Add New

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 25 August 2022

Journeys to a Free State: The Death of Michael Collins

Just over a week after reclaiming Cork City for the Irish Provisional Government, General Emmet Dalton played host to National Army Commander in Chief Michael Collins. On Sunday, 20 August 1922, Michael arrived from Dublin with his convoy to begin checking out the Republican manoeuvres in West Cork.

Dalton later recalled that he advised Collins that being in Cork was an ‘unnecessary risk’. Collins responded, “Nobody will shoot me in my own county”. Two days later, Dalton was travelling with Collins in his touring car in West Cork when their convoy was ambushed at Béal na Bláth some short few miles from Bandon.

It was on 22 August at about 7.15pm-7.30pm when the convoy consisting of a motorcycle outrider, a touring car, a Crossley tender and an armoured car were halted by a barricade on a bend in the road. Michael and his convoy took shelter on the side of the road.

In a very insightful section on an RTE documentary in 1978, entitled Emmet Dalton Remembers, it covers the life and times of the Major General. It was first broadcast following his death in March 1978. It was made in the final eighteenth months of his life. The programme is currently posted on YouTube. Dalton at eighty years of age is interviewed at Béal na Bláth.

Dalton recalls that once the ambush started that he and Collins got out and some fellow soldiers got off the Crossley tender and they hid behind a small ditch. It gave them cover from the angle from which the firing was coming, which was up from around 200 yards.

Dalton recalls: “From the volume that was there I would say that there were but a half a dozen at the most – firing rifles. A chosen ambush position is always perilous, and this was obviously a very bad position. There was no area for retreat. There was only one thing that we could have done was drive on. which I said to the Commander in Chief – ‘drive like hell’ but he elected to stop here and fight them, so we did…We were stretched out. We wouldn’t have been piled on top of each other…The spot where we were was one continuous bend of bank and the other members sheltered were firing obliquely across”.

Dalton relates that he saw action and indications of rifle fire. There were 15 to 20 minutes maximum of action on both sides. The motorcyclist came back and said that the obstruction had been cleared. So that it was then possible for them to have driven on. With one eye on Collins and after ten minutes of engagement. Dalton witnessed Collins getting up and moving to the back of the armoured car. He used it as protection to have a better sight of what was happening on the hill above. Then he moved from there up around the bend out of Dalton’s vision but he was firing from up ahead.

Dalton recalls that he thought he heard some of his convoy calling him; “I jumped up on at that stage O’Connell had been up the road to me and he said where’s the Big Fella so I said he’s around the corner around the bend. We both went up there and he had been shot. He was lying there with a very gaping wound to the back of his head…So I called the armoured car back and we lifted him and took him unto the side of the armoured car, we moved behind the armoured car with the armoured car between us and their firing position. We got him to the position on the side of the road. Under protection of the armoured car, I bandaged the wound and O’Connell said an act of contrition to him. I knew he was dying, if not already dead, so we did the best we could to cover it up [the wound].

All action at this stage practically had stopped. Except while they were lifting the body onto the armoured car, the motorcycle scout lieutenant Smith had come forward to give his help. In doing so there was an odd shot came and he was shot through the neck. It was a clean wound and he carried on helping them.

Collins’ wound was a very large wound open wound in the back of the head. On the wound Dalton recalls; “It was difficult for me to get a first aid field bandage to cover it. When I was binding it up – it was quite obvious to me – with the experience I had – it was a ricochet bullet. It could only have been a ricochet or a dum-dum. there was no exit wound…I felt he was dying or dead by the time I reached him. We were both very upset as you can well understand emotionally, and the rest of the word got around to the rest of our column. We got them together and moved quietly down the road and we moved Collins’ body from the armoured car situation onto the touring car back”.

Dalton sat in and carried Collin’s weight on his shoulder in the car and they drove off back to towards their home base of Cork. He remembers a tough journey back to Cork City. “It was a troublesome journey; we had encountered a lot of trouble and bother on the way because the roads were blocked. We had at one stage to go through a farmyard and came out on the other side. It took us quite a long time because we didn’t reach Cork City on 12 midnight”. To this day, there is no consensus as to who fired the fatal shot. 

Caption:

1165a. Memorial at Béal na Bláth, County Cork, present day (picture: Kieran McCarthy).

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 21 July 2022

Mother Jones Festival 2022

The 2022 Mother Jones festival and summer school in Shandon– the eleventh annual festival – will take place from Thursday 28 July to Saturday 30 July. It is dedicated to the memory of Mary Harris/Mother Jones and to inspirational people everywhere who fight for social justice. The website for all the details of the event is at www.motherjonescork.com

The Cork Mother Jones Committee have assembled over 20 events ranging from talks and lively discussions, to walks and exhibitions, to presentations of awards and toasts as well as singing, poetry and music. They are working closely with their sponsors Cork City Council, the SIPTU trade union, the ASTI Trade union and IFUT. With their assistance, it is possible to maintain the festival free and open to all.

Highlights for 2022 will include the screening of the Shandon Area History Group/Frameworks Films documentary ‘Ordinary Women in Extraordinary Times’ at the Dance Cork Firkin Crane Theatre on Friday evening, 29 July. 

Of special interest this year will be the visit of Antoinette Keegan, whose two sisters Mary and Martina died in the Stardust Fire tragedy in 1981.  Christine her mother and John her father were instrumental in establishing the campaign of the Stardust Victims to seek justice for their loved ones over the past 40 years.  Antoinette was will be presented with the 2020 Spirit of Mother Jones Award in person on Friday afternoon 29 July at 3pm. The festival committee hopes that the people of Cork will come along and show their support to the victims and survivors of the Stardust tragedy in their efforts to attain justice.

The Cork Mother Jones Commemorative committee was established in 2012 to mark the 175th anniversary of the birth of Mary Harris / Mother Jones (1837-1930)  in Cork. After a highly successful festival marking that anniversary it was decided to make the festival an annual event marking the life and legacy of Mother Jones. Although famous in other parts of the world, especially in the United States of America where she was once labelled “the most dangerous woman in America”, Cork born Mary Jones (née Harris) – or Mother Jones as she is perhaps more widely known – was virtually unknown and not recognised as yet in her native city.  The festivals and activities of this committee have changed that and now the name of Mother Jones is better known in Cork and beyond.

The Cork Mother Jones Commemorative Committee, in conjunction with Cork City Council commissioned Cork Sculptor Mike Wilkins to create a limestone plaque to honour Mother Jones in the Shandon area of the city, near her birthplace.  This plaque was erected near the famous Cork Butter Market and was unveiled on 1 August 2012 which was the 175th Anniversary of her baptism in the North Cathedral. 

Mary’s parents were Ellen Cotter, a native of Inchigeela and Richard Harris from Cork city. Few details of her early life in Cork have been uncovered to date, though it is thought by some that she was born on Blarney Street and may have attended the North Presentation Schools nearby.  She and her family emigrated to Canada soon after the Famine, probably in the early 1850s. Later in the United States, after tragic deaths of her husband George Jones and their four children, she became involved in the struggle for basic rights for workers and children’s rights, leading from the front, often in a militant fashion.

Mary is best known for her fiery speeches against the exploitation of miners; she was utterly fearless, travelling all over America to defend workers and their families.  Mother Jones was one of the best and most active union organizers ever seen in America. She became a legend among the coalminers of West Virginia and Pennsylvania; Mother Jones was fearless and faced down the guns and court threats of the mine bosses. In 1905 she was the only woman to attend the inaugural meeting of the Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies).

Later Mary became an organiser for the Socialist Party and continued her defence of workers in industrial disputes across America. She was arrested and jailed in West Virginia for her activities during the Paint Creek, Cabin Creek strikes, but later released following large demonstrations of her supporters. Between 1912 and 1914 she was involved in the “coal wars” of Colorado which led to the infamous Ludlow Massacre, where 19 miners and members of their families were killed. She was imprisoned many times but always released quickly due to huge local support for her activities.

Described as “the most dangerous woman in America”, her cry of “Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living” still resonates through history! Her autobiography was published in 1925. She passed away at the age of 93 in 1930 and is buried at Mount Olive Union cemetery in Illinois, where a museum will be erected to her memory shortly. When she died in 1930, she was a legend in her adopted land.  A magazine (Mother Jones) is still published to this day, along with dozens of books and countless references in US Labour History.  She certainly can claim to be the most famous Cork woman in the history of the United States of America.

See www.motherjonescork.com for more on the Mother Jones Festival 2022 across venues in the Shandon area.

Caption:

1160a. Photo of Mother Jones, 1920s (source: Library of Congress, USA).