Gluaiseacht Cearta Sibhialta na Gaeltachta (
English: "The
Gaeltacht Civil Rights Movement") or Coiste Cearta SÃbialta na Gaeilge (
English: Irish Language Civil Rights Committee"),
was a pressure group campaigning for
social, economic and cultural rights
Economic, social and cultural rights, (ESCR) are socio-economic human rights, such as the right to education, right to housing, right to an adequate standard of living, right to health, victims' rights and the right to science and culture. Econo ...
for native-speakers of Irish living in Gaeltacht areas. It was founded in
Connemara in 1969 to highlight the decline of the Irish language and to campaign for greater rights for Irish speaking areas in the area of access to services, broadcasting and ultimately an elected assembly of their own. It was later named Gluaiseacht na Gaeltachta (
English: "The
Gaeltacht Movement").
History
The organisation continued on where the earlier
Muintir na Gaeltachta
was a lobby-group representing Irish-speaking inhabitants of the Gaeltacht. It was founded in the winter of 1933–34, with Seán Ó Coisdeala, a national school teacher from Tully in Connemara, as President and Pádraig Seoige as secretary. Oth ...
had left off, but also took inspiration from the contemporary
Northern Ireland civil rights movement
The Northern Ireland civil rights movement dates to the early 1960s, when a number of initiatives emerged in Northern Ireland which challenged the inequality and discrimination against ethnic Irish Catholics that was perpetrated by the Ulster Pr ...
and the
American civil rights movement. Among the founders of the organisation were the writer
MáirtÃn Ó Cadhain and the community and political activists
Seósamh Ó Cuaig and
Seán Ó Cionnaith.
The
Irish Republican Army and
Sinn Féin under the leadership of
Cathal Goulding and
Tomás Mac Giolla played a role in establishment of as part of its policy of the Reconquest of Ireland following on the teachings of
James Connolly, who believed that the
Irish people required both political and cultural
decolonisation.
The campaign was often of a militant nature, such as the placing of nails under the wheels of the car carrying the then
Taoiseach Jack Lynch in
Galway West during the
1969 general election campaign.
In that election a member of the campaign,
Peadar Mac An Iomaire
Peadar is a masculine given name in the Irish, and Scottish Gaelic languages (in Manx Gaelic orthography the same name is rendered "Peddyr"). The names are ultimately derived from the Greek word ''petros'', meaning "stone", "rock". The Scottish ...
polled more than 6% of the vote in that constituency.
The campaign had some successes, including the establishment of a nationwide Irish-language radio station
RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta based in Connemara and of
Údarás na Gaeltachta — an elected body responsible for the economic and social development of the Gaeltacht regions but with far less power than envisaged by Gluaiseacht. Three Gluaiseacht candidates stood unsuccessfully in Connemara in the 1979 Údarás election.
Gluaiseacht persuaded
Conradh na Gaeilge to hold
Oireachtas na Gaeilge outside Dublin in 1974,
and secured recognition of
sean-nós dance in 1977.
See also
*
Desmond Fennell
Desmond Carolan Fennell (29 June 1929 – 16 July 2021) was an Irish writer, essayist, cultural philosopher and linguist. Throughout his career, Fennell repeatedly departed from prevailing norms. In the 1950s and early 1960s, with his extensiv ...
References
Sources
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Citations
External links
Ceart Teanga na Gaeltachta
Political advocacy groups in the Republic of Ireland
Organizations established in 1969
Irish language activists
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