'It was a bit of a shock': Arthur Leahy honoured to receive prestigious Cork award

When Arthur Leahy was told he was in line to receive the 2025 Spirit of Mother Jones award, the veteran social justice campaigner reacted with characteristic modesty.

“When they suggested that I should get the award, I told them I could think of at least five or six other people that would deserve it more,” he said.

“So it was a bit of a shock when they persisted in presenting it!”

The award named in honour of Cork-born US union organiser Mary Harris, known around the world as Mother Jones, and previous recipients include Fr Peter McVerry, Mary Manning (on behalf of the Dunnes Stores workers), and Don O’Leary, the former director of the Cork Life Centre.

Mr Leahy has been to the forefront of progressive causes in Cork for more than four decades, helping to establish the Quay Co-Op on Sullivan’s Quay in the early 1980s.

Since then, the co-op has been at the heart of social justice advocacy in the city, campaigning for women’s rights, LGBT rights, and environmental justice.

Since his earliest days as a prominent and public advocate for LGBT rights when he was involved in the organising of the first Irish National Gay Conference in Cork in 1980, Mr Leahy has been a force for positive change in Cork.

“I came back to Ireland in the 80s, and Ireland was a very different place,” he told The Echo.

“I used to go to the university to speak with students, and I noticed after about four or five years that they were falling asleep.

“They just couldn’t believe the kind of scenario that you would present of what Ireland was like in those days.

“It has a very repressive society, and it’s such a short time, it’s 40 years, there have been such huge changes in Ireland.”

Mr Leahy said there were “so many campaigns that we were part of through the co-op” in the years since then, and he says it became a safe haven for many in the city.

“It was a very positive thing in Irish society, because it drew maybe a hundred people who were involved, and they were all progressive people, coming from different political wings, but there was a very strong, protective environment that you could operate in then, that you were not out in the city as a small group.

“All the groups came together and there were five or six or eight people in each group and they got a huge degree of strength from being in that environment,” he said.

“The Quay Co-Op provided a safe space for people who were not making outlandish statements.

“You had people like CND, people who were presenting not a very threatening political scenario, but they were given much more comfort because they were quite oppressed by the State powers as well, and they were what would be seen now as quite middle-of-the-road groupings.”

These days, Mr Leahy is a prominent campaigner for the rights of Palestine, marching in the city centre every week for the people of Gaza.

Closer to home, he said he believed that Ireland continues to fail its citizens when it comes to housing in particular.

“It is a grossly mismanaged situation,” he said, showing little sign of resting on his laurels any time soon.