Ireland will pay tribute to the heroes of the 1913 Dublin lockout on Saturday – one hundred years after James Larkin delivered his famous speech.
President Michael D Higgins will lead the commemorations which will feature wreath-laying ceremony and a re-enactment of the Lockout events.
The Irish Times reports that tens of thousands are expected to line O’Connell Street a century to the day after police baton-charged injuring 600 strikers in what became known as Bloody Sunday.
The crowds will be addressed by an actor dressed as Jim Larkin who will deliver the famous speech from a 1913-era tram.
The report says hundreds of people will dress up in period costumes for the occasion with some dressing as dockers, others as Jacobs workers and still more as the poor of Dublin.
President Higgins will lay a wreath at the statue of Jim Larkin and will remain for the dramatisation of Larkin’s famous speech from a hotel window off O’Connell Street, his subsequent arrest and the riot that led to a police baton charge that resulted in more than 300 injuries.
Well known Irish actors Bryan Murray and Angela Harding, who both starred in the RTÉ adaptation of Strumpet City, will read extracts from the novel.
The event Dublin events are being co-ordinated by the 1913 Lockout Commemoration Committee.
The general secretaries of Irish, British, European and international trade union movements will also lat a wreath, followed by a minute’s silence.
The re-enactment will also feature extracts from James Plunkett’s play The Risen People and from Larkin’s famous speech which is commemorated on his statue: “The great only appear great because we are on our knees. Let us rise.”
The Irish Times reports that the re-enactment will include the arrest of Larkin and the Dublin Metropolitan Police baton charge. The final part of the re-enactment will be a frieze to replicate the 1913 photo of Bloody Sunday.
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