On our 495th Saturday, the street was lively with the traditional and additional market stalls, smoke from a number of barbecues occasionally drifting across the street. Cries of some street traders mingled with our own: “Save Moore Street from demolition! Save our heritage from speculators! Oldest street market in Ireland and 1916 Battleground! Don’t let speculators knock it down!”
The aimsir was mostly tirm with some occasional sprinkling of báisteach.
DAOINE
B’iad Bróna, Orla, Deirdre, Eileen, Diarmuid, Seán agus Eric an foireann againn Dé Satharn – a bigger team than usual.
Of course cut flowers are sold on Moore Street and the following day being Mother’s Day, lots of those were being bought on the street.
ON THE STREET …
We were kept pretty busy until 1.30pm and some of us were then off to present the campaign at a table we’d been allocated at the Radical Bookfair in Dublin so had to turn down a kind offer from Malik from Mama Shia’s foodstall to promote the campaign as we were about to leave.
Also we had three (nearly four but one arrived late) sisters, originally Nic an tSaoir, lined up for a solidarity photo. Two of the sisters, Orla and Eileen, are already regular team members and Claire joined us near the end of our shift. The fourth, Brenda, was with us on another occasion when we were able to accept Malik’s invitation and spoke from his group’s stage.
People from both indigenous and migrant backgrounds sign our petition as can be seen from our photos. Not all indigenous do but most do so. What might surprise some people, apart from the importance that people from migrant backgrounds give to street markets, is the awareness of many of our history of anti-colonial struggle. Of course, many have their own histories of such struggle, against empires based in Europe and in the USA.
We had one man making racist comments (we seem to be getting one per week now, which works out at single figures in percentage) but this one, unusually, became abusive to us and to our campaign too when we would not agree with him. He obviously had not looked at our posters showing some of the martyrs of Irish struggle who were migrants or sons of migrants.
… AND IN THE RADICAL BOOKFAIR
The Radical Bookfair was held in the big hall of the Teachers’ Club in Parnell Square and many Left and Alternative groups had tables allocated to lay out their publications, leaflets, posters etc. We only applied late but were given a small table which was sufficient for our 3 hours there.
Deirdre and Diarmuid staffed the table with petition sheet clipboard and leaflets on a table draped as usual for our campaign with the Cumann na mBan flag which was even more than usually appropriate, it being the day after International Working Women’s Day.
On the wall behind us we displayed also our poster of Constance Markievicz, an officer in the Irish Citizen Army, who fought in the Stephens Green Garrison in 1916, was sentenced to death but commuted to life imprisonment, first woman elected to UK Parliament in 1918 (on abstentionist ticket), first female Minister for Labour in the world in the First Dáil, fought in the War of Independence and in the anti-Treaty forces against the Counterrevolution. As the poster indicates, she was a migrant into Ireland.
We felt it was important to make our presence known more widely among the non-Republican Left and to promote the conservation of the battleground where the socialist James Connolly, among others, took the painful decision to surrender in 1916, and where he spent his last hours of freedom.
EILE
As usual you can support our campaign by sharing our posts from time to time, spreading the word to your social contacts and also by signing and promoting our on-line petition https://my.uplift.ie/petitions/save-moore-street
