Campaign To Save Moore Street Rallies Public Support
A group which is active in the campaign to save the site and one which Aontacht readers should give their support to is Save Moore Street from Demolition, who are independent of any political party, while some organisers are socialist republicans by conviction.
At 10:30 am on Saturday 26 September, historian Lorcan Collins will host a walking tour of the Dublin 1’s Moore Street area in support of the campaign to save Moore St to transform it and its surroundings into a cultural historic quarter that honours its “1916 Rising heritage and its street-trading tradition”.
The area holds significant national importance as it is the site of April 1916’s Battle of Moore Street, where eight revolutionary republicans were killed along with eleven civilians in their final stand-off against occupying British forces.
It also hosts the oldest open-air market in Dublin, Moore Street Market, which has been operational for over 150 years.
A group which is active in the campaign to save the site and one which Aontacht readers should give their support to is Save Moore Street from Demolition, who are independent of any political party, while some organisers are socialist republicans by conviction. They have been holding a stall every Saturday at 11:30am on Moore Street for 626 weeks now. This group has taken direct action to further the aims of the campaign, including a street demonstration which led to a week-long occupation of the building in 2016 to prevent its demolition, followed by a 6 week blockade. They have also organised protest marches, highlighted its UNESCO World Heritage potential, and have organised a growing petition.
“It is a very important part of our history and heritage as Irish people, but it is also of international importance, because it was the first rising against World War 1, there was not another one until February 1917 in Russia and then again in 1917 October, and another one in Germany in 1918. It was the first anti-colonial rising of any significance of the 20th century from which loads of other people took their inspiration, and in that rising fought the first workers’ army in the world, the Irish Citizens’ Army (who also recruited women), and the first women's republican military organisation, Cumann Na mBan, “ says Diarmuid Breatnach, who is an activist with Save Moore Street from Demolition.
“People might say that is in the past, but why Moore Street? Moore Street is where the headquarters of the 1916 rising was, and where the most important decisions were taken. And so, today it is important to protect this legacy, “ he explains.
“‘Nil saoirse gan stair’ means ‘there is no freedom without history’”, he says.
“Every struggle has its history, if you lose your history, you are on the way to losing your struggle as well, “ he concludes.
A more mainstream group is the Moore Street Preservation Trust , a body founded at the turn of the millennium. It is heavily embedded within Sinn Féin.
The Trust’s primary aim is to urge the State, which only owns a part of the site, to purchase it in its entirety and transform it into a distinct cultural quarter. Hammerson Group, a British property developer which owns nearby ILAC, also owns significant portions of the Moore Street area, which it wishes to partially demolish and reportedly construct in its place an area for hosting chain stores and a hotel. The proposed plan includes a new street from the Moore Street entrance ILAC straight towards O’Connell Street where the Carlton Cinema used to be. This would would destroy the buildings which the 1916 rebels occupied during the uprising.
So far, the State has approved the creation of a Commemorative Centre at Nº 8-9 and Nº 14-17 Moore Street, which was bought by the State in 2015 and was supposed to have been ready for the hundred-year anniversary of the Rising in 2016.
A bill introduced to the Dáil by Sinn Féin TD Aengus Ó Snodaigh seeks to create a management company called An Cheathrú (‘the Quarter’), which would oversee public and possibly private sites within the judicially defined Moore Street Battlefield Area, which includes not only Moore Street, but parts of Moore Lane, O’Rahilly Parade and Henry Place as well.
The bill would also assert Moore Street Market as a permanent market and ensure that any market stall holders in the area keep operating licences “with conditions attached no less favourable than at present”.
15-euro tickets to Lorcan Collins’ walking tour of Moore Street can be bought here. The tour group of about thirty-five will meet at the Jim Larkin Statue on nearby O’Connell Street.
