Saving 16 Moore Str - the Last HQ for GPO Insurgents (photos)

by Justin Moran - Sinn Fein Tue Apr 29, 2003 15:07 maigh_nuad at yahoo dot com

"No. 16 Moore Street must be preserved as building
of immense historical value"

Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams MP has joined the growing calls to have No. 16
Moore Street, the site of the 1916 surrender, preserved as a building of
"immense historical value". "It's part of our shared heritage and I would call
on people to support the demand and engage in a national campaign to have this
house saved from the demolition squad", he said. Mr. Adams made his call after
it was revealed that plans are at an advanced stage to have the building
demolished to make way for a shopping development.

Mr Adams said:

"No. 16 Moore Street is a building of immense historical value. It unwittingly
played host to one of the most significant events in Irish history. Having
being prevented from retreating any further from the GPO the leaders of the
Rising were left with no alternative but to surrender at the house. In any
other country in the world with any appreciation of its history this house would
be a national monument. It would and should be a treasured link with the past
and this country's long struggle for independence.

"Unfortunately there is a long and sorry history in the 26 Counties since the
foundation of the State of officialdom neglecting our national heritage and
kow-towing to developers and property speculators whose only interest is profit.
During the eighties there was numerous cases of buildings of national
significance being demolished or being allowed to fall into complete disrepair.
The United Irishman leader Lord Edward Fitzgeralds house in Blackrock was one
such case where now there is now only a lump of granite hidden behind bushes
with a small plaque on it to mark the man and his connection to the area. And
only through the dedication of a group of private individuals the Pearse family
home on Pearse Street would have gone the same way. Instead we now have a fine
building of not only historical importance but of social, political and cultural
value also. However it is shameful that this initiative had to be left to
private individuals to undertake.

"It is not beyond the realms of possibly or the imagination of the designers of
the new shopping area planned for Moore Street to incorporate the old No. 16
Moore Street house.

"I would like to support my Dublin City Council colleagues Nicky Kehoe, Christy
Burke, Larry O'Toole and Dessie Ellis in calling for the building to be
preserved. I would also like to acknowledge and welcome the cross party support
that exists in Dublin for it's preservation. This is part of our shared
heritage and should be protected. I would call on people to support the demand
and engage in a national campaign to have this house saved from the demolition
squad." ENDS

by Janus Tue Apr 29, 2003 15:09

And for those curious, the actual surrender took place outside what is now preferred watering hole for Dublin Sinn Féin, Conways. Ahhh the irony.

by James McKenna Tue Apr 29, 2003 21:48

Tear it down and build a social centre. The last thing we need is to be bowing to a symbol of the politically immature and fanatical religious nuts of Scoil Eanna.

We need realism not hero worship. Some of the men in the GPO proved themselves as cowards on the way from the GPO to that building on Moore Street. Unable to fix bayonettes and deficating in their pants they growled out the rosary on the first floor before they surrendered to the British . Some fucking heroes! There used to be a saying "death before dishonour", but it is not one our great "supermen" were familiar with.

If you want real heroes why not the men and women who declared the Limerick Soviet of 1919? They achieved freedom for the people of Limerick from the British Empire for a two week period. The strike and first soviet outside Russia was smashed by the railworkers under the diretion of the Roman Church who refused solidarity with the Limerick workers and transported the British army to Limerick. After a 10 day starve out the strike was broken thanks to the beloved friends of Paudrag Pearse and Mary Joseph Plunkhead.

Do you always let the Freestate pick your heroes? Should we take steps to preserve the Palace of Archbishop McQuade too - what a "fior Gael" he was too!

by Sean O C. Tue Apr 29, 2003 22:42

Your hatred of religion obviously knows no bounds, ironically it's the likes of the Taliban and other fundamentalists who would agree with you on rewriting history by tearing down significant buildings, artefacts etc.

by joe ranii Tue Apr 29, 2003 23:45

McKenna knows as little about the Limerick soviet as he knows about any of the other topics upon which he pontificates here. I think he heard a 5-minute segment about it on the radio a few days ago, can't remember which programme it was.

by Vincent Salafia - Brehon Law Project Wed Apr 30, 2003 05:11 uatuathal at yahoo dot com

Here we go again...another bandwagon to jump on, at the last minute. The place has been there for eighty-nine years since the fateful day, and well documented. It could have been a brothel, crack-house, or had 10 bedsits in it. Now, suddenly it is a Shrine, and we are all to attack the Government for allowing its demolition.

Get ready for another 'occupation'. Let's see, maybe Shane can do a concert from the roof, and puke on anyone who comes near?

Let's face it, An Taisce failed again. Why didn't they do something years ago if it was so important? Why don't they take steps to catalogue all revolutionary buildings, or act in a proactive, rather than the now customary reactive way?

Of course the place is important...but you are only handing the Government an opportunity to save face by preserving it, and reclaim their 'republican' roots at the same time. What's more, now it will look like they actually give a damn about heritage. What the building symbolises is much more important, and that is no longer politically, socially, or economically acceptable in this land.

This promises to be posturing on a grand scale by Bertie, Gerry, and all the Johnny-come-latelys.

The men who inhabited that building, all those years ago, were scholars, visionaries and freedom fighters. What's more, they were willing to do the dirty work as well. Would they not rather see their principles of a just Irish society and peaceful world restored, rather than an old building?

i.e.

'Whereas the Irish People is by right a free people:

'And whereas for seven hundred years the Irish People has never ceased to repudiate and has repeatedly protested in arms against foreign usurpation:

'And whereas English rule in this country is, and always has been, based upon force and fraud and maintained by military occupation against the declared will of the people:

'And whereas the Irish Republic was proclaimed in Dublin on Easter Monday, 1916, by the Irish Republican Army, acting on behalf of the Irish People:

'And whereas the Irish People is resolved to secure and maintain its complete independence in order to promote the common weal, to re-establish justice, to provide for future defence, to ensure peace at home and good will with all nations, and to constitute a national policy based upon the people's will with equal right and equal opportunity for every citizen:

'And whereas at the threshold of a new era in history the Irish electorate has in the General Election of December, 1918, seized the first occasion to declare by an overwhelming majority its firm allegiance to the Irish Republic:

'Now, therefore, we, the elected Representatives of the ancient Irish People in National Parliament assembled, do, in the name of the Irish Nation, ratify the establishment of the Irish Republic and pledge ourselves and our people to make this declaration effective by every means at our command:

'We ordain that the elected Representatives of the Irish People alone have power to make laws binding on the people of Ireland, and that the Irish Parliament is the only Parliament to which that people will give its allegiance:

'We solemnly declare foreign government in Ireland to be an invasion of our national right which we will never tolerate, and we demand the evacuation of our country by the English Garrison:

'We claim for our national independence the recognition and support of every free nation in the world, and we proclaim that independence to be a condition precedent to international peace hereafter:

'In the name of the Irish People we humbly commit our destiny to Almighty God Who gave our fathers the courage and determination to persevere through long centuries of a ruthless tyranny, and strong in the justice of the cause which they have handed down to us, we ask His Divine blessing on this the last stage of the struggle we have pledged ourselves to carry through to freedom.'

Irish Declaration of Independence
21st January 1919

We still have a long way to go boys. Again at the "threshold of a new era in history" we now have: an American garrison as well as an English one; no good will among the dozens of non-participatory nations; a national policy based on a tiny minority. We no longer make our own laws and actively assist in the disruption of international peace. As for Almighty God...

What would Mr. Connolly have us preserve, "by every means at our command?"

A condition precedent to claiming THIS heritage should be a real commitment to the cause of assisting the people of Iraq in making a similar bold and beautiful statement. Somehow I think they might actually put it into practice, if we leave them alone afterwards.

As for our built heritage, An Taisce should declare a positive solution to what is truly a national crisis, rather than simply insult us with this cause de jour mentality.

by James McKenna Wed Apr 30, 2003 08:35

http://www.irishpapermoney.com/adz/ancil/ancil03.html

http://www.eskimo.com/~recall/bleed/sinners/LimerickSoviet.htm

http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/talks/limerick.html

Here's some of your history my puking friend but you wont read it in any of the Free State/Roman approved version. It was rewritten years ago by sick Roman perverts and their lackeys like Eoin O'Duffy and his Hitler supporting Blueshirts or Liam Cosgrave (any) and his insecure neurotic paranoid economists and mathematicians.

Along with breaking the Limerick Soviet for the British the Roman Church went on to lead mobs against any "socialists" or " commonists" on "their island". They sent women to convents, the poor to industrial schools and ordered the masses into the likes O'Malley park and Southill while they abused and oppressed while holding up the image of perverts like Paudrag Pearse.

Why do we not know the name of Jimmy Gralton the Leitrim farmer deported for being a "Communist" because of his work for agrarian reform with Peadar O'Donell, instead of a middle class lawyer and American-o-phile and paedophile like Pearse?

An example of why Pearse is a "hero" and Gralton isn't is to be found in the poem where he describes his longing to brush back the hair and kiss the "full red" lips of an innocent schoolboy in his class. Sure now you see why he made a good hero for the Catholic Church. Birds of a feather and all that!

If you can fool people into seeing the past inaccurately you can better control their aspirations in the future. So go the mottos of groups who have seen themselves as having a role in the social engineering of our small pathetic state.

Seems like its worked a treat!

by ipsiphi iosaf - i liked the Salafia comment above. Wed Apr 30, 2003 11:05

yes indeed.
the slums of Dublin were the worst in Europe.
1913 saw children starve.
1916 saw many have shoes for the first time in the subsequent žlootingž which followed the Helga bombardment.
Crack cocaine was developed in the 1980s by a Columbian drug cartel believed to have been working with the CIA.
Control of Crack distribution and supply passed from Cartel to cartel and through a Dominican Republic network arrived in Europe.
Crack was first confiscated in London in the early nineties. Control of the low grade Cocaine base used for crack manufacture passed from Dominican gangs to "the yardies" in 1995-1997.

Several dealers were hung from coat hanger wire a traditional žyardiež torture, and three were thrown from abandoned high rise flats in Dalston East London. At that point the Metropolitan Police Force declared it was žtoo latež to stop the entry of Crack and its manufacturing techniques in to the London drugs market.

The Metropolitan Police estimated there were 4000 problem drug users (heroin and crack, using acquistive crime to support their habits) in Lambeth borough and 3000 in the adjoining south London borough of Sotuhwark in 1998.

Today children as young as 14 can be seen using crack in European cities. No accurate figures are availbale anymore for the number of "problem addicts".

The connection between Crack and Brothels is a well established one.

One does not need "Roisin Sraide" to know that the connection between poverty slums and prostitution was known to all Dubliners in the period 1904-1919.

Joyce made extended references to the nighttown area of Dublin which extended from Gardener Street to the Lanes behind O'Connell street.

10 bedsits.
10 beds.
20people? 40 people? 60 people?
the average was 8 to a bedsit. Dublin 1916.
80 people in that house.
where the provisional Republic was put on the shelf of history.
Don't worry Cuchulain is in the GPO.
Crack is on your streets.
and your kids know how to make it.

by Vincent Salafia - Brehon Law Project Wed Apr 30, 2003 21:41

As the good James Connolly quoted at the head of Chapter 1 of 'Labour in Irish History':

"What is History but a fable agreed upon.''

---Napoleon I.

by Jimmy Carl Black Wed Apr 30, 2003 22:09

But blow me down there he turns up in your photo. How's the habit, Ray, after your absence in the clinic? Is it true that Clair D and Kevin McL have fallen out? Pity...

by GARCIA OLIVER - A Thu May 01, 2003 20:24

I BLAME THE SOCIALIST PARTY FOR THE WHOLE THING

by hahaha Fri May 13, 2005 04:47

sooo funny to hear gerry armani i mean adams talk and use the word surrender, he should have the sign moved to belfast and put on his door.