The Dublin Lockout, 1913

New Perspectives on Class War & its Legacy

Conor McNamara, Padraig Yeates

• Publisher: Irish Academic Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781911024781
• eBook ISBN: 9781911024828
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Irish History
• Index: History

Putting Ireland on trial, Jim Larkin's verdict was damning and resolute. His words resound, shuddering towards the present day where class division and workers' rights disputes make headlines with swelling frequency. In this pioneering collection, an exemplary list of contributors registers the radical momentum within Dublin in 1913, its effects internationally, and its paramount example in shaping political activism within Ireland to this day.

The narrative of the beleaguered yet dignified workers who stood up to the greed of their Irish masters is examined, revealing the truths that were too fraught with trauma, shame and political tension to remain within popular memory. Beyond the animosity and immediate impact of the industrial dispute are its enduring lessons through the First World War, the Easter Rising, and the birth of the Irish Free State; its legacy, real and adopted, instructs the surge of activism currently witnessed, but to what effect?

The Dublin Lockout, 1913 illuminates this pivotal class war in Irish history: inspiring, shocking, and the nearest thing Ireland had to a debate on the type of society that was wanted by its citizens.

CHAPTER ONE

Chronology of the Great
Dublin Lockout, 1913–1914

Pádraig Yeates

The Great Dublin Lockout was the first major urban-based conflict in modern Ireland to dominate the political agenda. For a time, it overshadowed the Home Rule crisis and in the second half of 1913 proved an unwelcome distraction to the leadership of the Irish Party. The dispute aroused intense emotions on all sides and constituted a major challenge to the conservative middle-class Catholic consensus that dominated nationalist politics.

The conflict did not emerge from a vacuum. Several attempts had been made since the 1880s to introduce the ‘new unionism’ to Ireland, aimed at organising unskilled and semi-skilled workers who had traditionally been excluded from the predominantly British-based craft unions. It was 1907 when Jim Larkin arrived in Ireland as an organiser for the National Union of Dock Labourers (NUDL), whose general secretary, James Sexton, was himself a former Fenian. The Liverpool-Irishman’s fiery brand of trade unionism, characterised by militant industrial action combined with a syndicalist political outlook, proved more than the NUDL could tolerate. After spectacular initial success in Belfast, where he succeeded briefly in uniting workers across the sectarian divide in a campaign for better pay and conditions, Larkin proceeded to organise NUDL branches in most of Ireland’s ports. It was his handling of a Cork docks strike in 1908 that provided an opening for his dismissal. Sexton accused him of unauthorised use of union funds by issuing strike pay before the NUDL executive had sanctioned it. Larkin was imprisoned for embezzlement following a court case in which Sexton was the main witness for the prosecution.

Far from destroying Larkin’s reputation, however, his imprisonment made him a hero for a generation of young Irish socialists who campaigned successfully for his release. Even before he was sentenced, Larkin set up the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU). Dublin became the centre of gravity for the new union, which rapidly became the largest in the country, displacing the NUDL in most locations. In the first half of 1913, an aggressive campaign of industrial action in Dublin resulted in wage increases of between 20 and 25 per cent for groups ranging from dockers in the port to agricultural labourers in the county. So successful was the campaign that the Lord Mayor, Lorcan Sherlock, prompted by Dr William Walsh, the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, proposed a conciliation board for the city. The Chamber of Commerce had nominated its members and Dublin Trades Council was about to nominate its representatives when the Lockout began. If it had gone ahead Dublin would have been the first city in the United Kingdom with a geographically-based industrial relations mediation body covering all manual occupations.

The prime mover in preventing this system from being established was Ireland’s leading Catholic nationalist businessman and former anti-Parnellite MP, William Martin Murphy. He had been ill in early 1913, but when he discovered that Larkin had been recruiting members in the Dublin United Tramway Company (DUTC), of which he was chairman, Murphy began to root them out systematically. He began by summoning the workers to a midnight meeting in the Antient Concert Hall in July 1913, and gave due warning that any man who stayed in the ITGWU would be sacked. The late hour was to ensure the tramcar operators and conductors could all attend after services stopped running for the night. They could reflect on Murphy’s warning on the long walk home.

Murphy subsequently began dismissing employees suspected of ITGWU membership in the DUTC and in another of his major businesses, Independent Newspapers. Larkin advised his members in the DUTC against going on strike, but when the handful still employed said they would leave the union if he did not sanction industrial action, and he was told that workers in the company’s power station would come out in sympathy, he allowed a ballot to be held on 25 August 1913 in the ITGWU headquarters at Liberty Hall. They struck the next day, 26 August. He told them to stop the trams at 9.40 a.m. when most of the vehicles with ITGWU crews would be in the vicinity of Nelson’s Pillar on Sackville (later O’Connell) Street, the nexus of the system because he had far too few members left for mass pickets at the tram depots. However, the power workers failed to strike after being threatened with instant dismissal and Murphy had the trams up and running within the hour by using ‘scabs’, or strike-breakers.

The following days saw numerous rallies in support of the strikers, the stoning of the trams, the arrest of strike leaders for making seditious speeches and the proclamation of a meeting Larkin called for 1 p.m. in Sackville Street on Sunday 31 August. Other trade union leaders tried to defuse the situation in the city, where widespread rioting had broken out, by organising a march from Liberty Hall to the union’s recreational centre, Croydon Park in Fairview.

Larkin had other ideas, however. He had himself smuggled into William Martin Murphy’s Imperial Hotel on Sackville Street and he managed to speak briefly from the balcony on the first floor before being arrested. Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) and Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) constables baton-charged the crowd, leaving 400 to 600 seriously injured, many of them respectable, middle-class mass-goers. These events became known as Bloody Sunday.

The next morning the British Trade Union Congress (TUC) conference began in Manchester. Delegates were appalled at newspaper reports of police brutality. These were confirmed by William Partridge, a Labour councillor, ITGWU organiser and member of Dublin Trades Council, who travelled over to describe in graphic detail what had happened. The TUC pledged total support for the Dublin workers. During the Lockout over £93,000 was sent in cash, food and fuel by the labour movement in Britain. This support enabled strikers to hold out until January 1914, but it could not win their dispute for them in the face of Murphy’s intransigence and support from other employers.

1913

July

19 July: William Martin Murphy, President of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce and Chairman of the Dublin United Tramway Company (DUTC) calls his workers to a midnight meeting in the Antient Concert Hall in Great Brunswick (now Pearse) Street. He warns them that he will sack anyone who is a member of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU). Over the next six weeks he dismisses hundreds of employees.

21 July: Management issues dismissal notices to employees in the parcels department of the DUTC and tells them only to re-apply for their jobs if they are not in the ITGWU.

August

15 August: Murphy sacks forty men and boys in the despatch and delivery office of the Irish Independent. Newsboys refuse to sell Independent newspapers and delivery vans are attacked. The newspaper carries notices offering £10 rewards for anyone with information leading to the arrest and conviction of those involved.

17 August: The Dublin Farmers’ Association agrees to increase weekly wages for agricultural labourers from 14s to between 17s and 20s for a sixty-six hour week and to use ITGWU members to cart produce to city markets.

22 August: Murphy visits the headquarters of the British government in Ireland, Dublin Castle, and is promised support from the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP), Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and the military, if he goes ahead with his plan to force a showdown with Larkin and his union.

26 August: The first day of Royal Dublin Horse Show sees all trams on Sackville Street stop and the strike begin. Workers seek pay rises ranging from 1s to 2s a week. Murphy brings in ‘scab’ crews to operate buses with DMP escorts to provide protection. Trams are stoned and the company has to stop services after dark. A mass meeting is held in Beresford Place outside Liberty Hall. Thousands attend and Larkin tells followers it is not a strike but a Lockout.

28 August: DMP detectives raid the homes of Larkin and other trade unionists who addressed the previous evening’s rally outside Liberty Hall. They are charged with incitement before Police Magistrate E.G. Swifte, who is a substantial shareholder in the DUTC. Dozens of trade unionists are charged in the courts with intimidation, obstruction and for stoning trams. Another rally is held outside Liberty Hall that evening where Larkin calls for a mass demonstration on Sackville Street on Sunday 31 August.

29 August: Swifte proclaims the meeting on Sackville Street and Larkin burns a copy of the proclamation at yet another rally outside Liberty Hall. He promises to speak on Sackville Street on Sunday, ‘dead or alive’. The police baton charge the crowd.

30 August: James Connolly, who has come from Belfast to help run the strike, is arrested and charged with incitement. He tells Swifte, ‘I do not recognise the English government in Ireland at all.’ Swifte tells him he is talking treason and sentences him to three months. Riots break out in Ringsend and spread to Great Brunswick (now Pearse) Street, then to the north inner city around Liberty Hall. Fifty-year-old labourer John Byrne is beaten senseless by police on Butt Bridge and 33-year-old labourer James Nolan is attacked by police on Eden Quay. They are taken to Jervis Street hospital where both men die of their injuries.

31 August: Dublin Trades Council and senior DMP officers agree that the unions can hold a rally at Croydon Park in Fairview without breaching the Proclamation on a meeting in Sackville Street. Larkin ignores the rally and goes to the Imperial Hotel, where he attempts to address the crowd on Sackville Street. He is arrested and police baton charges inflict between 400 and 600 casualties. Trade unionists returning from Croydon Park attack the police and rioting breaks out across the city. Cavalry are deployed in Sackville Street and infantry in Inchicore to help contain the rioting.

September

1 September: The TUC conference in Manchester is appalled at ‘Bloody Sunday’ reports in newspapers and in an eye witness account by William Partridge, delegates pledge support for ITGWU men locked out in Dublin. Meanwhile, more employers lock out ITGWU members.

Dublin Corporation discusses the crisis. It is dominated by shopkeepers and small businessmen who support John Redmond and Home Rule. While the mercantile community resents the rise of Larkin, many are appalled by the behaviour of the police. The Lord Mayor, Lorcan Sherlock, calls for a public inquiry. Dr James McWalter, whose surgery ‘was crowded with absolutely harmless, inoffensive citizens returning from devotions, who had all been batoned’, proposes that the DMP and RIC be withdrawn from the city.

The Coroner’s inquest into the death of James Nolan takes place. He was a member of the ITGWU, which paid for his family to be legally represented. Several witnesses give the numbers of the policemen who attacked Nolan, but the hearing is adjourned and no charges follow. There are disturbances outside George Jacob’s biscuit factory as ITGWU members on the afternoon shift are turned away at the gate. Rioting resumes on both sides of the Liffey.

2 September: Seven people, including three children, die when two tenements at 66 and 67 Church Street collapse. Seventeen-year-old Eugene Salmon, an ITGWU member locked out by Jacob’s is killed when he tries to rescue his 4-year-old sister, Elizabeth, from the collapsing buildings.

3 September: The funeral of James Nolan takes place. Thousands follow the coffin to Glasnevin cemetery. A guard of honour is provided by 200 striking tramway workers in uniform and Keir Hardie, Britain’s first Labour MP, attends.

William Martin Murphy unveils his strategy to smash the ITGWU at a meeting of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce. Over 400 employers agree not to employ members of the ITGWU. Over the next few days thousands of workers are told to sign forms resigning from the union or disassociating from it if members of another union. One thousand five hundred men are laid off in the coal trade alone. Larkin is released from prison on bail facing charges of riot, unlawful assembly and sedition.

Keir Hardie, addresses a mass meeting in Beresford Pl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword by Joe O’Flynn, General Secretary, SIPTU
• Foreword by Denis Brennan, Bishop of Ferns
• Introduction
• 1. Chronology of the Great Dublin Lockout, 1913–1914
• 2. A Tale of Two Cities: The 1913 Lockout, The View from Belfast
• 3. ‘Quick-Witted Urchins’: Dublin’s Newsboys in Challenging Times, 1900–1922
• 4. American Social Reform and the Irish Question: An Irish-American Perspective on the 1913 Lockout
• 5. Insult and the Locked-Out Workers of 1913
• 6. ‘Into the Sun’: Helena Molony’s Lost Revolution
• 7. Glorious Forever? The Political Evolution of the Irish Citizen Army, 1913–1921
• 8. ‘The Layers of an Onion’: Reflections on 1913, Class and the Memory of the Irish Revolution
• 9. 1913: The Cinderella Centenary
• 10. The Legacy of the Lockout: Lessons from Oral History
• 11. An Introduction to Manuscript Sources on the Irish Citizen Army
• Contributors
• Select Bibliography
• Index
• Plates