A national commemorative event has been held in Dublin by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) and the Health and Safety Authority (HSA) to mark Workers’ Memorial Day, an international day of remembrance for those who have been killed or seriously injured in work-related incidents.
In Ireland, 481 people were killed in such incidents over a 10-year period from 2012 to 2021, and so far seven people have died in incidents at work this year.
Workers’ Memorial Day, also known as International Workers’ Memorial Day or International Commemoration Day for Dead and Injured, takes place annually around the world on April 28, an international day of remembrance and action for workers killed, disabled, injured, or made unwell by their work. In Canada, it is commemorated as the National Day of Mourning.
Workers’ Memorial Day is an opportunity to highlight the preventable nature of most workplace incidents and ill health and to promote campaigns and union organisation in the fight for improvements in workplace safety. The slogan for the day is Remember the dead – Fight for the living.
Although April 28 is used as the focal point for remembrance and a day of international solidarity, campaigning and other related activities continue throughout the year right around the world.
ROTUNDA RINK MEMORIAL AT PARNELL SQUARE NEAR THE GATE THEATRE
Google Maps describes this as “1916 Site Of Rotund Rink” but on the copper plaque the date is 1913.
Unfortunately there is a lot of lens flare my photographs of this memorial because I used a very wide-angle lens and the sunlight was somewhat overpowering.
Oglaigh na hÉireann was founded in the Rotunda Rink and the neighbouring garden on 25th November 1913. The Rotunda Rink, was a temporary building in the Rotunda Gardens capable of holding 4,000.
25 November – The pro-Home Rule Irish Volunteers are formed at a meeting attended by 4,000 men in Dublin’s Rotunda Rink.
On 19th November 1913, James Larkin and James Connolly established the Irish Citizen Army as a force to protect workers from the excesses of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. It had a membership of about 350, the majority being members of Unions.
The Irish Volunteers, Óglaigh na hÉireann, was founded on 25th November 1913 at a public meeting held in the Rotunda Rink in Dublin. It emerged in response to an article, ‘The North Began’ written by Eoin MacNeill in the Gaelic League paper ‘An Claidheamh Soluis’. The Volunteers included members of the Gaelic League, Ancient Order of Hibernians and Sinn Féin, and, secretly, the IRB and its ranks numbered up to 100,000 at one point.
At the time of WW1 the Irish Volunteers broke into two distinct bodies. The National Volunteers, under the direction of John Redmond, went to fight in the Great War; the Irish Volunteers, under the direction of men such as Patrick Pearse and Eoin McNeill, stayed in Ireland and went on to join forces with The Irish Citizens Army in the 1916 Uprising.
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