German Mausers being unloaded from the Asgard on Sunday July 26th, 1914

Saturday, July 26th, 2014

THE HOWTH GUN RUNNING; 100 YEARS ON

Collins Barracks, Dublin  

10.00am Welcome with Raghnall O’ Floinn, Director, National Museum of Ireland

10.10am The Guns of July Professor Michael Laffan, University College, Dublin

10.30am Ulster Volunteer Force Gun-running, 1913-14 Dr Tim Bowman, University of Kent

10.50am The Gun-running: Planning and Personalities Sandra Heise, National Museum of Ireland

11.10am Q&A session chaired by Brian Crowley, Curator, Pearse Museum

11.20 – 11.50am COFFEE BREAK

11.50am At home on the Asgard: the Accounts of Mary Spring Rice and Molly Childers

Professor Lucy McDiarmid. Marie Frazee-Baldassarre Professor of English at Montclair State University

12.10pm The Life of Robert Erskine Childers Professor Rory Childers, University of Chicago (more…)

Irish Media Team wins four awards in New York – including Gold for Lockout documentary

Athena Media first Irish independent to win four awards at 2014 New York Festival Radio Awards

Therese McIntyre of Athena accepts Award on Behalf of Company in New York

Four Athena Media radio projects have brought home awards from this year’s prestigious New York Festival Radio Awards, winning two Gold, one Silver, and one Finalist award. Herosongs, our history meets song series (RTE Radio 1/BAI), won Gold in the best educational programming category; Citizens: Lockout 1913-2013, our landmark history series (RTE Radio 1/BAI) won Gold in best history programming; and our science series Science is Everywhere (Newstalk/BAI) won Silver in best science and technology programming. Our project James Joyce: The Dead, an illustrated reading by Barry McGovern, was also a Finalist in the best narration craft category.

Athena Media is the first Irish independent production company to have won four awards for multiple projects at the New York Festival Radio Awards.

Athena Media MD Helen Shaw said:

“It’s humbling to get such a response from an international jury of radio peers. It’s a fantastic tribute to the whole Athena Media team and to the support of the BAI Sound and Vision Scheme and UCD in supporting our work. We are delighted to make history as an Irish independent production company in the New York Festival Radio Awards and thank our broadcasters RTE Radio 1, RTE Lyric FM and Newstalk for their collaboration in the success of this work.” (more…)

RHYTHMS OF A PORT OPENS TUESDAY JULY 1st

RHYTHMS OF A PORT

A Film Installation 

PhotoIreland Festival 2014

 You are warmly invited to the 

Opening Reception

Tuesday 1st July at 6pm

Sea Tunes provided by Eoin Kenny, Sean Fitzpatrick, Ceoltóirí Chluain Tarbh and John Nolan

The Red Brick Shed on Sir John Rogerson’s Quay 

at the junction with Lime Street, beside the Samuel Beckett Bridge, Dublin 2

http://2014.photoireland.org/program/moira-sweeney/

Set in an imposing redbrick warehouse beside the Samuel Beckett Bridge on Sir John Rogerson’s Quay, the audiovisual artwork Rhythms of a Port intertwines the stories and memories of dockworkers, boatmen and port managers with personal reflections and insights on dock life from the artist. Multiple screens hang from the rafters, bringing a former dry cargo store to life and reminding us that the vibrant hub of Dublins’ working docks was once close to the heart of the city. Descriptions of contemporary reality on the docks contrast with its history and illustrate an evolving way of life. Arresting industry visuals are amplified by the rugged harmonies of forklift warnings, creaking wood and metal, squeaking ropes and pulleys, and seagulls.

‘The voices and surrounding sounds are the poetry of the everyday, the poetry of life. No drama here, but great beauty, a gentle pace allows you to soak it up….These custodians of the docks and surrounding sea are given the central voice, the “story” is told at a steady pace, steered by the camera and a keen listening ear. The rhythm of the piece, juxtaposed with the steel and industry of the port are beautifully realised.’                                                                                           

– Dr. Sally McDee, Researcher and Writer

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 29^th July until Mother Jones Day on Friday 1^st 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 1^st 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 31^st 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 31^st 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. (more…)

Film of Lockout Play by RADE

RADE (Recovery through Art, Drama, Education) has been producing original theatre plays, films, art exhibitions, books of creative writing and short films for the past 10 years. 

“A Hundred Years Ago” was first performed in Smock Alley Theatre in September 2013.   It ran for a further three weeks in December and finally to mark the centenary of the end of the Lockout, a farewell performance, to raise money for Dublin Simon, played to a packed house in Liberty Hall Theatre.

The play explores the events that evolved through the autumn of 1913 when ordinary workers took a stand against the subsistent wages that held them in slavery.  The play is delivered with bawdy humor that includes both jaunty and haunting ballad songs.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHmHqBRSU7Y

Also see what Minister Joan Burton said in the Dail after seeing the show  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5yqCH3L0hM

Major History Seminar in Kells to look at new perspectives on Politics and War in Meath 1913 to 1923 – May 31st

The recent launch of the new edition of Oliver Coogan’s groundbreaking Politics and War in Meath 1913-23 serves as an inspiration for a public seminar to be held in Kells on Saturday 31 May next, writes Danny Cusack. Coogan was a native of Navan and teacher at Dunshaughlin Community College. He passed away suddenly in May 2005 but he left us an important legacy in terms of the scholarship relating to this period. His book, originally published in 1983, serves as a touchstone and as a yardstick with which to assess what has been achieved in the thirty years since – and what still remains to be done.

Kathleen McKenna, centre, at work in Cadogan Gardens, London during the 1921 Treaty negotiations

As well as the more traditional themes of the 1914-18 War, the War of Independence and the Civil War, the seminar will consider social and labour issues such as the role of women and conflict between farmers and agricultural labourers. Within the wider context of the national Decade of Commemoration it is intended that this seminar, organised by Meath History Workshop, will make a contribution to furthering our understanding of events and conditions in Meath during these turbulent times. (more…)

CWU and IMPACT unions to display Lockout Tapestry at their conferences in Killarney this Month

If anyone is travelling to Killarney this month they might be interested to know that the 1913 Lockout tapestry will be on display at the Communications Workers Union Conference in the Gleneagles Hotel, Killarney from May 7th to 9th and at the IMPACT conference in the same venue from May 14th to 17th. The Tapestry will be in the public area adjoining the conferences so you won’t have to be a member of either union to see it.

If you are not in a union already a visit to see the Tapestry may just give you the prod you need to join one. These rights were hard won and still under attack from wealthy elites who seem to become greedier with every accumulated billion. We can only win our fair share of the wealth we produce by combining together.

Battle of Annesley Bridge in 1916 and Lockout Remembered

Joe Mooney sent in this short blog and great pic of Eamon Carpenter and Geraldine Gilsenan. Our thanks to Joe, Eamon, Geraldine and Hugo McGuinness, local historian and organiser of the tour to commemorate Easter Week

Eamon Carpenter with Geraldine Gilsenan and Tapestry Book – Available at Easons, O’Connell Street and SIPTU Communications, Liberty Hall, Dublin 1

After the “Battle of Annesley Bridge”  walking tour  Eamon Carpenter spoke about his father Peter ,and also about his grandfather Walter .A  presentations was made  on behalf of the East Wall History  Group . Geraldine Gilsenan presented Eamon with a copy of ‘The making of the great 1913 Lockout Tapestry’ book . Hugo McGuinness gave him a copy of the records of The Carpenter fund , set up to support the family when Walter was jailed in 1911 .

“Blackguard” Tom Daly …a story so big we needed two parts to tell it !

Irish Citizen Army Members on Roof of Liberty Hall

On the 16th April 1916 an Irish Republican flag was flown for the first time over Liberty Hall. It was a hugely symbolic ceremony , a message of defiance and a signal of intent by the Irish Citizen Army. Amongst those caught up in the excitement and emotion of the day was Tom Daly. In the second instalment of a two part feature, Hugo McGuinness continues the story of “Blackguard” Tom Daly. ( See part one here –http://eastwallforall.ie/?p=2261 ) A North Dock resident,  ITGWU member and Citizen Army volunteer, Daly was acquitted of murdering a blackleg during the Lockout , but jailed for assaulting two scabs. We continue his story in 1915 after  he had been released from jail, and was working at Croydon Park, Marino, which was rented by the union. 

Click below for full story

http://eastwallforall.ie/?p=2294 

The “Blackguard” Daly, the Lockout and the killing of “Harten the Blackleg” 1913 Lockout, East Wall, History, Irish Citizen Army

Court Sketch of Tom Daly on Trial in 1914

East Wall for All has produced the first of a two part article on the life of Tom Daly, the ITGWU strike falsely accused of murdering Thomas Harten, the only ‘scab’ or strike

Letter offering Reward

breaker killed in the 1913 Lockout

For the full story go to http://eastwallforall.ie/?p=2261