THE 100th anniversary of the 1913 Lockout, a strike which saw 20,000 workers take on 300 employers, has arrived. The strikers paid a horrendous price and gained nothing, but finally the terror of oppression and being afraid to fight back against abusive employers was at an end. People finally straightened their backs, lifted their shoulders and, under the direction of Big Jim Larkin, stood up to the slave drivers for the first time. It started on 26 August at 10am when the trams stopped rolling all over Dublin as drivers and conductors walked off the job. The workers were seeking a raise of one to two shillings a week, but this was refused point blank.

James Larkin was born in Liverpool to Irish parents on 21 January 1876. His early employment was as a sailor and then a docker, becoming a foreman in 1903, the same year he married Elizabeth Brown. Larkin’s education was basic, but it did not deter him from becoming a trade union activist. In 1905 he lost his foreman’s job when he took part in the Liverpool dockers’ strike. He moved to Belfast in 1907 and there founded the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, the Irish Labour Party and the Workers Union of Ireland.

What led to the 1913 Lockout? Well, let’s look at the facts. More than 30,000 families lived in 15,000 slum tenements in Dublin. Many of the unrepresented poor people who lived there had no work, while those who had laboured for a 70-hour week for a pittance, as little as 30 shillings, with women working the same hours for ten shillings.  Although solid in structure, the slums of Dublin were little better then those you will find in third world countries today. Dublin winters were as severe as the current ones, but there was no protection from the cold. Families endured living in dank sickness-ridden accommodation, many rodent infested. They are best described as disease-breeding conditions. Tuberculosis was rampant and the death rate was high, claiming 50% more lives than in any other part of Britain. Children were starving, as were parents, but the children’s death rate was high, infant mortality higher still, at 14%. This, of course, was as a result of oppression and near-slavery imposed for more than seven centuries, but by 1913 you would imagine that even the British would have realised that this was wrong? Not a sign of it. This is one reason Ireland should be acutely aware of its history, and it should never be allowed to happen again.

Larkin, aided and abetted by Edinburgh-born (of Irish parents) James Connolly, led the strikers, who suffered terrible humiliation during the period of industrial unrest. But they eventually had to concede defeat and return to work on 18 January 1914.

If we look at the employers in this confrontation, businessman William Martin Murphy would be the main culprit. Born in Castletownbere, Co Cork and educated at BelvedereCollege, he inherited his father’s building business at the age of 19, which he quickly enlarged into one of the biggest in Ireland. He was chairman of the Dublin United Tram Company as well as owning Clerys department store. He also controlled the ***Independent Herald*** and ***Irish Catholic*** newspapers. He was founder of the ***Sunday Independent***, as well as being a major shareholder in the B&I shipping line. He was always regarded as a good employer and a strong nationalist, having sat as a Home Rule MP in Westminster, representing St Patrick’s, Dublin from 1885 to ’92. It was this man who led the Dublin employers against the unions. He despised Larkin but feared in particular that he would destroy the tram business and this motivated him. As the Lockout proceeded, Murphy became unpopular, and even more so after the 1916 Rising when he called for the execution of Connolly and McDermott in his papers, a call that brought greater support for those who had taken part in the insurrection, while alienating Murphy even more.

It’s worth mentioning here that although Guinness donated £500 to the employers’ fund, they refused to take part in the lockout. However, they did sack six workers and despite Larkin pleading for their reinstatement, the company stuck with its decision. A scheme to have the children of strikers looked after by British trade unionists was vetoed by the Catholic Church in a very unsavoury manner.

Dublin’s workers were locked out and replaced by what was called blackleg labour from Britain and elsewhere. Mass pickets and intimidation on companies using this blackleg labour led to confrontation with the Dublin Metropolitan Police, who baton charged the strikers’ rallies. In August, as Larkin spoke in Sackville Street (now O’Connell Street), one of these charges led to the deaths of two strikers, James Nolan and John Byrne, with hundreds injured. Sixteen-year-old Alice Brady was shot dead by a scab, as strike-breakers were known, as she made her way home with a food parcel she had just collected from her union office. Union official Michael Byrne died after bring tortured in a police cell.

Following these incidents, Larkin, Connolly and ex-British army captain Jack White formed a workers’ militia, which gave birth of the Irish Citizens’ Army. However, when the British TUC refused to hold a sympathy strike, the Irish strikers had no option but to return to work, signing a pledge they would not join a union. This decimated the ITGWU, which was further hit by the departure of Larkin to the US in 1914 and Connolly’s execution following the 1916 Rising. That being said, commercial business in Dublin suffered, too, with many businesses being declared bankrupt. The union was rebuilt by Thomas Johnson and William O’Brien, and by 1919 membership had increased from the 1913 figures. Murphy, a man with a true chequered history of which we have included some facts in various articles, deserves his own story and we will do this in the future. He died in 1919 but his family owned Independent newspapers until 1973 when they were sold to Tony O’Reilly.

So that was the fate of the Irish worker coming to the end of British rule. Now we will look at how the new Dáil Éireann treated the workers of Ireland in their early days, or perhaps it would be better to look at how Ireland’s new political class brushed the workers aside, a feat which has been repeated by that class regularly since the Treaty, ending the War of Independence.

Let us look at the records of the fourth Dáil (which ran from 19 September 1923 to 23 June 1927) sitting on 30 October 1924 and see would any of these ring a bell in today’s situation.

There is a discussion on unemployment, which blames petty strikes for most of the situation as no-one wants to create jobs in these circumstances. Labour deputy William Davin from Leix-Offaly is one of the main contributors, stating he refuses the right of companies to tell a man whether he can be a member of a trade union or not. He later follows what is now a familiar path when the discussion accuses the banks of not doing enough to generate employment. Davin’s contribution is: “I put it to the minister that a serious situation is developing due to the anti-state attitude of the Irish banking institutions.” The government must officially or unofficially stay the hand of these very dangerous people.” Sound familiar?

Another part of the debate was raised by minister for industry, commerce and external affairs Patrick McGilligan. He was probably one of the most active politicians of this or any other era, who pushed through the Shannon hydroelectric project, the ESB and the Agricultural Credit Corporation), dealt with roads where the Land Commission had been allotted £178,000 out of a £250,000 employment grant. Speaking of relief schemes to the unemployed, he explained how it cost a large amount in administration which, if it could be streamlined, would be of further benefit to those in need. You have to look over a period of years; you cannot take measures this year which will lead to more people going hungry next year. To this, Mr Johnston questioned “what if they die this year?” McGilligan replied that there are certain limited funds at our disposal, people may have to die in this country and may have to die from starvation. Deputy Colohan: “That would solve the problem.” McGilligan: “It may solve the problem but not in the way I would desire or that the deputy would desire.”

This was a long debate and although some of the exchanges were questionable, it was largely constructive, if chilling, in its reality. It showed that little had changed since the lockout: the poor were still that way and people were poorly paid, if at all, and Irish children and the elderly were dying from starvation.

But today we are in a better place that is of our own making. But when we take a step forward, we get kicked back two by  bad governance that looks no further than its own pay packets and perks, encouraging the likes of insurance companies, devious bankers and con artists of all descriptions lead the country to disaster after disaster and then take from the ordinary worker, the old, the sick, the disabled. And all these measures help to keep the bankers and others, including themselves, worry-free and financially well off. How often are we going to bail them out?

The taxpayer is again picking up the tab for their woeful decisions, which, five years later, should have seen justice done, instead of thinking about an enquiry. The dismissal of the Dunlop case speaks for itself. We should expect no better in what is to come. Not much has changed in the last 100 years.