Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent– 7 March 2013

Technical Memories (Part 47) – A Magna Carta of Hope

On Thursday 12 June 1930, the delegates attending day two of the Irish Technical Congress were entertained to dinner by the Cork reception committee. In the Victoria Hotel, Cork, Mr Jeremiah Hurley, President, Cork Workers’ Council, proposed the toast of Technical Education. He opened his speech by commenting that technical education in Ireland was not of a recent growth. As history recorded he noted,“in the very earliest times in Ireland they had very highly skilled technicians in stone work, metal work, and on parchment”. He gave the example of the Cross of Cong, which was unique example of metal work, which was “unrivalled in the world”. The stonework on Cormac’s Chapel on the Rock of Cashel and beautiful penmanship and illumination of the Book of Kells were a tribute he commented “to the skill of the early technicians, and which had no rival in this age of wonders”.

Mr Hurley believed the future of the country was very bright, and he looked to the new Vocational Education Bill as the “Magna Carta of Technical Education”. He believed that the country would again lead in the “art of peace”, as it had done before the Irish War of Independence. Technical education he expressed was “really the hope of the country”.

Mr William Ellis, Chairman of the Cork Municipal committee of Technical Instruction, in his toast reminded the audience that before the Department was established, Brother Dominic Burke, in the North Monastery School had established trades classes for the technical training of the working class children who then frequented the North Monastery; “Much of the skill and distinction which Cork tradesmen of an earlier generation achieved was due to the practical training provided by the Christian Brothers in Cork”.

Mr Ellis also recalled the powerful advocacy of a distinguished Cork Vincentian, Father Dowling, who “crusaded throughout the land, for very many years”, urging the promotion of technical education in all populous centres of technical education. He also paid tribute to Arthur F Sharman Crawford, who he noted had “much faith in the possibilities of technically educated Corkmen that he gave generously of his wealth and freely of his time to the lay the foundations soundly and widely of Technical Education in our city”.

Speaking from his experience as a worker Mr Ellis held that the advancement of technical instruction was full of “weighty possibilities” in Cork City. He spoke about the establishment of Fords, the largest single industry in the whole country, which aimed when fully working, to employ more than 7,000 men. Around it, he hoped that subsidiary metal and other industries would arise, “each affording fresh outlets for native skill and enterprise”. He wished for future vocation education schemes to be based on the existing manufactures and trades of each locality and on industries suited to such localities. The scheme of technical education in Cork must aim, he argued, to be linked to the large development of the engineering and mechanical trades. He outlined that classes must train the rising generation to be skilled electrical and mechanical engineers. This would make them not only “valuable assets to Messrs. Fords’ great industry in Cork and to other existing industries, but make them so noted for their skill and industry so that other employers will be encouraged to start metal and other allied trades in Cork, and so make our city an important engineering centre”.

Mr Ellis also referred to the completion of the National project- the Shannon Hydro Electric Scheme; “It is more than a coincidence that the new Vocational Education Bill should be introduced just as the Shannon electricity is being made for all parts of the country. There is, I am certain, bound to be a great development in the electrical trades of the country; indeed that development had already begun”. Technical education, he described, could not fail to be of practical help, both to the master electrician and to his workman and apprentice. Commenting on the scourge of emigrating tradesmen, he noted: “The sooner we train our own journeymen to be electrical engineers the sooner we will stop importing qualified men, and exporting as emigrants our own gifted but untrained youths”. In all the centres of technical education, classes he argued should be provided to promote electrical trades.

Mr Ellis claimed in his toast that the age of steam was largely responsible for the “herding” into towns and cities of enormous masses of people who were met with far from ideal conditions in factories and warehouses;“This period drew our people from the land, from the beautiful healthy countryside, into the crowded and unhealthy industrial districts in our cities and towns. As a consequence, our country suffered both by the loss of good health amongst its industrial cases, and by the loss of wealth from the decline of tillage and industry in rural districts”. He felt and hoped that the age of electricity would see a movement of the people from the cities and towns back to the countryside.

To be continued…

Wanted: looking to talk to people about their memories who attended the “Crawford Tech”, c.1930-c.1970, contact Kieran, 087 655 33 89

Caption:

681a.   Congress Standing Committee, June 1930, Mr J.F. King, Principal, Crawford Technical Institute, back row, last gentlemen on right; Mr William Ellis, second from right, front row  (picture: Cork City Library)