2013 Press Releases

The cause of Labour: 1913 and beyond

20 Feb 2013
Jim Larkin

UCC will host a two-day conference on the 1913 Dublin lock-out and the role of labour during the ‘revolutionary decade’ of 1912-23 on 1 and 2 March.

 

The event which is organised by the UCC School of History, in association with SIPTU, is free and open to all.  It is the second in a series of conferences entitled ‘Cork Studies in the Irish Revolution’, which are being organised by the School of History, UCC to mark the ‘Decade of Commemorations. 1912-23’.

 

Leading historians of Irish labour history from the worlds of academia, journalism, the trade union movement and the Catholic church will address the conference, including Emmet O’Connor on Jim Larkin, John Gray on Northern labour, Kieran Allen on James Connolly and Thomas J Morrissey on the Catholic Church and labour. The keynote talk on Friday 1 March – on the 1913 Lockout - will be delivered by Padraig Yeates, author of the definitive history of the Lockout. Cork historian Fintan Lane will be speaking on Saturday afternoon on ‘Labour in Irish History’.

 

Other topics to be covered during the event include the social pre-history of the Lockout, international responses to the cause of labour in Ireland during the revolutionary decade, women and labour, labour and the land, and the impact of labour in Dublin and the regions

 

On the opening day of the conference a new, updated chronology of the Lockout by Padraig Yeates will be launched by Jim Larkin’s successor, Joe O’Flynn, General Secretary of SIPTU (successor to the ITGWU). The chronology will be posted on the UCC ‘MultiText’ website.

 

Conference co-organiser Dr Donal Ó Drisceoil of UCC’s School of History says  ‘We are very excited to be hosting the centenary year’s first major conference on the events of 1913 and the role of workers and the labour movement in the events of the revolutionary period. This is a topic that is often overlooked, but is of vital importance to our understanding of the period and the outcome of the revolution, the consequences of which we are living with to this day. It is an academic conference, but the lectures and presentations will have a broad appeal to the general public, and we are issuing an open invitation to the people of Cork and beyond to come to UCC on 1 and 2 March and join in an ongoing historical conversation that has much to teach us about our current predicament.’

 

For further information  contact:  Gabriel Doherty, University College Cork (T) 021 4902783, or the conference website: http://www.ucc.ie/en/history/REVOLUTION.jpg

 


University College Cork

Coláiste na hOllscoile Corcaigh

College Road, Cork T12 K8AF

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