CHAS lecture on the ‘rotten Prod’

CARLOW Historical and Archaeological Society (CHAS) will hold its first lecture of 2025 given by Professor Emmet O’Connor on Wednesday 15 January at 8pm in the Seven Oaks Hotel.

The lecture, titled ‘Dongaree Baird: a “rotten Prod” in southeast Ireland’, will focus on James Baird – one of an extraordinary cohort of agitators thrown up by the wave of industrial and political unrest in Ireland between 1917 and 1923.

Professor O’Connor has published widely on labour history, including ‘Rotten Prod: the unlikely career of Dongaree Baird’.

Born in 1871 to a Presbyterian tenant farmer on ten acres in south Tyrone, James Baird became a boilermaker in Harland & Wolff and worked on the Titanic. In July 1920, he was one of thousands of Catholics and ‘rotten Prods’ expelled from the shipyard by loyalists.

He subsequently canvassed support for expellees in Britain and among Protestants in the south of Ireland. By 1922, he was an organiser for the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union in Carlow.

In 1923, he became de facto leader of 2,000 workers in Waterford during the big farm strike that lasted from May to December and escalated into a miniature civil war. During the struggle, he came very close to being elected a Labour TD.

From the start of the Waterford strike, Baird was a marked man, targeted by the Farmers’ Association, the clergy and the government. After carrying the red flag from shipyard to farmyard, he was eventually compelled to take his family to Brisbane, Australia. His daughters became distinguished piano teachers in Queensland.

All are welcome to the lecture, which takes place in the Milford Room at the Seven Oaks Hotel.