Mayoral Election 2019
Ten community non-political candidates will be on the ballot paper on Saturday 25th May when the people of Clonakilty go to Scoil na mBuachaillí to vote in the Clonakilty Mayoral Election. Polling will be open from 9am to 7pm.
Everyone who is entitled to vote at that polling station on the previous day in the County Council and Euro elections and referendum can return there on Saturday to vote in the Mayoral election.This unique election will see five of the candidates directly elected as community, voluntary, non-political, honorary “Mayors of Clonakilty” for one year each over the coming five years.
Clonakilty is the only place in the whole of Ireland where this is happening and it was initiated in 2014 when the abolition of the 400 years old town council also saw the demise of the statutory town mayor position! Local community organisation Dúchas Clonakilty Heritage organised the inaugural Clonakilty mayoral election and almost 1,600 locals went out and voted in five of the eight candidates that stood.
The process is being repeated again on Saturday week 25th May, and on this occasion, ten candidates have been nominated for the five seats. Clonakilty is the only town in Ireland to have directly-elected mayors.
The ten candidates, as they will be listed on the ballot paper on 25th May are:-
Eddie Hawkins; Chris Hinchy; Paddy McCarthy; Anthony McDermott; John O’ Carroll; Michael O’ Neill; Pádraig O’ Reilly; Annie Tanner; Richy Virhasawmy and James White.
Meanwhile, the Dúchas Clonakilty Heritage Mayoral Sub Committee which is organising and overseeing the election, is appealing for election volunteers to man the polling station on Saturday 25th. Interested people are asked to contact 086-0833323 asap.
PHOTO: The five outgoing members of the Clonakilty Mayoral Council, who have served as voluntary community Mayors for one year each since their election in 2014. Front: Current Mayor Gretta O’ Donovan and Deputy Mayor Colette Twomey. Back: John Loughnan, Anthony McDermott and Cionnaith Ó Súilleabháin. Anthony McDermott is the only one going forward contesting next Saturdays (25th May) election. (Photo: Dermot Sullivan).
Under the Starry Flag
Dúchas Clonakilty Heritage is very pleased to host the following summer lecture, by eminent Professor Lucy Salyer of New Hampshire University:
Under the Starry Flag
Lecture by
Dr Lucy E Salyer
in The Parish Centre, Clonakilty
on Thursday June 13th 2019 at 8.30 pm
In 1867 forty Irish American freedom fighters, outfitted with guns and ammunition on Erin’s Hope, sailed to Ireland to join the effort to end British rule. Yet they never got a chance to fight. British authorities arrested them for treason as soon as they landed, sparking an international conflict that dragged the United States and Britain to the brink of war. John Warren, born in Clonakilty, turned his trial for treason into a bold challenge to British authority. The small ruckus created by these impassioned Irish Americans provoked an international human rights revolution that is not, even now, fully realized.
The Fenians claimed American citizenship. British authorities disagreed, insisting that naturalized Irish-born Americans remained British subjects. “Once a subject, always a subject,” they quipped. Whose vision would prevail?
Since the American Revolution, the United States had been on a collision course with European nations as migrants poured out of Europe and into America. “Sending” states often refused to relinquish their legal hold on emigrants. The Fenians stepped into an international controversy that had been brewing for years over “whose was whose.” The crisis resulted in a dozen landmark treaties and path-breaking domestic laws – in Britain, Germany, and the U.S. – acknowledging the right of exit and the freedom of migration.
Dr Lucy E. Salyer is Associate Professor of History at the University of New Hampshire and author of Laws Harsh as Tigers: Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law, which won the Theodore Saloutos Book Award for the best book on immigration history. A former Constance E. Smith Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Salyer received the Arthur K. Whitcomb Professorship for teaching excellence, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies. Her latest book Under the Starry Flag recovers a forgotten chapter in international history, a time when nations sought to tear down walls preventing the free flow of people.