Great excitement – I’ve been asked to speak at the Michael Davitt Museum in Straid, County Mayo this Friday, November 6th, as part of a celebration by the Michael Davitt National Memorial Association to mark 130 years since the foundation of the Land League. Michael Davitt is known as “The Father of the Land League”, and it was he who actively sought – and fought – to establish a Ladies Land League. Anna Parnell considered him to be one of her closest allies and supporters during the Land War.
The same weekend sees the official opening of the Davitt Centre and the North/South Cultural and Historial Symposium on the weekend of November 6 and 7.
Cllr John Cribbin, Cathaoirleach of Mayo County Council will also launch a photographic exhibition on civil rights, which is on loan from the Museum of Free Derry.
Anton McNulty, of The Mayo News, reports full details of the event on their website. Here’s a quote from his article:
On Saturday, November 7, a lecture by Dr Dominic Bryan of Queens University, Belfast , entitled ‘Transforming Conflict Flags and Emblems’ and a lecture by Dr Mary Harris of NUIG called ‘The Catholic Church and the Partition of Ireland’ will take place in the Pontoon Bridge Hotel at 11am. The session will chaired by Cllr Henry Kenny.
In the afternoon session which starts at 2pm, Rev John Farr from Antrim, will talk on ‘Personal reflections on the Orange Order’ and Senator Labhras O’Murchu will speak on ‘Music and Tradition’. This session will be chaired by Bernard O’Hara of GMIT, and each session will be followed by a question and answer session.
With deep gratitude to Mrs Nancy Smyth for her encouragement and organisational skills!
Thursday, 15th October 2009, is international Blog Action Day. The theme for this year is Climate Change. Nearly 7,000 bloggers have already registered their blog, with a combined readership (RSS subscribers) of over 11 million!
This is an annual event, run by bloggers for bloggers.
To register your blog, visit Blog Action Day website. All you have to do then is blog about climate change on your own blog, and include a link to www.blogactionday.org
Trócaire’s Campaigns Team is taking part in Blog Action Day, so check out Trócaire’s Climate Change Blog tomorrow for all the latest news and information!
“Petticoat Rebellion – The Anna Parnell Story ” has been selected for Great Irish Book Week, a special promotion of 30 top titles from Irish publishers.
Senator David Norris, T.V. Presenter Kathryn Thomas, Author Anna McPartlin and The Arts Council’s Sarah Bannon successfully launched the Great Irish Book Week at the National Library on Thursday 1st October.
A FREE 288-page sampler of extracts from all the books is included with every purchase in your local bookshop.
Comparing Davitt to a nineteenth-century Ghandi, Myers writes, “Davitt’s real lesson for the world — which Ghandi learnt, but tragically Pearse and Connolly did not — wasn’t about the creation of a word but a concept: that peaceful, studiously non-violent mass-action in pursuit of a palpably just cause can create an almost irresistible political momentum. If unjust imprisonment be your fate, then lift your hand against no man, and go to jail.” Davitt did indeed go to jail in 1881, when the British government realised that he was encouraging starving tenants not to pay their overpriced rents. He went back to jail in England, peacefully and with dignity.
Myers goes on to say that “No single individual has ever transformed Ireland for the better as Davitt did; but best of all, he gave power to the powerless by perfectly peaceful means”.
Michael Davitt was one of the key intellects behind the formation of the Ladies Land League, which was headed by Anna Parnell. Both were accused by the media of the time of being extremists, but a closer look at their characters reveals the opposite. Both were pacifists, dedicated to using peaceful means to end the land struggle in Ireland.
Anne Dolan, a lecturer in Irish history at Trinity College, Dublin, wrote an excellent review of Petticoat Rebellion which was published in the Irish Times newspaper on Wednesday 5th August.
The review says that “Petticoat Rebellion portrays an Anna Parnell who understood the need for revolution on the land in a way that her brother never could; it depicts a progressive advocate of women’s social and political rights, and Groves’s portrayal might be right. Anna Parnell’s politics were the politics of building shelters for the evicted, the politics of the activist who could brook no compromise not even from her own brother, whom she considered a traitor for signing the Kilmainham Treaty.”
Anne’s only criticism of the book is that “it chooses not to question her [Anna's] sometimes extreme methods, her obsessive need to revise the published version of events, or why she died the unknown Cerisa Palmer”. I would argue that Anna was only considered extreme by those who criticised her for being so active in her defence of the rural poor, and of her mission to ensure that the events of the day were accurately recorded.
In closing, however, Anne remarks that the book was written as a celebration of Anna’s life and work, and is “a gentle reminder that perhaps we need to consider “Madam Moonlight” a little more”. This, ultimately, was my primary motivation for writing the book, and I am delighted with Anne’s assessment.
I’m Trish Groves, a writer. I write for film, television, multimedia, print and publication. “Petticoat Rebellion – The Anna Parnell Story”, my first historical biography, has just been published by Irish publisher Mercier Press, and is available in all good Irish bookshops and online bookstores.
Here are some samples of my work in film/multimedia:
Rapunzel has screened at a series of major international film festivals including Darklight (Ireland), the Galway Film Fleadh (Ireland), the WOW World of Women Film Festival (Australia), the 11/22 International Short Comedy Film Festival (Austria) and the Notting Hill Film Festival (UK)…and it’s still doing the festival circuit.
I was assistant director to Vittoria Colonna on two music videos in 2009 for composer/performer Julie Feeney from her second album “Pages”, which was produced by Mark Kelly of Grey Man Films – here are two catchy hits “Love is a Tricky Thing”, which was filmed at 22 locations over 2 days, and “Impossibly Beautiful” which was filmed in de Studio in Dublin.
And last but not least, Save Tara Valley is a short documentary that was made in 2007 under the Creative Commons using footage from three filmmakers. This is aerial art project featuring a human insallation on the ancient Hill of Tara by renowned aerial artist and climate change activist John Quigley, with an interview with filmmaker/activist Stuart Townsend, writer/director of Battle in Seattle.
And, as we screenwriters always say, “I have an interesting slate of projects in development”…watch this space!
Kevin Myers wrote a lovely insightful article about 
