Edward was the flag bearer

EDWARD Hollywood, born in 1814, was a master silk weaver from Dublin whose artisan skills and political convictions were instrumental in the creation of the Irish tricolour. While Thomas Francis Meagher is often celebrated as the face of the flag, Hollywood was the craftsman who brought the symbol to life using the finest French silk.

Hollywood grew up in The Liberties, a historic working-class district of Dublin renowned for its centuries-old textile and weaving heritage. The area was a hub for skilled trades, particularly silk and poplin weaving, which had been largely introduced to the area by Huguenot refugees generations earlier.

He was not merely a skilled craftsman, but a leader among his peers, serving as a prominent figure in an early trade union for artisans. This role positioned him at the epicentre of labour rights and national identity, as many Dublin artisans saw their livelihoods threatened by British economic policies.

Hollywood’s radicalism led him to join the Irish Confederation, a militant offshoot of the Young Ireland movement that sought full independence from British rule and who, in turn, were formed as a result of the growing frustration of the passive approach of Daniel O’Connell and his Repeal Association.

A poignant gift

In 1848, as revolutions swept across Europe, the Young Irelanders were deeply inspired by the overthrow of the French monarchy. A small delegation, including Hollywood, Thomas Francis Meagher, and William Smith O’Brien, travelled to Paris in April 1848 to congratulate the new French Republican Government. It was during this trip that they were gifted an Irish variation by a group of women of Paris. The colours were interesting: orange first, white in the middle and green at the end. The design went through a few variations through the years, one of which was the Tricolour of ‘orange, white and green,’ but with a red hand of Ulster In the white middle symbolising the resistance that Ulster gave English/British rule.

Upon their return from France, the delegation brought with them the silk tricolour. Accounts vary but it seems that Hollywood was the skilled weaver who carried the gift back and used it as inspiration and produced the first variation of the gifted flag that Meagher was to later unveil in Waterford in March at the Wolfe Tone Confederate Club and later in April to the citizens of Dublin.

The flag’s design was a deliberate message of reconciliation between the traditions of Orange and Green on the island and the white denoting peace between them, if only that had been the case.

Following the failed Young Ireland Rebellion at Ballingarry in August 1848, many leaders were arrested or forced into exile. Hollywood, facing the threat of imprisonment for his revolutionary activities, was forced to flee Ireland. While the exact details of his later life and the date of his death remain sparse in mainstream records, he eventually returned to Dublin and was buried in the city he had fought to represent.

Remembering a visionary

For over a century, Hollywood’s name was largely lost to history, but this changed during the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising. On Easter Sunday 2016, Edward Hollywood was formally honoured at his graveside in Glasnevin Cemetery by the Irish President Michael D Higgins who laid a wreath in his honour to recognise him as the craftsman of the national flag. Peadar Kearney was also honoured that day as the man who penned the national anthem

The event served to educate the public on the flag’s artisan origins, moving the narrative beyond the battlefield and into the workshops of the Liberties.

Today, Hollywood is remembered not just as a weaver, but as a visionary who used his trade to weave the very fabric of Irish identity.

Spoof? And a sidenote

Coincidentally, my own mother-in-law is a Hollywood and claims ancestry—most probably—and to have babysat the bold Edward but she is, like her daughter, prone to the odd spoof!

Another interesting sidenote, the tricolour largely disappeared from the Republican gaze until Easter Week 1916 and only really ended up becoming the national flag because Pearse and company needed a different flag so the general public wouldn’t mix those in the GPO etc with those from the ‘breakaway’ Irish National volunteers—who chose to fight for British in World War I under the pretence of Home Rule being granted—who also used the green flag with harp emblazoned that was, up until then, seen as the national flag.