Monthly Archives: March 2022

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 10 March 2022

Uncategorized
1141a. Film still from British Pathé of Michael Collins and the crowds on the Grand Parade, Cork, Sunday, 12 March 1922.

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 10 March 2022

Journeys to a Free State: Collins’ Rallying Call

The first political rally that Michael Collins attended outside Dublin to promote support for the Treaty was in Cork City. All of the regional newspapers of the time including the Cork Examiner had media spreads on the rally. On the second weekend in March 1922, Michael Collins travelled from Dublin to Cork by train, accompanied by Fionán Lynch TD, Commandant Seán MacEoin or MacKeown TD, Seán Milroy TD, and J J Walsh TD.

Michael Collins and Commandant MacKeown briefly addressed the large crowds that had foregathered at some of the railway stations – at Gould’s Cross, Thurles, Limerick Junction and Mallow. Long before the arrival of the train people before to assemble in large numbers in the vicinity of the Cork Terminus, admission to the platform was strictly limited to ticketholders.

On that Saturday afternoon, 11 March, Michael and colleagues were taken through the city in triumph, behind a number of bands. Not everyone was content to see them. A number of armed Republicans halted one band who has set out to meet Collins. They took their instruments at gunpoint and flung them into the River Lee. One band member leapt into the river to retrieve a drum, which was floating down the river. Gunshots were also fired in the air as Collins passed in his car through St Patrick’s Street towards his accommodation at Turner’s Hotel on Oliver Plunkett Street.

During Saturday evening, the two platforms set up on the Grand Parade for the rally the following day were damaged. The wooden planks were hurled into the river. In the area around Turner’s Hotel, Republican slogans were posted as well as several white flags in very visible places. The white flags were a message to Treaty supporters to consider surrendering their stance.

On Sunday morning 12 March, before the rally, Michael Collins and his colleagues, and now joined by other supporters attempted to visit the Republican Plot at St Finbarr’s Cemetery. They were met with twenty armed men telling them if they entered the plot area they would be shot. Meanwhile the special excursion trains from Youghal, Fermoy and Newmarket were raided by armed Republicans. Engine drivers and firemen were kidnapped. The passengers were left abandoned to fend for themselves.

Circa 50,000 people turned up on Cork’s Grand Parade for the rally. Every vantage point was used. At platform no.1, which was nearer to the National Monument Cllr Barry Egan presided as chairperson. The first speaker was Liam De Róiste, who was followed by Michael Collins. The core of Michael’s speech was basically a rebuttal of many of De Valera’s ideas he had presented in previous weeks at his own Anti Treaty rallies across the country. Michael noted: “The Irish people have not disestablished their democratic right to rule themselves. They have claimed that right and fought for it through many generations. They have now at last established that right. They have done more. They have secured recognition of that right by the power which through, all the centuries had denied it. The departure of his forces is the real recognition of that right. It was those forces alone that prevented the Irish people from exercising their right”.

Michael went onto comment on the Treaty negotiations and the success of the British army leaving the south of Ireland. He highlighted; “That interference has come to an end—that interference, the absence of which Mr De Valera lays down as the condition necessary for the existence of a Republic. We took a certain amount of government out of the hands of the economy while he was here. We took as much as we could. But we could not grasp all of it, because he used, the whole of his force to prevent us from doing so, and were unable to beat him out of the country by force of arms. But the enemy is going – will soon be gone, if, indeed Mr DeValera and his friends will but allow them to depart”.

Michael Collins was followed by Seán Hayes, Commandant Seán McKeown TD, Commandant Seán Hayes TD, and Diarmuid Fawsitt. During Seán McKeown’s speech shots were fired during his speech and continued interruptions of shouting was heard all the way to the end of the programme of platform no.1.

At platform no.2, the proceedings had scarcely started when elements of hostility were displayed right in front of the platform. A party of young men, numbering about twenty or thirty, congregated just under the rostrum on which Seán Jennings, Pro Treaty supporter and Chairman of the Cork Board of Guardians, had appeared to open the proceedings. They raised shouts of “Up the Republic”, sang the Soldier’s song, and generally created a din, drowning the voices of the speakers. Within a minute or two, revolver shots were fired into the air. Seán kept speaking but the interruptions drowned him out. At this point Commandant McKeown stood, who had moved over from platform no.1 stood up to take control of the deteriorating situation.

Booming at the crowd, MacKeown declared; “I am not going to be hounded down by four or five men. yes, we sung that when there was danger in singing it. We sang that when we fought for what it meant, and when there was danger in singing it. If Miss MacSwiney called us murderers we fought for the flag, and we are not going to be dictated to by Miss MacSwiney”. Pointing to the group from where the interruptions came, McKeown noted “These men are afraid to hear the truth; they are afraid to let the truth be told even in Cork.

At this juncture a photographer who said he was from an American News Agency appeared on the platform, and endeavoured to take a snap from near where the pressmen were seated. There was immediately an angry rush from the group of interrupters who focussed a revolver at the camera man. The photographer immediately backed down and disappeared from the platform.

Revolver fire became more intense and numbers of people congregated round the platform became alarmed, and there was a slight stampede. The din of the interrupters continued right throughout the meeting and the speakers, Seán Milroy TD, Fionán Lynch TD, J J Walsh TD, Pádraig O’Keeffe TD and Michael Collins TD (who had moved over from platform no.1) were heard with great difficulty.

Over the ensuing six weekends Michael Collins held political rallies from Skibbereen to Waterford, Wexford, Castlebar, Tralee, and Naas.

On the British Pathé YouTube channel there is a film piece entitled “Great Cork Treaty Meeting. Mr Michael Collins receives enthusiastic reception from the huge gathering despite salvoes of shots from a few malcontents”.

Captions:

1141a. Film still from British Pathé of Michael Collins and the crowds on the Grand Parade, Cork, Sunday, 12 March 1922.

1141b. Film still from British Pathé of Michael Collins speaking on the Grand Parade, Cork, Sunday, 12 March 1922.

1141b. Film still from British Pathé of Michael Collins speaking on the Grand Parade, Cork, Sunday, 12 March 1922.

“You and Your Mental Health” Booklet

Improve Your Life, Uncategorized


“You and Your Mental Health” booklet was launched recently. This booklet was produced by Cork Healthy Cities, Mental Health Services and Health Promotion & Improvement.

This booklet is for the adult population and contains really good tips on what you can do to improve and maintain your mental health and wellbeing by building healthy habits daily.

It also introduces the Five Ways to Wellbeing, which are evidence based actions to support our mental health and wellbeing.

https://corkhealthycities.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/You-and-Your-Mental-Health.pdf

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 3 March 2022

Cork History, Uncategorized
1340a. Ford Factory, Cork, c.1930 (picture: Cork City Library).
1340a. Ford Factory, Cork, c.1930 (picture: Cork City Library).

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 3 March 2022

Journeys to a Free State: The Henry Ford Motion

During simmering tensions amongst Treaty and anti-Treaty factions in February and March 1922, a motion passed by eighteen members of Cork Corporation created another stream of tensions amongst Cork citizens. The motion concerned the Ford factory in The Marina and a call to Henry Ford that the target of 2,000 employees as set out in the lease agreement between the Corporation and the company be put in place within two months of the motion.

Henry Ford’s journey to create the tractor factory from first negotiations in 1916 to the first tractor rolling off the production line in mid-July 1919 was not straight forward and ultimately required significant investment on his side. The site of the proposed factory was fully in the possession of Cork Corporation but a racecourse committee held a lease of the land. In 1916, there were 35 years of an agreed lease still in play to the committee at £175 a year. Fortunately, the lease contained a clause that at any time the Corporation could retake possession of the holding, if it was required for factory sites.

The Ford company also required a strip of land on the docks from the Marina to R & H Hall. This was a very valuable site. Henry Ford’s team agreed to pay 7s 6d per foot per annum, which was on par with what R & H Hall and Furlongs were paying to Cork Corporation.

Fords also needed a portion of land that was in the hands of the Cork Harbour Board. It consisted mainly of a wharf that had been erected a few short years before Ford’s arrival. It was built as a docks site to discharge timber and was 500 feet in length. At that point as well in the south docks area, there were also limitations on turning long vessels in the river. Vessels could be no longer than 420 feet long. However, for the four years of the wharf’s existence no vessel of any kind used it. Initially it cost £8000 but the Henry Ford & Son Company paid £10,000 for it to buy it outright.

In addition, to the money that the Henry Ford and Son Company paid down for The Marina site, certain guarantees also had to be signed up to. A total of £200,000 needed to be expended upon the site and buildings and 2,000 men at 1s an hour were to be employed at a minimum – making a total investment in wages alone of over £,4,800 per annum.

For the Ford company, the total spent on the land and buildings ended up close to £275,000. A further £485,000 was spent on equipment and machinery. By early 1920, the company were employing 1,500 men with a weekly wages bill far in excess of anything contemplated at that time at between £8,000 and £9,000 weekly. The rates paid by the company to the Corporation were also substantial.

There were four outside firms in Cork doing sub-production work for the Ford company. One of them was employing 40 men solely on Ford work. In addition, hundreds of men were working indirectly for the Ford company, such as carters, dockers, etc being employed by transport companies in the conveyance of the company’s goods and products. In short, the Ford investment annually into the Cork economy was quite substantial.

Edward Grace, Managing Director of Fords in Cork, wrote to Lord Mayor Donal Óg O’Callaghan and the members of the Corporation re-iterating the company’s significant investment in Cork and asking them to rescind the motion. The letter was published in the Cork Examiner on 2 March 1922. He described that before Ford’s arrival only 10 per cent of the tractor was manufactured in Ireland; in 1922 it was over 90 per cent, principally in Cork and its neighbourhood. In addition, they were manufacturing the complete engine of a Ford car, a part which was bound for the Ford Trafford Park Factory in Manchester. In early 1922, the company suffered from the general economic slump between Britain and Ireland and had to restrict its employment of staff from a high of 1,500 men employed in 1920 to 940 men in February 1922. However, the 1922 workers were on a rate of 2s 1d per hour, which was double the wages stipulated by the Corporation lease agreement.

The Corporation motion also upset hundreds of Ford workers who met en masse outside the factory on The Marina on the evening of 3 March 1922. They all agreed upon a motion to be sent to the Lord Mayor; “That this meeting of Ford workers strongly protest against the ill-advised and ill-judged action of a section of Cork Corporation, and hereby call on the Corporation as a whole to take immediate steps to rectify what may easily become a serious calamity to us, our families, to the City of Cork. A second motion was also put forward and agreed upon to be cabled to Henry Ford; “That Ford workers, Cork, disassociate themselves from action of section of Corporation. Taking steps to have recent mistake rectified. Your position appreciated and endorsed by the workers”.

Henry Ford was livid receiving the Cork Corporation motion and by 6 March 1922 had ordered the shutting down of his Cork factory. The workers presented themselves to the city’s labour exchange. The exchange already had 8,000 people on its books and telegraphed the Dublin Labour Exchange for extra administration support.

By 9 March 1922, Diarmuid Fawsitt of the Ministry of Economics of the Irish Provisional Government visited the Ford factory accompanied by Liam De Róiste, TD and James C Dowdall, President of the Cork Industrial Development Association. As secretary to the Cork IDA, Diarmuid was associated with the coming of the Henry Ford firm to Cork. At the conclusion of their visit, they strongly called for Cork Corporation to rescind the motion.

A day later on the 10 March, members of Cork Corporation met and the motion was rescinded. Another agreed motion at the meeting set out a call for a resolution; “That the city solicitor confer with the legal representatives of Messrs H Ford with a view to an amicable settlement. That a delegation of two members of council be appointed to wait on Mr Henry Ford and explain the matter fully to him on receipt of his reply to cable of the Lord Mayor”. Ultimately the Ford factory immediately resumed its work under its own terms of progress and through several weeks of negotiation the legal binding element of 2,000 workers was waived by Cork Corporation members.

Caption:

1340a. Ford Factory, Cork, c.1930 (picture: Cork City Library).