This year, the Culture Date with Dublin 8 festival will commemorate the 250th anniversary of Daniel O'Connell's birth with a number of specially curated events.
Journalist and author Caelainn Hogan writes for Culture about her event, Liberation at the Back Lane Parliament, an evening of storytelling and performance to celebrate The Liberator's 250th birthday.
Within the red brick walls of Tailor's Hall, generations of Irish people came together to plan struggles for change and freedom. Not all of them agreed on what liberation meant or how it should be fought for.
When I was asked by Culture Date with Dublin 8 to organise an event engaging with the ideas of Daniel O’Connell, whose support of anti-slavery and suffrage movements inspire many still today, even 250 years later, I found myself with questions about his vision of liberation.
An abolitionist who inspired civil rights movements internationally. An orator whose campaign for Catholic emancipation and monster meetings to repeal the act of union between Ireland and Britain agitated for change. An infamous womaniser whose legacy helped usher in a de-facto theocracy. Amidst an urgent revival and revolutionising of Irish culture, how do we mark the Liberator’s birth?
While the festival is bringing together historians, musicians, storytellers and artists to commemorate his struggle for civil rights, I think it is interesting to also challenge perspectives. O’Connell once wrote that his own people, oppressed under a colonial regime, were not "enlightened enough" for freedom, and that liberation at that time would lead to "licentiousness".
He believed liberation was possible within the empire, calling himself a West Brit and promising that "Ireland, instead of being a burden to England, will prove a rich source of wealth and strength to the empire." With protests at Shannon ongoing, should we be questioning our role within an empire today?
James Connolly credited O’Connell with effectively cementing British rule through the landlord class. On O’Connell Street today, soup kitchens that the government has tried to ban draw long lines, the number of unhoused people ever rising.
Inside Tailor’s Hall, one of the last standing guildhalls in Dublin, Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen planned a rebellion which Daniel O’Connell turned against, opposing their armed resistance against British rule, joining the Lawyers’ Corps militia to counter it.
Known as the Back Lane Parliament for fostering so many movements for change, this incredible space was the stage on May 9th for what proved to be an exploration of what liberation means today.
On the night, we heard from Jude Hughes, a tailor in his eighties who has spoken out against injustice throughout his life, especially as a survivor of Ireland’s religious-run institutions and as a member of the Association of Mixed Race Irish. Chrissy Donoghue Ward, whose book The Fairy Queen calls out the state’s treatment of Irish Travellers while celebrating her community’s oral tradition and identity, shared her insights in conversation with her daughter, Elizabeth. Visual artist Tuqa Al-Sarraj, whose Threads of Home project on Palestinian embroidery and Huguenot weaving illuminates how threadwork holds resistance and memory within its patterns, also shared her work and words on the night.
We also heard from artist and activist Osaro Azams, poet from the Donegal Gaeltacht Annemarie Ní Churreáin, as well as artist, performer and writer Day Magee.
Liberation at the Back Lane Parliament, curated by Caelainn Hogan, took place at Tailor's Hall, Dublin 8 on Friday 9th May as part of the Culture Date with Dublin 8 Festival - find out more here.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
