Music Lectures and Films Will Celebrate Cork’s Greatest Labour Campaigner in US
The Spirit of Mother Jones Festival and Summer School 2014
The third annual festival will be held on Cork’s north side in historic Shandon from Tuesday 29th July until Mother Jones Day on Friday 1st August.
Born nearby, Mary Harris was baptised in Cork’s North Chapel on August 1st 1837. Emigrating to America after the Famine, she became a miners union activist and was associated with the March of the Mill Children in 1903, the foundation of the Wobblies and many of the coal wars. A plaque was unveiled to her in Shandon on 1st August 2012 at the inaugural festival.
To celebrate her life almost 30 events will be held with speakers, musicians and film makers from the USA, the UK, Greece and Ireland taking part. The emphasis will be on themes and events associated the Spirit of Mother Jones, the radical union organiser, defender of workers and campaigner against injustice who became known as “the most dangerous woman in America”.
Mother Jones – ‘the most dangerous woman in America’
Thursday 31st July is devoted to the struggles of miners and mining communities which were championed by Mother Jones. Landmark labour events such as the British Miners Strike, the Battle for Orgreave, the Ludlow Massacre and the Durham Gala celebration will feature prominently, with speakers Betty Cook, Anne Scargill, Dave Hopper, and Paul Winter taking part. Rosemary Feurer of Northern Illinois University and Professor James Green of Boston will also present lectures on labour history.
Rosemary, who is probably the foremost expert on Mother Jones will deliver a paper entitled “Get off your knees” James Connolly, Jim Larkin and the fight for a Global Labour Movement.
Luke Dineen will give an account of the Cork Harbour Soviet of 1921. The extraordinary tale of little remembered Cork socialist and patriot Tadhg Barry will be presented in film and in story by Trevor Quinn of SIPTU and Jack O’Sullivan of Cork Council of Trade Unions. Tadhg O’Sullivan will tell of the miners of Allihies and their connections to Butte, Montana.
Themes of injustice such as the story of the Magdalens will be delivered by Claire McGettrick of JFM. The workers graveyard that is now World Cup Qatar will be discussed by David Joyce of the ICTU. Law and injustice, with solicitor Gareth Peirce will provide another significant and vital element of the festival.
Film maker Lamprini Thoma will show her film on Louis Tikas and Ludlow for the first time outside of Greece at the festival. A new documentary by Frameworks Films “Mother Jones and her Children” will have its premiere at the festival.
Labour and union folk singers, songwriters Si Kahn (Aragon Mill) and Anne Feeney (Union Maid) will feature in a one off festival fundraising concert on Thursday 31st July (tickets €15 euro at tickets.ie).
All other events are free. Singers and musicians such as Jimmy Crowley, Two Time Polka, Pete Duffy, Richard T Cooke, William Hammond, the Cork Singers Club, the Butter Exchange band, Wildwood Flower and the Mother Jones Ceili Band will ensure music and song and dance over the four days as we celebrate rebel Mary Harris/Mother Jones.
“The greatest woman agitator of our time was Mother Jones. Arrested, deported, held in custody by the militia, hunted and threatened by police and gunmen — she carried on fearlessly for sixty years” Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, the Rebel Girl New York 1955.
Prof Jim Green
Full program details from www.motherjonescork.com, Facebook, twitter@motherjonescork or tel. 086 3196063.
Prof Mary Fuerer at Shandon Tower