REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE,AT HASLINGDEN LIBRARY, MICHAEL DAVITT EXHIBITION, WEDNESDAY, 12 APRIL
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE,AT HASLINGDEN LIBRARY, MICHAEL DAVITT EXHIBITION, WEDNESDAY, 12 APRIL, 2006
Dia dhíbh a chairde. Tá an-áthas orm bheith linn anseo inniu i Haslingden.
Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls
It’s good to be here with you all and to have this opportunity to offer my congratulations and best wishes to everyone associated with putting together this excellent exhibition. I would like in particular to thank the Davitt family, especially Mrs. Sheilagh Davitt, for their generosity in lending the library so many valuable and interesting items connected with the life of Michael Davitt. I thank Michael Forde and Chris Clegg for all their work behind the scenes in ensuring this day came about.
My thanks too to Michael Cruise and everyone associated with the ‘Irish Heritage in Haslingden Committee’ who have done such a magnificent job in putting this exhibition together.
A special welcome to the teachers and students from St. Mary’s school. I hope you will be fascinated by the story of one of Haslingden’s most famous residents, a boy who lost his arm as a child labourer in a local mill, who never indulged in self-pity but instead turned to books and education and through them became one of the most powerful men of his generation. His life shows how one human being, fired with a passion for justice can against all the odds make good things happen. Thanks to the hard work and commitment of the Irish Heritage in Haslingden Committee, an educational pack entitled ‘Michael’s Haslingden’ will be distributed to every school in Rossendale so that you can read and learn more about him and life in Haslingden when he was a lad.
And where better to view this exhibition than here in the very building where from 1858 Michael Davitt attended evening classes in what was then the ‘Mechanics Institute’. Davitt said that this building “ was a regular meeting place of men from the factories and workshops who had the ambition and the stamina to improve themselves”. It was here he began to study Irish history and to acquaint himself with the great political and social issues of the day. It was also here that he became acquainted with working class radicalism in its English setting, in particular the Chartist movement and with which he was able to find common ground with the suffering of tenant farmers in Ireland.
He had a passion for social justice which was not confined to the poor farmers of Ireland but, as this exhibition shows us, embraced anywhere injustice was taking place, from the pogroms against the Jewish people in Russia at the time, the suffering of the Boers during the South African war, to the maltreatment of the indigenous populations of Australia and New Zealand. A man of huge compassion, generosity and talent all of which he put at the service of those around him who were suffering and who were so downtrodden they were voiceless.
I am sure this exhibition will renew interest in Davitt’s life and times and it will I hope, inspire a more prosperous generation to take responsibility for championing the cause of the poor and the overlooked of whom there are still too many in our world but far fewer than there might have been, thanks to Davitt.
Go raibh maith agaibh. Thank you.