by Frameworks Films for the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival 2020 and will be freely available to view by all.

Full programme of events will appear here and the Mother Jones Cork Facebook by mid-November.

Joan Goggin (Courtesy of Andy Jay)
Joan in Shandon
Joan with Lord Mayor John Sheehan at the March of the Mill Children 2019
Joan at the March of the Mill Children 2019.

The Spirit of Mother Jones Festival 2020 on Cork Community TV

Beginning on Saturday 1st August, the Cork Mother Jones Committee in conjunction with Cork Community TV are making available on television, some of the talks and presentations, which have been delivered at the Spirit of Mother Jones Festivals and Summer Schools since 2012.

The original series of Mother Jones annual lectures, will be shown on Saturday next while during the month of August, further talks delivered over the years at the Summer School will be televised. These will feature Margaret Aspinall, Louise O’Keeffe, Fr. Peter McVerry, Chris Mullin, Anne Twomey and many others.

These are free to view, thanks to Frameworks Films and Cork Community TV, for allowing us to celebrate Mother Jones during August.

The 2020 festival will be held in late November 2020. Further talks and speakers, will be televised during the November Festival.

To see the schedules or tune into the live stream please visit www.corkcommunitytv.ie

Mor tune into Virgin Media Channel 803.

Spirit of Mother Jones Festival Cork

Mother Jones Lives.

Some photos of past speakers, throughout the years.

Fr. Peter McVerry at the plaque in 2015.
Louise O’Keeffe receiving the Spirit of Mother Jones Award in 2018 from James Nolan and Ann Piggott of the Cork Mother Jones Committee.
Sue Roberts, Margaret Aspinall, Lord Mayor of Cork, Cllr. Catherine Clancy, and Professor Simon Cordery in 2013.
Kaiulani Lee with Lord Mayor of Cork, Cllr. John Buttimer in 2012.
Marat Moore, Professor Rosemary Feurer, Lord Mayor of Cork, Cllr. John Buttimer, and Professor Elliott Gorn in 2012.
Former miner, Marat Moore in 2012.
Warren Davies in 2017.
Lord Mayor of Cork, Mick Finn, with the Mother Jones’, Joan Goggin, Aoife Delaney and Loretta Williams.
Luke Dineen in 2016.
Loretta Williams with Dominic O’Callaghan, Cork Mother Jones Committee in 2018.

The remarkable Wallace sisters.

Documentary on One – The Little Shop of Secrets by Bill Murphy.Saturday July 18th at 1pm on Radio 1.


In the early decades of the last century two sisters, Nora and Sheila Wallace, ran a small newsagents in the centre of Cork City. However, their customers were unaware that when they bought their Irish Times or Cork Examiner, that this small shop also traded in military secrets during the Irish War of Independence – from deciphering codes, to keeping the inventory of armaments for the Cork No. 1 Brigade, Irish Republican Army. 

Sheila and Nora Wallace grew up in rural north Cork, before coming to live and work in Cork City in the 1900s where they rented the premises on Brunswick Street (now St Augustine’s Street) in the centre of the city. On the very narrow street in the shadow of the large St Augustine’s Church, the shop sold newspapers, sweets, cigarettes, magazines and religious items such as statues and rosary beads. 


Over the shop the sisters lived in small, meagre quarters. Interested in nationalist and socialist ideals, Sheila and Nora became friendly with figures such and James Connolly and Countess Markievicz. Because of their deep-rooted sense of nationalism, they also came to know prominent local nationalist figures in Cork such as Tomás McCurtain, Terence MacSwiney, Florence O’Donoghue, Seán O’Hegarty, as well as Michael Collins.  
As the nationalist movement gained more popularity throughout Ireland, the Wallace Sisters became deeply involved with the Irish Volunteers. After the shutting down of the Cork Volunteers headquarters in Sheares Street in 1917, the Wallaces’ small shop became more than a meeting place for the leadership of the Cork Volunteers. It was essentially the Brigade headquarters where the intelligence and communications activities in the city and county were co-ordinated during the War of Independence. 


Records show that Sheila became a Staff Officer in the IRA, making her one of the highest female rank holders in the organisation at the time. Meetings of Cork No. 1 Brigade leadership were held in the kitchen at the back of the shop, where raids and ambushes were planned. Dispatches went through the shop for IRA operations. Spies in the Crown forces were recruited and handled by the Wallaces and British Army codes were deciphered by them. They also kept meticulous records of the armaments and equipment held by the Brigade, effectively acting in the role as quartermasters.


In The Little Shop of Secrets, Bill Murphy – grandnephew to Sheila and Nora Wallace – pieces together the remarkable story of two young women who placed their lives in grave danger by running an intelligence centre, safe house and spy network from their little shop in the centre of Cork City during the War of Independence, right under the noses of the Royal Irish Constabulary and British Crown forces. 
Contributors to the documentary include Dr. John Borgonovo and Gabriel Doherty from the History Department in University College Cork, local historians Anne Twomey and Gerry White, Commandant Daniel Ayiotis of the Bureau of Military History, Daniel Breen of Cork Public Museum, Bernadette Wallace – niece to Nora and Sheila Wallace, Ted Murphy – grandnephew to Nora and Sheila Wallace.


Saturday 18th July, 1pm, RTÉ Radio 1Sunday 19th July, 7pm, RTÉ Radio1 Narrated by Bill Murphy Produced by Bill Murphy and Sarah Blake www.rte.ie/doconone


Note:On 30th July 2016, Anne Twomey of the Shandon Area History Group gave a talk on “The Wallace Sisters” at the 2016 Spirit of Mother Jones Summer School before a packed audience which included Bernadette Wallace, a niece of the sisters.The remarkable story of the sisters came as a surprise to many who attended, which showed how quietly these two extraordinary women went about their business.  

The Extraordinary Wallace Sisters | The Spirit of Mother Jones Festival.

An Irishman’s Diary about about a republican newsagents in revolution-era Cork.

March of the Mill Children re-enacted in Shandon, Cork

A re-creation of March of the Mill Children was held on 31st July 2019 and was staged by Cork Community Art Link. It was directed by Beibhinn O’ Callaghan and Elisa Gallo Rossi.

 The event took place on the historic streets of Shandon in Cork city in conjunction with the Cork Mother Jones Committee as part of the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival 2019. Ms Joan Goggin was Mother Jones. The Lord Mayor of Cork Cllr. John Sheehan attended.
We thank everyone who participated in what was is a historic event which commemorated the original event led by Mary Harris\Mother Jones from Philadelphia to New York during three weeks in July 1903.
For more information on the background of the original March of the Mill Children see our previous article here:https://motherjonescork.com/2019/06/25/mother-jones-and-the-march-of-the-mill-children/

Best wishes to Shandon Street Festival 2019

The Cork Mother Jones Committee would like to extend our best wishes to all involved at the Shandon Street Festival as they prepare for their 2019 festival which takes place next Saturday, 22nd June in and around Shandon Street on Cork’s Northside.  The festival runs from 1 to 6pm and will have something for all the family.

Shandon Street Festival 2019

The Shandon Street Festival is in many ways a sister festival of the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival.  It was with tremendous help from the Shandon Street Committee that we got off the ground in 2012 and many of the same individuals play a key role in both festivals which take place in the same area of the city.

Programme outside

Shandon Street fesstival (outside)

Inside of Flyer / programme

Shandon is Ready for Mother Jones!

Shandon
Shandon, Cork City

The flowers are blooming, the window displays are resplendent and the streets are gleaming in the Shandon area as it awaits tomorrow’s start of the 7th Spirit of Mother Jones Festival and Summer School which begins tomorrow (Wednesday) and runs until Saturday, 4th August.   Our thanks to all concerned.

Spirit of Mother Jones Festival 2018 – Information for Visitors

The 2018 Spirit of Mother Jones Festival 2018 starts on Wednesday, 1st  August and runs until the evening of Saturday, 4th August.  This year we have a new venue in addition to our now established venues at the Maldron Hotel and the Firkin Crane Theatre.  That new venue is the North Cathedral Visitor Centre at the side of Cathedral of St. Mary and St. Ann on Roman Street.  All three venues are within a few minutes walking distance of one another in the Shandon area just to the north of Cork city centre.

The Maldron Hotel
 
Maldron Hotel
The Maldron Hotel

The Maldron Hotel is situated on John Redmond Street in what was formerly Cork’s historic North Infirmary hospital.   All of this year’s Music events will be held in the cosy atmosphere of Bells Bar in the hotel.

 
Firkin Crane
The Firkin Crane Theatre

The Firkin Crane Theatre is just 200 metres from theMaldron.  This iconic circular building from 1855 was originally part of Cork’s historic butter market but is now used primarily as a centre for dance, especially ballet, and for other music and theatrical events.  The Firkin Crane will be the venue of a number of lectures / talks during the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival 2018

 
 
 

 

Cathedral Visitor Centre
Cathedral Visitor Centre

The Cathedral Visitor Centre is located to the rear of Cork’s North Cathedral (Cathedral of St. Mary and St. Ann) and can be accessed from just around the corner at Roman Street.  It is within 5 minutes walk of our other venues and will be the venue for many of the films and talks during the festival

 
 
Our sincere thanks the the management of all three venues for their assistance and cooperation with our festival.

 

How to get there:

 
Venue Map
Venue Map with Shandon Steeple at its centre

Bus Service.

The 202 and 202A bus travelling northside from the City Centre (Merchants Quay stop) will take one to the door of both the Maldron Hotel and the Cathedral Visitor Centre and to within 200 metres to the Firkin Crane Theatre.  The City Tour Bus stops also at the Firkin Crane Theatre as a regular stop on it’s City wide tour.
 
 
Walking distances.
Maldron is 5 minutes from Christy Ring Bridge (Opera House)
Firkin Theatre is 8 minutes from Christy Ring Bridge
Cathedral Visitor Centre is 10 minutes from Christy Ring Bridge.
 
Car Parks.
Pay car park in the grounds of the North Cathedral.
Carrolls Quay or Paul Street car parks are nearby.