Fri 29th & Sat 30th April Greyfriars Municipal Art Gallery and the Central Library.
The Waterford Council of Trade Unions celebrates workers and the struggle for national independence in the Revolutionary Period by hosting a number of public talks in conjunction with Waterford City and County Council 1916 Centenary celebrations. These talks are open to the public and will look at the role of women and organised workers and their leaders during the Revolutionary period that preceded the rising of 1916 and lasted until 1922.
7.30pm Friday Greyfriars Gallery – Mary Smith (Retired mid wife, Socialist activist and contributor to the Journal, Irish Marxist Review) will speak on Women and 1916. She will look at the Suffrage Movement and the women involved in Revolutionary Nationalism.
11.30am Saturday Greyfriars Gallery – Dr Brian Kelly (Teacher of history at Queens University Belfast) will address the impact of the struggle for independence on the workers movement in the North of Ireland. This talk will attempt to reframe partition as a problem of class politics, and advance an understanding of partition as a problem for the labour movement north and south.
4.15pm Saturday Greyfriars Gallery – Dr Conor Kostick (Teaches History at Trinity College Dublin and author of ‘Revolution in Ireland 1917-23’…’The Easter Rising A Guide to Dublin in 1916’ and ‘Strongbow’) will speak on the extraordinary worker militancy that characterised the period, with many workers taking over their workplaces and declaring Soviets in the Russian fashion.
2.15 pm Central Library – Dr Emmet O’ Connor (Renowned Irish Labour historian with work including ‘A Labour History of Ireland, 1824-2000‘and ‘A Labour History of Waterford’) will speak of James Connolly and James Larkin as both Socialist, Internationalist and Republican. Larkin absence from the rising having travelled to America in the wake if the 1913 lock-out caused him personal problems and complicated his attitude to Connolly’s status as a national martyr and workers hero.
Date: Fri 29th & Sat 30th April
Greyfriars Municipal Art Gallery, Greyfriars Street, Viking Triangle, Waterford
Ph: 0761102983 https://www.facebook.com/GreyfriarsMunicipalGallery
Central Library, Lady Lane, Waterford – 051 849975 – library@waterfordcity.ie