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Thursday January 01 1970

25th Desmond Greaves Annual School 2013

national | miscellaneous | event notice

Wednesday September 04, 2013 09:40

by Frank Keoghan

post at greaves dot ie

27 Pearse Street, Dublin 2

087 2308330

A Forum for Debate

The topics this year include:
- Labour in Ireland – Past and Present
- Desmond Greaves’ life and work on the 100th anniversary of his Birth
- Labour, imperialism and the Irish revolution
- Irish Trade Unionism 100 years on from the Great Dublin Lockout
- Women and the Labour Movement since 1913
- The international weakness of the Left in the face of the Economic Crisis

25th Desmond Greaves
Annual School 2013

A weekend of political debate running from 13 – 15 September 2013 at the Ireland Institute in the boyhood home of Pádraig Pearse

Topics in the summer school’s programme acknowledge the many anniversaries this year marks -
· 250th anniversary of Wolfe Tone’s Birth
· 100th anniversary of the 1913 Lockout
· 75th anniversary of the foundation of The Connolly Association

Friday 13 Sept 7.30
The School opens for the weekend with
Desmond Greaves’ life and work on the 100th anniversary of his Birth
Session starts at 7.30

Speakers:
· Anthony Coughlan: - Desmond Greaves’ literary executor
- A Political Evaluation of Charles Desmond Greaves, the historian, political activist and biographer of Connolly

· Priscilla Metscher: - Historian, University of Oldenburg, Germany
- The importance for the labour movement of Greaves’ biography of James
Connolly: “The Life and Times of James Connolly” (1961)

Chair:
· Kevin McCorry: - People’s Movement and former organiser of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA)

Saturday 14 Sept. Two sessions
The first of two sessions today is
1) Labour and the National Question since 1913
Session starts at 11.00

Speakers:
· Joe Jamieson: - Trade Unionist, New York
- Connolly's Long-Term Legacy in America
· Ruan O’Donnell: - Historian, UL
- Labour and the Irish Revolution

Chair:
· John Douglas: - General Secretary MANDATE Trade Union and President of Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU)

The second of two sessions today is
2) Challenges to Irish Trade Unionism 100 Years after the Great Dublin Lockout
Session starts at 14.30

Speakers:
· Brian Campfield: - Gen Sec, NIPSA and Exec Committee, ICTU
- Strategies and solutions – Trade Unions in a time of crisis

· Michael Taft: - Research Officer, UNITE Trade Union
- Social partnership, the Croke Park Agreements etc and their effects on Union effectiveness

· Esther Lynch: - Legal and Social Affairs Officer, ICTU
- Trade Unions and the EU: the demise of Social Europe

Chair:
· Mick O’Reilly: - President of Dublin Council of Trade Unions

Sunday 15 Sept
The first session is
1) Women and the labour movement since 1913
Session starts at 11.00

Speakers:
· Therese Moriarty: - Labour Historian
- The historical experience of women in the union movement

· Louise O’Reilly: - SIPTU Sector Organiser
- The EU and working women

· Fionnula Ui Brógáin: - Trade Union Organiser, Communications Workers Union (CWU)
- Organising women in the new economic climate

Chair:
· Catríona Crowe: Head of Special Projects, National Archives of Ireland

The concluding session is
2) The collapse of the Left in the capitalist economic crisis
Session starts at 14.30

Speakers:
· John Boyd: - Secretary of the Campaign against Euro–federalism (CAEF), Britain

· Horst Teubert: - German Foreign Policy Analyst

· Eoin O’Murchú: - Former Political Editor Raidió na Gaeltachta

Chair:
· Professor Thomas Metscher: - University of Bremen, Germany

Bookings and Admission
Full School €25
Individual sessions €6
Students/unwaged half-price

For More Information
www.greavesschool.com
Frank Keoghan, Summer School Director
25 Shanowen Crescent,
Dublin 9
Mobile: 087 2308330
Email: [email protected]

Venue
27 Pearse Street, Dublin 2

How to get there
Pearse Street is in the city centre close to Trinity College; number 27 is on the same side of street as the Trinity Capital Hotel (next door).
By Dart and Train: Tara Street Station (01 828 6400);
Pearse Station on Westland Row, Dublin 2 ( 01 703 3634)
By Bus: 1, 3, 5, 7, 7A, 8, 44B, 44C, 47A, 47B, 48A, 62, 63 and 86
Car Parking: Trinity Car Park, Pearse Street, Dublin 2 (01 678 9200); Tara Street Car park (located opposite the Irish Times); Fleet Street Car Park (01 671 4201)

The venue for the Desmond Greaves Summer School is the Pearse Centre a purpose-built theatre space accessible through number 27 Pearse Street. This house on Pearse Street is the boyhood home of 1916 leader Pádraig Pearse; a building in part restored to its period look and held in trust by the Ireland Institute for Historical and Cultural Studies.

The Greaves Summer School has over its 25 years been the forum for looking back over Ireland’s socialist heritage while looking forward to address issues concerning Ireland's place in the wider world in the twenty-first century.

Desmond Greaves’ writings about the necessity of national sovereignty are especially relevant today as the Irish state finds itself completely emasculated within Euro-American structures.

Desmond Greaves was editor of The Irish Democrat, the magazine of the Connolly Association. Greaves championed the idea of campaigning for Civil Rights against Unionist domination in the North of Ireland. The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association grew out of the Wolfe Tone Society in the 1960’s. Greaves’ legacy lies in his vision of Ireland, a message that echoes Tone’s, to unite Irish people throughout the island to work together in their common economic and social interest.

School Programme 0.14 Mb

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Comments (1 of 1)

worth a listen

by jolted into re-assessing the old Left

Tue Sep 10, 2013 19:29

I’m going to go to this yolk this year. I’ve been meaning to go year after year.

I’ve been jolted into re-assessing the old Left.

The Trots are just mouths. I can see that now with the disintegration of the electoral and Parliamentary pact, the ULA

Writers like Desmond Greaves seem to have a more coherent, holistic vision Ireland rooted in the application of Marx’s ideas to the conditions the broad socialist movement finds itself in at that moment.

The first speaker, Anthony Coughlan, is the face of anti-European integration politics all my 25 years. He has consisted argued that the absorption of Ireland into a quazi-federalist entity negates all the efforts of Irish people’s Independence struggle.

IT IS TO RAY CROTTY WHO WE HAVE TO BE THANKFUL THAT WE HAVE REFERENDA FOR EUROPEAN TREATIES.

This intellectual, farmer, and member of Coughlan's Sovereignty Movement challenged the 1986 Single European Act.

The Single European Act was the first significant piece of legislation to come out of Brussels since the R. o. I. joined. The sitting Fianna Fail Government (republican my arse) had no intention of allowing a referendum. The propaganda was spun that this was of no great consequence, merely a tidying-up of some existing informal procedures; a few necessary tweaks to EC treaty texts. Crotty successfully argued that sovereignty of the Irish state was affected and as such there should be a referendum.

Greaves’ writings and the analysis of this particular strain of Irish socialism differs from the manufactured “consensus” about the nation-state being an anachronistic concept. The state apparatus are there for the benefit for vested interests in that society, few on the Left will contest that. Connolly argued that unless the state he was fighting for in 1916 was socialist in nature than the capitalists would become the new rulers. But …….

The level of sovereignty that a nation has vested in that state carries with it more democratic accountability. The EU sees the concentration of political power in smaller and smaller groups of people. The erosion of sovereignty in the Irish state over the past 40 years has resulted in the lessening of the capacity of Irish people to determine our foreign policy, our various food policies (agriculture, fisheries) and has facilitated the importation of a turbo-charged spirit in capitalism.

With regard to the 1986 Single European Act, Crotty points out that the Act set up a framework for a single Central Bank for Europe. He found that buried in the text of the Single European Act were provisions which would lay the groundwork for a European Central Bank and monetary union, something which the political establishment denied. He argued that among other things article 29 of Bunreacht na hEireann was affected, and therefore if this was a genuine republic then a vote by the people should be held. He believed that Single European Act represented a fundamental shift in powers that were up until then vested in national governments.

That’s a Left I’m interested in. We have a rich socialist heritage in this country.

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25th Desmond Greaves Annual School 2013

Comments (1 of 1)