Éirígí Gaillimh Launches Campaign To Name New Bridge After 1916 Veteran Julia Morrissey
Éirigí Gaillimh has launched a public campaign to have a new bridge in Galway City named after the 1916 veteran Julia Morrissey. The, as yet unnamed, pedestrian and cycle bridge will cross the River Corrib close to the existing Salmon Weir Bridge. Speaking from Galway in relation to the campaign, Ian Ó Dálaigh said,
“An Athenry native, Julia Morrissey, was a key figure in Cumann na mBan's Galway branch. In 1916, she commanded a group of 50 women during Easter week, as part of the rebellion in Galway that was led by Liam Mellows.
When Mellows first came to Athenry in 1915, Morrissey was his landlady. The two became very close and it is said that Julia never recovered from Mellows' execution in 1922. At some point in the 1930s, she was admitted to the ‘mental asylum’ in Ballinasloe, where she died in 1974.
Artist’s impression of the new bridge which should bear the name of Julia Morrissey
During her lifetime, Morrissey received little or no public recognition for her contribution to the fight for Irish freedom. She was given neither a 1916 medal or the veteran’s pension for her actions during The Rising.
She is one of many women whose contribution to the revolutionary struggle has been either forgotten or deliberately airbrushed from history. Éirígí For a New Republic is calling for the new pedestrian and cycle bridge across the Corrib to be named in her honour.
We believe that naming the bridge in this way would serves as a fitting, belated tribute to Julia Morrissey and others of her generation who risked their liberty and lives so that future generations, including our own, could live in a free Ireland.”
You can sign the petition supporting the naming of the new bridge after Julia Morrissey here.