{"id":810,"date":"2012-01-12T12:27:08","date_gmt":"2012-01-12T12:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/54.229.91.100\/libraryandarts\/library\/ehistory\/?p=810"},"modified":"2012-01-12T12:27:08","modified_gmt":"2012-01-12T12:27:08","slug":"sobriety-and-socialism-themes-of-st-patricks-day-1915","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/sobriety-and-socialism-themes-of-st-patricks-day-1915\/","title":{"rendered":"SOBRIETY AND SOCIALISM – THEMES OF ST. PATRICK’S DAY 1915"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sobriety and socialism \u2013 themes of St. Patrick\u2019s Day 1915<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

St. Patrick is said to have slain all the serpents in Ireland but there was one demon which escaped his missionary zeal and was to come back and haunt his feast day centuries later, the demon known as \u2018drink\u2019. The extent to which alcoholic excess had debased the national holiday in the early twentieth century was apparent in an editorial from the Kildare Observer<\/em> in March 1915. It is clearly with some relief that the Observer<\/em> editor reported that \u2018There was a notable absence of the drunken dissipation which self-respecting Irishmen so condemned in the festivities of a few years ago.\u2019 He was happy to record that the wave of temperance which had spread over Ireland in the previous decade had relegated to the past \u2018the old time revels, chiefly stimulated by the use of alcohol.\u2019\u00a0\u00a0 Warming to his theme he prophesied that the abandonment of alcohol and its vices would unlock the potential of the Irish race and open the way to a brighter destiny. Indeed the words which flowed from the editor\u2019s pen in 1915 bear much similarity with the rhetoric being used by commentators in a modern Ireland looking to a better future after years of mediocrity (albeit for different reasons) – \u2018Despite all the discord that has devastated our country and which has prevented its progress in a material sense there will come a time when, the shackles of drunkenness and misunderstanding removed, Ireland will take her place among the countries of the world.\u2019<\/p>\n

A model of the new and sober approach to marking the national patron\u2019s feast was to be found in the report of the Naas Commercial Dance held in the Town Hall on St. Patrick\u2019s Eve. The tone of the account suggests that this was a highly respectable evening with the Naas commercial circle being the epitome of manners on their night out. Upwards of fifty couples waltzed on the polished floors of the Town Hall ballroom to the strains of Messrs. Boushell\u2019s dance orchestra. When not playing dance music the Boushell\u2019s ran a shoe and boot shop, interestingly its premises are now part of the Leinster Leader offices in South Main Street, Naas. The dance organising committee comprised Messrs. P.Dowdall, J. McDonald, P. Malone, J. Maher, J.J.O\u2019Neill and M. Foynes \u2013 names which were to continue in Naas commercial circles well into the twentieth century. The same could be said for many of the patrons whose names were dutifully recorded in the Observer report \u2013 the Misses Hyland, Tyrrell, Higgins, Sammon, Berney, Patterson, Coughlan and O\u2019Neill,\u00a0 all daughters of well established business houses in the locality.<\/p>\n

Looking towards rural Kildare the Observer\u2019s<\/em> local notes column recorded that St. Patrick\u2019s Day was marked in a more robust way, still temperate but with a political nuance. A fife and drum band which had been started in connection with the Staplestown corps of the National Volunteers led the volunteers on a route march on St. Patrick\u2019s Day. The National Volunteers comprised of followers of the Irish Parliamentary Party leader John Redmond who had split the masses of the Irish Volunteers the previous September when he had promised recruits for the British army at the outbreak of the world war.<\/p>\n

There was high politics too from the pulpit on St. Patrick\u2019s Day in Staplestown when holy day mass goers heard an exhortation from Fr. Conroy, curate, that \u2018God would rid the country of socialism, Larkinism, and every other \u201cism\u201d that tended towards dissension and ruin.\u2019\u00a0 Father Conroy went on to \u2018refer to the sad fate of the traders in the city whose little businesses had been smashed because of Larkin\u2019s society.\u2019\u00a0 The Larkinism referred to is the mobilisation of workers in Dublin led by Jim Larkin, regarded as one of the founding figures of Irish trade unionism.\u00a0 The Dublin worker\u2019s strike of 1912 had seen Larkin organise mass protests by workers against the captains of commerce in the capital. The Catholic clergy saw communist anti-clerical influences behind such militant trade unionism.\u00a0 Even St. Patrick could not have envisaged that his name would be invoked to, in the words of the Staplestown curate to his parishioners \u2018 deal with godless influences which existed on the continent\u2019 \u2013 a reference to the emergence of socialism in the industrial cities of Europe.\u00a0 Series no: 220.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In his column ‘Looking Back’ from the Leinster Leader<\/em> 15 March 2011 Liam Kenny\u00a0reflects on sobriety and socialism on St. Patrick’s Day 1915. As always our thanks to Liam.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his column ‘Looking Back’ from the\n<\/place>\nLeinster Leader March 15 2011 Liam Kenny reflects on sobriety and socialism on St. Patrick’s Day 1915. As always our thanks to Liam.<\/em><\/strong> <\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nothing-new-under-the-sun","category-uncategorised"],"blocksy_meta":[],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Kildare Local Studies","author_link":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/author\/localstudies\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}