THE challenged lives and scary times of the Limerick Soviet are ours to visit at Limerick City Gallery of Art, Pery Square. Letters, diaries, proclamations and photographs of the Soviet Committee and Bruree’s Workers Soviet Mills (“We make Bread not Profits”) take us back to this 1919 response by the city to British military totalitarianism. Limerick Soviet however is but one part of an installation titled ‘STRIKE!’ which looks at decades of international industrial unrest and workers’ resistance. According to the gallery’s Shinnors Scholar Aoibheann McCarthy, “There are four connecting strands and the fourth part is our response to the rest of what is going on.
To gather this I am running ‘clinics’ here at Pery Square, the coming ones on Saturday February 9 and then Saturdays March 2 and 9 between 11and 12noon, or by appointment here.”.
In an white room upstairs, she will collect and document memories that the community in the Mid West has of that era – stories, letters, newspaper cuttings:
“It’s about getting the memories processed and the Limerick Soviet show will change throughout the year to reflect what people have brought in. This element of the current shows will go on past March 15 when the rest comes down, for community engagement purposes. This show ‘STRIKE!’ will evolve and change over the year, a long term project initiating now”.
The younger generation may have come across Limerick Soviet in textbooks or through Mike Finn’s vivid loop through the decades, his play ‘Pigtown’. Looking at the sepia toned photos of the Limerick Soviet Committee that created in the city’s “strike against militant tyranny”, the old family names are evident: Gabbett, Roberts, O’Brien, Griffin, Leahy, Bennis and more.
Committee coupons for 1shilling, 5 shilling, 10 were to be exchanged for food in a bold city deprived of trade and therefore, food.
It’s difficult to read the notice detailing the protest led by Robert ‘Bobby’ Byrnes of Town Wall Cottage who was handcuffed and strapped in prison along with others who defied the British ruling of Limerick. Byrnes died within months.
His mother’s subsequent letter to the Strike Committee for their kindness brings out the scope of grief and destruction. Young Henry Meany’s health, while still handcuffed and manacled, moved the Governor of Limerick Prison to call his family in, so close was he to death.
But ‘STRIKE!’ has other visual arts and subject matter to offer on a worldwide scale: the series of 14 films spooling constantly has the titular Eisenstein 1925 masterpiece; Chaplin’s ‘Modern Times’ and Barbara Kopple’s ‘Harlan County USA’.
In another room, see the re-enactment of the Miners’ Strike, UK 1984 in Jeremy Deller’s ‘The Battle of Orgreave’ (2001) which is directed by Mike Figgis. In it, some of the cast of 1000 were policemen and strikers playing opposite parts to their own particpation in the 1980s.
LCGA at Carnegie Building, Pery Square is open seven days, late Thursdays until 8pm and Sundays 12noon to 5pm. Free to all, as are all its activities.
