Labour Party in Cork call for the new bridge to be named after Mother Jones

THE Labour Party in Cork has urged City Councillors to back Mother Jones as the name for the new Harley Street bridge.

Four famous Cork women are in the running to have the planned bridge named after them.

Cork-born US labour rights organiser Mary Harris, better known as Mother Jones; Irish aid worker Mary Elmes; Irish Red Cross advocate Leslie Price de Barra and ballet dancer and teacher Joan Denise Moriarty have all been shortlisted to have the bridge named in their honour. Irish Volunteer during the Civil War Donnchadh de Barra – who died on hunger strike in 1923 – is the sole male on the shortlist.

Labour submitted the name of Mother Jones to City Council.

“Mother Jones is rightly one of Cork’s greatest exports, feared in the United States Senate but never given the due regard she was owed by her home city,” said Linda Kelly, Labour North Central Secretary.

“Granting her this honour, while late, can open up her life to thousands more people - both from in and outside Cork city - and see the work she did in the name of social justice for the working men and women of the world.”