Despite past visions for change, Dublin city’s motto still calls for obedient citizens

More than a decade ago, Mary Freehill, former Labour councillor and then-Lord Mayor of Dublin, hoped to change the city’s motto.

“Obedientia Civium Urbis Felicitas” is a Latin refrain that roughly translates to, “Obedience of citizens makes a happy city”. 

Freehill’s efforts got coverage and support in the media at the time. 

Laws are broken all over the city, all the time. That shouldn’t be the metric for its happiness, wrote Frank McNally in the Irish Times in October 2014.

“Making Dublin's happiness conditional on civic obedience is probably unwise,” he wrote.

But Freehill couldn’t get most of the councillors on board at the time, she said, by phone recently.

Then, in July 2017, the council backed a motion proposing to look at changing the title “Lord Mayor”, and to invite Dubliners to dream up a new slogan for the city. 

That never happened, says Labour Councillor Dermot Lacey, who, along with his party colleague Andrew Montague, was among the councillors behind it. 

These days, neither Freehill nor Montague are councillors, and the city’s official message is still the same. 

Freehill is disappointed and believes in what she’d advocated for more than ever now, she says. “It’s a pity. Happy is the city whose citizens are caring.”

Those seeking a change argue that the motto glorifies authority instead of community and cohesion in these times of division and animosity. Will it ever change?

A spokesperson for Dublin City Council has not yet responded to queries sent on 11 June, including one asking about the possibility of change and what the process looks like.

Surviving in the years 

The motto has been in use for more than 400 years.

The city’s emblem, three flaming castles or watchtowers, has been in use even longer, says a council leaflet, which dates the logo back to 1538. 

The flames are “said to represent the zeal of the people in defending their city”, said historian Donal Fallon, host of the Three Castles Burning podcast. 

The castle is Dublin Castle. “Repeated three times because of the mystical significance of the number three,” says the council’s website. 

The emblem embodies the old order, says Fallon, the historian. “Constructed to maintain English and later British rule.”

In the city’s coat of arms, the trio of burning castles is flanked by two female figures, one bearing a sword, the other, the scales of justice. Underneath the castles, on a scroll, sits the city’s motto.  

The coat of arms was first granted officially in 1607 to the city by Daniel Molyneux, Ulster King at Arms and Principal Herald of All Ireland, according to a Dublin City Council leaflet.

The newspaper the Freeman’s Journal mentioned the motto in 1852, in an article about the designation of what had been the Royal Exchange as the City Hall.

The “council room” had previously been the “coffee room” of the Royal Exchange, and the journalist judges it too small for its new use – before describing the arrangements for council business there.

“The seat for the Lord Mayor is placed beneath the canopied recess, supported by two handsome Ionic pillars and over the entablature is affixed in letters of gold the motto ‘Obedientia Civium Urbis Felicitas,’” it says.

Motto in the news

Exploring newspaper archives suggests the city motto was a big hit with some people, even after Ireland overcame colonial rule. 

A June 1934 column in the Dublin Evening Mail celebrates the motto, while recounting a story of then Lord Mayor – Alfred Byrne – happening by and saving “a young man” from a crowd of people who’d attacked him on O’Connell Street.

This shows the importance of the city’s slogan as not just an “empty formula but something real,” the column says. “All good citizens will honour it.”

Another article in the Dublin Evening Mail, from September 1933, which condemns “wanton destruction of municipal property,” says the city’s official message should be displayed prominently in schools in a language pupils understand. 

“It would teach them that the prosperity of the city depends on the civic spirit of its own people,” it says. 

Says a clipping from Offaly Independent dated August 1922: “For all our present troubles, Dublin’s motto gives a remedy. Read it on our lamposts as you pass.”

With the passage of time, the city slogan loses its shine in newspaper commentary, but in a way that suggests Dubliners can’t live up to it.

“Obedientia Civium Urbis Felicitas. What a laugh!” said a letter to the editor in the Evening Herald in March 1967. 

The letter talks trash about Dubliners and how they have apparently made a mess of the city, and how London is cleaner and much more pleasant to be in. 

A whimsical 2004 piece about Dublin life in the Evening Herald by Tom Galvin says the city motto is “a bit ambitious”.

Though a December 2023 op-ed in the Sunday Independent by Conor Skehan invokes it in the context of the city’s anti-immigration riot in November of that year, which he frames as a symptom of broader anti-social issues in the city centre. 

“Saving the centre of an ancient city like Dublin needs to be guided by its motto,” he wrote.

Things that never happened 

After Dublin city councillors backed that motion in July 2017 to rethink both the title “Lord Mayor” and the motto about how Dubliners should be obedient, the effort got a bit derailed. 

The council’s protocol committee agreed in September 2017 “not to move forward with the survey as the Minister had indicated that there were proposals in the pipeline in relation to a Directly Elected Mayor for Dublin”, the chief executive told independent Councillor Mannix Flynn in a written response to a query in November 2018.

All these years later, Dublin still has a Lord Mayor, who is not directly elected. 

Flynn says he hates the motto as much as the idea of calling the city’s mayor “lord” and having them carry golden chains around their neck. These are both equally obsolete concepts, he says. 

With the motto, Flynn says, subservience is the word that comes to mind. “We don’t live in an obedient space anymore; we live in a much more respectful space,” he said. 

To everything, turn, turn, turn!

The city’s motto features on the Lord Mayor's award, too. 

That’s sometimes granted to Dubliners who dreamed up a better city by fighting back and saying no – disobeying. 

Cathleen O’Neill, the late community activist and co-founder of the city’s addiction support hub for women, Saol Project, had said she was disappointed to see that message on her Lord Mayor’s award.

“I was never an obedient citizen,” she said in Born Bolshy, a 2002 documentary about her life by the late director Louis Lentin.

Hazel Chu, a Green Party councillor, also says that the times have changed, and so probably should the motto.

The council is currently changing its official branding, too, said Chu, making it an apt time for other turns. 

Fallon, the historian, says he’s not keen on the city motto. It’s hard to tweak, too, he said.

Though “A banner at a Shamrock Rovers match did proclaim that ‘happy is the city where citizens disobey!’” he said in an email. 

He’d like to see a new motto, he said.

But Lacey, the Labour councillor, who’d advocated for change in 2017, has now changed his mind. Not that he endorses the motto now. “It’s a bit outdated.”

He just thinks it doesn’t matter anymore, he said. He wouldn’t file a new motion to change it, said Lacey.

“These sort of trivial and side issues have damaged politics and democracy,” he said in a text message last week.

Flynn, the independent councillor, and Freehill, the former Labour councillor, see it differently, though. 

Flynn says the city needs a motto that is thoughtful and makes all Dubliners feel at home. 

Freehill says the current motto doesn’t invoke accountability for those who run the city, but demands obedience from Dubliners. That doesn’t sit right with her, she said.

“If people are obedient, you don’t take responsibility for your behaviour,” she said.

At the very least, Dubliners should debate it, she said.

A shift to a kinder language, Freehill said, would “have a unifying impact. Particularly in the current climate”.

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