Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 18 July 2024

Spirit of Mother Jones Festival 2024

The Spirit of Mother Jones Festival, which celebrates the life and activities of Cork born Mary Harris, known throughout the world as Mother Jones is now in its 13th Year. It is organised by the Cork Mother Jones Committee, a voluntary community group in Shandon each year. The programme of events from between 25-27 July are on the festival website, www.motherjonescork.com

According to James Nolan, spokesperson, the 2024 festival edition builds upon the 2023 edition: “The 2023 Spirit of Mother Jones festival was without doubt one of the very best we’ve had. Hundreds of people from all corners of Ireland and across the world visited Shandon, and many events had a capacity audience. Trade union leader Mick Lynch was an outstanding speaker. He attracted a huge attendance to the Firkin Theatre and was delighted to be back in the city of his father and the extended Lynch family. All the speakers, musicians, singers, choirs, and many participating for the first time ensured a lively three days. Even the traditional Irish whiskey toast to Mother Jones was packed. We are already looking forward to the 2024 festival”.    

The festival committee aims to make the festival always memorable. The festival and summer school will consist of talks, discussions, songs, music, films and documentaries. They will be interesting, challenging and relevant. A number of standout highlights for the 2024 festival include the visit to Cork of Kentucky based Carla Gover and her band Cornmaiz from high up in the Appalachian mountains where Mother Jones was highly regarded.

The Festival is proud to present the Irish Premiere of Kaiulani Lee’s documentary on Mother Jones Fight Like Hell – The testimony of Mother Jones. Years in the making, it is being shown throughout the USA and it will be shown for the very first time in Ireland at the Dance Cork Firkin Theatre on Thursday 25th at 4pm on the opening evening of the festival.

Later that evening also at the Firkin theatre, Dublin historian Liz Gillis and Anne Twomey of Cork’s Shandon Area History group will discuss what became of the revolutionary women after the Civil War. The Decade of Centenaries has finished but the festival has decided to continue to tell the story of the virtual disappearance of most of that rebel generation of those women. Anne Twomey will concentrate on the life of Cork’s Winters Hill born Margaret Goulding Buckley, an amazing woman.

Julianna Minihan will present a fascinating paper on the historical provision of water in Cork city 1760-1890 and how the rich people benefitted from private supplies of fresh water, while the poor suffered from an unsanitary supply for many years until the public authorities took over the provision of water. And of course there will be mention of whatever became of the lost Shandon Dunscombe Fountain.

Historian Jack Lane will tell the story of the All for Ireland League and Irish Land & Labour League which were uniquely Cork movements. He will also tell of North Cork born D.D Sheehan MP and his efforts to house the rural labourers. Over 40,000 rural cottages were constructed in little over a decade from 1906 onwards.

The General Secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions Owen Reidy will give a landmark speech on “The Future World of Work and the Place of Trade Unions” while Cork historian Luke Dineen will discuss Big Jim Larkin and his Cork connections on the 150th Anniversary year of his birth.

Current human rights issues and environmental problem will be discussed. Writer and Journalist Walaa Sabah will tell the story of how the Palestinians are surviving the condition in GAZA at present.

An environmental round table featuring the younger generation of climate activists such as Niamh Guiry, Claudia Hihetah and Dearbhla Richardson will take place on Friday afternoon.

Professor John Barry of Queens University Belfast will earlier examine alternative pathways for society instead of the consumption model of modern society.

These are just some of almost 30 events which are forming the Spirit of Mother Jones Festival and Summer School and they are all free and open to all in and around Shandon on the days and night of the festival. Thanks to the support of some Irish trade unions, the Cork City Council, Cathedral Credit Union and local businesses. Attendance at each event is on a first-come, first-seated basis, so booking is unnecessary.

Mary Harris was born in Cork in 1837 and was baptised by Fr John O’Mahony in the Cathedral of SS Mary’s & Anne on 1 August of that year. The Harris family lived through the Great Famine, which claimed thousands of lives in the slums of Cork City. They then survived the horrors of the coffin ships when the family emigrated to Toronto in the early 1850s.

   By 1860, Mary had qualified as a teacher and was teaching in Monroe, Michigan. She later worked as a dressmaker and married George Jones, an iron moulder, and who was a member of the International Iron Moulders Union.

Mary went to Chicago where she resumed her dressmaking, established a little business. Again disaster struck when on 9 October 1871 the great fire of Chicago destroyed her premises. Little is known of Mary for a decade or more however it seems that she became very active in the growing Labour movement which was then organising for fair pay and decent working conditions in the factories, mills and mines of a rapidly industrialising North America.

   In 1890, the United Mine Workers union was formed; many of the tough union organisers were Irish and Mary too became an organiser. She was nearly sixty years old. As a woman operating in a rough male world of miners and mining pits, she was utterly fearless. She was outspoken and she cut an inspirational figure, being immaculately dressed in her long black dress, bonnet and carrying a handbag amidst the industrial debris of coal pits.

   Mary witnessed the terrible conditions under which thousands of men, women and young children worked. In this decade she helped miners to demand better pay and conditions in Alabama, West Virginia, Colorado and Pennsylvania. She had become known as “Mother Jones” to countless thousands of workers. In 1903, Mother Jones led the March of the Mill Children from Pennsylvania to New York, in which highlighted the exploitation of young children in the mines and factories in America.

Caption:

1262a. Poster for Spirit of Mother Jones Festival 2024.