Strumpet City RTÉ DVD90, E14.99 by John Gibney Dublin City Council’s ‘One City, One Book’ initiative sees a work of literature connected with the city being officially promoted every April. Dubliners and Gulliver’s travels are amongst those chosen in previous years, and in the centenary year of the 1913 Lockout James Plunkett’s Strumpet city (originally … Read more
Speaking at the golden jubilee meeting of the Workers’ Union of Ireland (WUI) in September 1974, historian F.X. Martin supported the union’s attempt to have a monument erected on Dublin’s O’Connell Street in memory of James Larkin, the WUI’s inaugural general secretary from 1924 to 1947: ‘This burly, brass-throated orator with the magnificent frame which … Read more
In the short term, the Lockout was a pyrrhic victory for the employers. They did not abandon their central demand, the ban on Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU) members, but only its inspirer, Murphy, and a few others enforced it. The union was weaker but it survived. Its example inspired workers to organise … Read more
Tourists are often invited, like Doubting Thomas, to thrust their fingers into the bullet holes that mark the sides of the General Post Office. Few visitors to the National Archives pause to run their hands along the words etched into the granite of the wall that runs along Bishop Street. Yet the history of Jacob’s … Read more
Liberty Hall was the first high-rise building in Dublin. Upon its completion in 1964 it was the highest building in the state, bringing a new building type (the tall building) into Dublin’s street- and riverscape; it was hailed as ‘Ireland’s first sky-scraper’ and ‘Dublin’s crystal tower’. The original Liberty Hall, which served as the Northumberland … Read more