Description
About Spirit of Revolution
Spirit of Revolution is a collection of regional and local case studies which by contrast, shows that a ‘spirit of revolution’ was widespread in Ireland in the period 1917-23.
In the spring of 1919, UK Prime Minister David Lloyd George wrote: ‘The whole of Europe is filled with the spirit of revolution. There is a deep sense not only of discontent, but of anger and revolt, amongst the workmen against prewar conditions . In some countries, like Germany and Russia, the unrest takes the form of open rebellion; in others . it takes the shape of strikes and of a general disinclination to settle down to work.’ While comparative studies of revolution within the social sciences define revolution, in part, as necessarily involving mass participation, dominant narratives of the Irish revolution have left Lloyd George’s ‘spirit of revolution’ by the wayside. The political content of the revolution is assumed to exclusively be the demand for national independence, while a focus on high-politics and military elites obscures the ways in which tens of thousands of people participated in diverse forms of popular mobilization.
About the authors of Spirit of Revolution
John Cunningham is a lecturer in History at NUIG, and a former editor of Saothar: Journal of the Irish Labour History Society. He has published on the moral economy, Irish local history and global syndicalism. Terry Dunne graduated with a PhD in Sociology from MU in 2015. He has published widely on agrarian social movements in the Irish past, and is Laois historian-in-residence under the Decade of Centenaries Programme.
The Contents of Spirit of Revolution
John Cunningham & Terry Dunne
A spirit of revolution? Introductory reflections
Anne Boran
“The change was not to be in symbol only but also in substance”: contested freedoms in the Castlecomer coalfield
Johnny Burke
A “bolshie spirit”? Agrarian mobilizations in Co. Galway in 1920
John Cunningham
A “soviet at Galway”? William J. Larkin, Stephen Cremen and the town tenant mobilization of May 1922
Terry Dunne
“Strike out for yourselves”: land and labour from the Boyne to the Barrow
Mary Forrest
“Eager to produce food”: the United Irish Plotholders’ Union
Brian Hanley
“The only people who would take a risk”: maritime workers and the Irish revolution
Dominic Haugh
The “dreaded menace of the Red Flag”: the Munster soviets of 1922
Liam Alex Heffron
“Famous only as far as the wanders of a lame dog”: the Volunteers of Moygownagh C Company
Moira Leyden
“They were the coming men – Ireland’s hope”: the mobilization of agricultural labourers in Maugherow, Co. Sligo, 1917-20
Fearghal Mac Bhloscaidh
“No such sight has been seen in Belfast since Dissenter and Catholic united in 1791”: the Workers’ Union and the Belfast Labour Party
Kieran McNulty
“More militant than the men”: women’s activism, class and revolution in Kerry
Theresa Moriarty
“They felt it was their duty to stimulate that discontent”: women at the Irish Trade Union Congress, 1916–23
Gerry Watts
“Welcome back Jim”: the mobilization of Dublin workers on the return of James Larkin in 1923
