Where is our James Connolly?

James Connolly



Patrick Galvin, the renowned Cork poet, writer and socialist, died earlier this year. Patrick wrote many great poems and songs, among them James Connolly covered memorably by my old buddy Liam Weldon.



http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/09/liam-weldon.html







James Connolly (1868 – 1916) was a revolutionary socialist, a trade union leader and a political theorist. His execution by firing squad after the 1916 Easter Rising, supported by a chair because of his wounds, significantly contributed to the mood of bitterness in Ireland. He was co-founder (with Jim Larkin) of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union and of the Irish Citizen Army (ICA), the most effective force in the 1916 Rising.





Countess Markiewicz in the uniform of The Irish Citizen Army



The ICA numbered among its members Constance Gore-Booth, The Countess Markiewicz, who was the first female M.P. and the playwright Seán O'Casey whose plays dealt with the plight of Dublin’s working classes.



http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/10/first-female-member-of-parliament.html



Connolly was born in Edinburgh, the son of Irish parents. He was brought up in poverty, largely self-educated, attracted into politics by the labour movement and drawn through it to Ireland. In 1896, he was invited to become paid organiser of the Dublin Socialist Society. By the time he emigrated to the US in 1903 his ideas had developed, fusing together both his socialist and nationalist principles. When he returned to Ireland in 1910 he found the Irish political environment more receptive. Connolly rose to prominence during the Dublin Lockout in 1913 and in October 1914, after Larkin’s departure for America, became General Secretary of the Irish Transport and General Workers` Union and commander of the Irish Citizen Army (ICA). Liberty Hall was the headquarters of both and this became his power base. He welded the ICA into a potent force and potential weapon for his own use. Though small, just 220 members in 1912, it was well disciplined and trained and ideologically united; its goal was an independent Irish republic.









Liberty Hall, Dublin - Before and after the 1916 Easter Rising





The Starry Plough - Flag of the Irish Citizen Army



Connolly was a prolific author and pamphleteer whose ‘Labour, Nationality and Religion’ is still relevant to modern Ireland and its woes. Connolly was sentenced to death by firing squad for his part in the 1916 rising. On 12 May 1916 he was transported by military ambulance to Kilmainham Gaol, carried to a prison courtyard on a stretcher, tied to a chair and shot. His body (along with those of the other rebels) was put in a mass grave without a coffin. The executions of the rebels deeply angered the majority of the Irish population, most of whom had shown no support during the rebellion. It was Connolly's execution, however, that caused the most controversy. Historians have pointed to the manner of execution of Connolly and similar rebels, along with their actions, as being factors that caused public awareness of their desires and goals and gathered support for the movements that they had died fighting for.







Patrick Galvin was born in Cork in 1927. He has had an amazing life rising from the obscurity of the Cork slums of the 1920s to becoming one of Ireland's most lauded writers and singers with many and varied adventures along the way. Galvin was a committed socialist and was never afraid to let his political convictions show in his writing. A dramatist too (he wrote eight plays, the best-known of which, The Last Burning dealt with witchcraft) it was as a poet that he will be, and would have wished to have been remembered.





Patrick Galvin



Here he is singing his own song in 1981.







Patrick Galvin (1927-2011)





Eamonn O’Doherty’s sculpture of James Connolly opposite Liberty Hall, Dublin



"THE CAUSE OF LABOUR IS THE CAUSE OF IRELAND – THE CAUSE OF IRELAND IS THE CAUSE OF LABOUR"





Finally this is Andy Irvine’s (of Planxty) excellent version with an equally excellent short video by Ciarán O’Brolocháin telling the story of James Connolly. It culminates in a shot of Eamonn O’Doherty’s memorial to James Connolly opposite Liberty Hall, Dublin.



http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2011/08/eamonn-odoherty.html

Where is our James Connolly?

James Connolly



Patrick Galvin, the renowned Cork poet, writer and socialist, died earlier this year. Patrick wrote many great poems and songs, among them James Connolly covered memorably by my old buddy Liam Weldon.



http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/09/liam-weldon.html







James Connolly (1868 – 1916) was a revolutionary socialist, a trade union leader and a political theorist. His execution by firing squad after the 1916 Easter Rising, supported by a chair because of his wounds, significantly contributed to the mood of bitterness in Ireland. He was co-founder (with Jim Larkin) of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union and of the Irish Citizen Army (ICA), the most effective force in the 1916 Rising.





Countess Markiewicz in the uniform of The Irish Citizen Army



The ICA numbered among its members Constance Gore-Booth, The Countess Markiewicz, who was the first female M.P. and the playwright Seán O'Casey whose plays dealt with the plight of Dublin’s working classes.



http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/10/first-female-member-of-parliament.html



Connolly was born in Edinburgh, the son of Irish parents. He was brought up in poverty, largely self-educated, attracted into politics by the labour movement and drawn through it to Ireland. In 1896, he was invited to become paid organiser of the Dublin Socialist Society. By the time he emigrated to the US in 1903 his ideas had developed, fusing together both his socialist and nationalist principles. When he returned to Ireland in 1910 he found the Irish political environment more receptive. Connolly rose to prominence during the Dublin Lockout in 1913 and in October 1914, after Larkin’s departure for America, became General Secretary of the Irish Transport and General Workers` Union and commander of the Irish Citizen Army (ICA). Liberty Hall was the headquarters of both and this became his power base. He welded the ICA into a potent force and potential weapon for his own use. Though small, just 220 members in 1912, it was well disciplined and trained and ideologically united; its goal was an independent Irish republic.









Liberty Hall, Dublin - Before and after the 1916 Easter Rising





The Starry Plough - Flag of the Irish Citizen Army



Connolly was a prolific author and pamphleteer whose ‘Labour, Nationality and Religion’ is still relevant to modern Ireland and its woes. Connolly was sentenced to death by firing squad for his part in the 1916 rising. On 12 May 1916 he was transported by military ambulance to Kilmainham Gaol, carried to a prison courtyard on a stretcher, tied to a chair and shot. His body (along with those of the other rebels) was put in a mass grave without a coffin. The executions of the rebels deeply angered the majority of the Irish population, most of whom had shown no support during the rebellion. It was Connolly's execution, however, that caused the most controversy. Historians have pointed to the manner of execution of Connolly and similar rebels, along with their actions, as being factors that caused public awareness of their desires and goals and gathered support for the movements that they had died fighting for.







Patrick Galvin was born in Cork in 1927. He has had an amazing life rising from the obscurity of the Cork slums of the 1920s to becoming one of Ireland's most lauded writers and singers with many and varied adventures along the way. Galvin was a committed socialist and was never afraid to let his political convictions show in his writing. A dramatist too (he wrote eight plays, the best-known of which, The Last Burning dealt with witchcraft) it was as a poet that he will be, and would have wished to have been remembered.





Patrick Galvin



Here he is singing his own song in 1981.







Patrick Galvin (1927-2011)





Eamonn O’Doherty’s sculpture of James Connolly opposite Liberty Hall, Dublin



"THE CAUSE OF LABOUR IS THE CAUSE OF IRELAND – THE CAUSE OF IRELAND IS THE CAUSE OF LABOUR"





Finally this is Andy Irvine’s (of Planxty) excellent version with an equally excellent short video by Ciarán O’Brolocháin telling the story of James Connolly. It culminates in a shot of Eamonn O’Doherty’s memorial to James Connolly opposite Liberty Hall, Dublin.



http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2011/08/eamonn-odoherty.html

Eamonn O’Doherty

Eamonn at the relocation of Anna Livia to the "Croppy Acre" a mass grave of fighters executed in the 1798 Rebellion



I was sad to hear of the passing of Eamonn O’Doherty at the age of 72 from throat cancer. Whilst remembered for his art and public sculptures he was an Architect by profession and was my Studio master when I was studying at Bolton Street.



Eamonn, who was born in Derry in 1939, was responsible for some of the best-known and loved works of public art around the country, including the Quincentennial Sculpture in Galway's Eyre Square, the James Connolly Memorial across from Dublin's Liberty Hall, the Great Hunger memorial in Westchester, New York, - and, of course, the Anna Livia fountain (aka, The Floozy In The Jacuzzi), which was relocated to Croppy Acre Memorial Park near Heuston Station last December.



His friend and fellow artist Robert Ballagh is quoted in the Irish Independent paying tribute to Eamonn;



"People who ramble around our streets will be very familiar with Eamonn O'Doherty's work as the creator of extraordinary public sculptures. But those of us in the arts business also know of his talents as a painter and a graphic artist.”





'The Tree of Gold' on the Central Bank plaza on Dame Street, Dublin



"Eamonn will be remembered for his work. His piece 'The Tree of Gold' on the Central Bank plaza on Dame Street is a great example and is important in the context of the city as all sorts of people, from political protesters to punks, gather under the shade of Eamonn's tree.”





The Anna Livia monument is a personification of the River Liffey (Abhainn na Life in Irish) which runs through the city. Anna Livia Plurabelle is the name of a character in James Joyce's Finnegan’s Wake who also embodies the river. The river is represented as a young woman sitting on a slope with water flowing past her. She is familiarly known by the people of Dublin as the Floozy in the Jacuzzi, or the Whore in the Sewer (pronounced hoo-er to rhyme with sewer) among other names. Both nicknames were encouraged by Eamonn who was no respecter of formality.





At the casting of Anna Livia in 1988



Like myself, Bobby Ballagh didn’t qualify as an architect and lived near to Dublin’s Bolton Street College (now the DIT) in Broadstone. I have a fond memory of Bobby regaling me in a local hostelry with the tale of how he didn’t become an architect. He was playing in the Chessmen Showband and kept missing lectures and project deadlines. Things came to a head when his Studio master Pearse Mc Kenna (brother of the actress Siobhan McKenna and also one of my lecturers) confronted him and ended up breaking a T-Square over his head! That was the very moment when Bobby decided he was going to be an artist, not an architect!





The Great Hunger memorial in Westchester, New York. It depicts an Irish family walking away from their home in the 1840's to make the dangerous voyage to America in the "coffin ships."



For many years a senior lecturer in architecture at Dublin Institute of Technology, O’Doherty also lectured at the University of Jordan, University of Nebraska and École Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris. He retired to make art full time in 2002, and his work was most recently exhibited at the Graphic Studio Gallery in Dublin.



O’Doherty was also an accomplished photographer, and had an abiding interest in traditional music. In the 1970s he collaborated with Allen Feldman to produce The Northern Fiddler (1979), for which he wrote the introduction and contributed photographs and drawings. Indeed I remember hearing Allen play and introducing many in Ireland to the folk music traditions of the Appalachian Mountains which has its origins in the musical traditions of Irish and Scottish immigrants. This was the musical nursery which gave birth to Bluegrass and Country and Western. A musician himself Eamonn played the flute and also briefly managed the folk group Sweeney’s Men.





Eamonn O’Doherty's marquette for a Famine Memorial featured at “An Gorta Mór – Ireland’s Great Hunger” Exhibition in New York last year



http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/07/gorta-mor-irelands-great-hunger.html



Eamonn is survived by his wife Barbara Ní Brolocháin, son Eoin and daughters Aisling and Megan.





Eamonn with his wife Barbara Ní Brolocháin and artist Charles Harper at an opening of Charles's exhibition in Wexford earlier this year



As for Eamonn, a talented artist, sculptor, photographer, musician, architect and a sociable individual, with his sculpture ubiquitous in Ireland it could be said of him as it was of another architect;



"Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice"



For more on Bolton Street see;



http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/08/bob-geldof-and-me.html





The James Connolly Memorial across from Dublin's Liberty Hall

Eamonn O’Doherty

Eamonn at the relocation of Anna Livia to the "Croppy Acre" a mass grave of fighters executed in the 1798 Rebellion



I was sad to hear of the passing of Eamonn O’Doherty at the age of 72 from throat cancer. Whilst remembered for his art and public sculptures he was an Architect by profession and was my Studio master when I was studying at Bolton Street.



Eamonn, who was born in Derry in 1939, was responsible for some of the best-known and loved works of public art around the country, including the Quincentennial Sculpture in Galway's Eyre Square, the James Connolly Memorial across from Dublin's Liberty Hall, the Great Hunger memorial in Westchester, New York, - and, of course, the Anna Livia fountain (aka, The Floozy In The Jacuzzi), which was relocated to Croppy Acre Memorial Park near Heuston Station last December.



His friend and fellow artist Robert Ballagh is quoted in the Irish Independent paying tribute to Eamonn;



"People who ramble around our streets will be very familiar with Eamonn O'Doherty's work as the creator of extraordinary public sculptures. But those of us in the arts business also know of his talents as a painter and a graphic artist.”





'The Tree of Gold' on the Central Bank plaza on Dame Street, Dublin



"Eamonn will be remembered for his work. His piece 'The Tree of Gold' on the Central Bank plaza on Dame Street is a great example and is important in the context of the city as all sorts of people, from political protesters to punks, gather under the shade of Eamonn's tree.”





The Anna Livia monument is a personification of the River Liffey (Abhainn na Life in Irish) which runs through the city. Anna Livia Plurabelle is the name of a character in James Joyce's Finnegan’s Wake who also embodies the river. The river is represented as a young woman sitting on a slope with water flowing past her. She is familiarly known by the people of Dublin as the Floozy in the Jacuzzi, or the Whore in the Sewer (pronounced hoo-er to rhyme with sewer) among other names. Both nicknames were encouraged by Eamonn who was no respecter of formality.





At the casting of Anna Livia in 1988



Like myself, Bobby Ballagh didn’t qualify as an architect and lived near to Dublin’s Bolton Street College (now the DIT) in Broadstone. I have a fond memory of Bobby regaling me in a local hostelry with the tale of how he didn’t become an architect. He was playing in the Chessmen Showband and kept missing lectures and project deadlines. Things came to a head when his Studio master Pearse Mc Kenna (brother of the actress Siobhan McKenna and also one of my lecturers) confronted him and ended up breaking a T-Square over his head! That was the very moment when Bobby decided he was going to be an artist, not an architect!





The Great Hunger memorial in Westchester, New York. It depicts an Irish family walking away from their home in the 1840's to make the dangerous voyage to America in the "coffin ships."



For many years a senior lecturer in architecture at Dublin Institute of Technology, O’Doherty also lectured at the University of Jordan, University of Nebraska and École Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris. He retired to make art full time in 2002, and his work was most recently exhibited at the Graphic Studio Gallery in Dublin.



O’Doherty was also an accomplished photographer, and had an abiding interest in traditional music. In the 1970s he collaborated with Allen Feldman to produce The Northern Fiddler (1979), for which he wrote the introduction and contributed photographs and drawings. Indeed I remember hearing Allen play and introducing many in Ireland to the folk music traditions of the Appalachian Mountains which has its origins in the musical traditions of Irish and Scottish immigrants. This was the musical nursery which gave birth to Bluegrass and Country and Western. A musician himself Eamonn played the flute and also briefly managed the folk group Sweeney’s Men.





Eamonn O’Doherty's marquette for a Famine Memorial featured at “An Gorta Mór – Ireland’s Great Hunger” Exhibition in New York last year



http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/07/gorta-mor-irelands-great-hunger.html



Eamonn is survived by his wife Barbara Ní Brolocháin, son Eoin and daughters Aisling and Megan.





Eamonn with his wife Barbara Ní Brolocháin and artist Charles Harper at an opening of Charles's exhibition in Wexford earlier this year



As for Eamonn, a talented artist, sculptor, photographer, musician, architect and a sociable individual, with his sculpture ubiquitous in Ireland it could be said of him as it was of another architect;



"Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice"



For more on Bolton Street see;



http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/08/bob-geldof-and-me.html





The James Connolly Memorial across from Dublin's Liberty Hall