Everything about The Dublin Lockout totally explained
The
Dublin Lockout was a major industrial dispute between approximately 20,000 workers and 300 employers which took place in
Ireland's capital city of
Dublin. The dispute lasted from
26 August 1913 to
18 January 1914, and is commonly viewed as the most severe and significant industrial dispute in Irish history. Central to the dispute was the workers' right to unionize.
Although the dispute is most commonly referred to as the Dublin Lockout, it has been suggested that
1913 Strike and Lockout is a more accurate name, as the dispute did in fact involve a
strike as well as a
lockout.
Background
Dublin City slums
One of the major factors which contributed to the ignition of the dispute was the dire circumstances in which the city's poor were forced to live. In 1913, one third of Dublin's population lived in
slums. 26,000 families lived in 5,000 tenements. An estimated four million pledges were taken in pawnbrokers every year. Infant mortality rate amongst the poor was 142 per 1,000 births, which was very high for a European nation. The situation was made considerably worse by the high rate of disease in the slums, which was a result of a lack of health care and cramped living conditions, among other things. The most prevalent disease in the Dublin City slums at this time was
tuberculosis (TB), which spread through tenements very quickly and caused many deaths amongst the poor. A report published in
1912 claimed that TB-related deaths in Ireland were fifty percent higher than in England or Scotland, and that the vast majority of TB-related deaths in Ireland occurred amongst the poorer classes.
Poverty was perpetuated in Dublin City by the lack of occupational opportunities for unskilled workers. Prior to the advent of
trade unionism in Ireland, unskilled workers lacked any form of representation. Furthermore, there many more unskilled labourers in Dublin than were needed. Thus unskilled workers often had to compete with one another for work on a daily basis, the job generally going to whoever agreed to work for the lowest wages.
James Larkin and the formation of the ITGWU
James Larkin, the main protagonist on the side of the workers in the dispute, had a history within the trade union movement. His first experience with trade unionism in Ireland had been in
1907 when he was sent to
Belfast as local leader of the British-based
National Union of Dock Labourers (NUDL) after working as a docker in Liverpool. While in Belfast, Larkin organized a strike of dock and transport workers. It was also in Belfast that Larkin developed his tactic of the
sympathetic strike, whereby workers who were not directly involved in an industrial dispute with employers would go on strike in support of other workers who were. The Belfast strike was a moderately successful and boosted Larkin's standing amongst Irish workers. However, his tactics were highly controversial and as a result Larkin was transferred to Dublin, where it was thought he could do less damage to the Union. Unskilled workers in Dublin were very much at the mercy of the employers. Employers who suspected workers of trying to organize could "blacklist" said workers, practically destroying any chance of future employment. Nevertheless, Larkin set about trying to organize the unskilled workers of Dublin. This was a cause of concern for the NUDL, who were reluctant to engage in a full-scale industrial dispute with Dublin employers. As a result Larkin was suspended from the NUDL in
1908. Larkin then decided to leave the NUDL and set up his own union, the
Irish Transport and General Workers' Union (ITGWU).
The ITGWU was the first Irish trade union to cater for both skilled and unskilled workers. In the first few months after its establishment it quickly gained popularity, and soon it had spread to other Irish cities. The ITGWU was used as a vehicle for Larkin's
syndicalist views. Larkin believed in the bringing about of a
socialist revolution by way of the establishment of trade unions and the calling of general strikes. After initially losing several strikes between 1908 and
1910, the ITGWU became more successful after
1911, winning several strikes involving carters and railway workers. Between 1911 and 1913, membership of the ITGWU rose from 4,000 to 10,000. This trend didn't go unnoticed by employers, who soon became alarmed by the rise in popularity of the trade union.
Connolly and the Irish Labour Party
Another important figure in the rise of an organized workers' movement in Ireland at this time was
James Connolly, an Edinburgh-born
Marxist. Connolly, like Larkin, was a talented orator and became known for his speeches on the streets of Dublin, in which he made a case not only for socialism, but also for Irish
nationalism. In 1896, Connolly established the
Irish Socialist Republican Party, along with the newspaper
The Workers' Republic. In 1910 Connolly became involved with the ITGWU, and was appointed as its Belfast organizer in 1911. In 1912 Connolly and Larkin formed the
Irish Labour Party, which was intended to represent the workers in the imminent
Home Rule Bill parliament (which, due to the rise of
militant nationalism following the
1916 Rising, never actually materialized).
William Martin Murphy and the employers
Foremost among the employers opposed to trade unionism in Ireland was
William Martin Murphy. Murphy was a highly successful businessman from
Co. Cork. In 1913, he was chairman of the
Dublin United Tramway Company and owner of Clery's department store and the
Imperial Hotel. He also controlled the
Irish Independent,
Evening Herald and
Irish Catholic newspapers. He was one of the few successful
Catholic businessmen in Ireland at the time, as the country's upper class was generally dominated by descendants of the
Protestant Ascendancy. Murphy was also a prominent nationalist and a former Home Rule MP in
Westminster. He was known as a kind and charitable man in his private life. His workers received better wages than the other workers, but conditions were poor. Employees were forced to work up to 17 hours a day and a harsh discipline regime and informer culture was pursued. Murphy was vehemently opposed to external trade unions which he saw as an attempt to impede on his business, and in particular he was opposed to Larkin, whom he saw as a dangerous revolutionary. In
July 1913, Murphy presided over a meeting of 300 employers, at which a collective response to the rise of trade unionism was agreed upon. Murphy and the employers were determined not to allow the ITGWU to unionize the Dublin workforce. On
15 August Murphy dismissed forty workers he suspected of ITGWU membership, followed by another 300 over the next week.
Course of the dispute
Beginning of Strike
On
26 August, the tramway workers officially went on
strike. Larkin timed the strike to take place in the middle of the
Dublin Horse Show held by the
Royal Dublin Society, when the inconvenience caused would be greatest and Murphy's business worst affected. At a pre-arranged time, the tram drivers and conductors literally walked off the trams, leaving them unattended. Led by Murphy, over four hundred of the city's employers retaliated by requiring their workers to sign a pledge not to be a member of the ITGWU and not to engage in
sympathetic strikes.
Escalation
The resulting industrial dispute was the most severe in
Ireland's history. Employers in Dublin engaged in a lockout of their workers, employing
blackleg labour from
Britain and elsewhere in Ireland. Dublin's workers, amongst the poorest in the
United Kingdom, were forced to survive on generous but inadequate donations from the
Trades Union Congress (TUC) and other sources in Ireland, doled out dutifully by the ITGWU. A scheme whereby the children of Irish strikers would be temporarily looked after by British trade unionists was blocked by the
Roman Catholic Church, who protested that Catholic children would be subject to Protestant or atheist influences when in Britain. The Church supported the employers during the dispute, condemning Larkin as a
socialist revolutionary.
The strikers used mass pickets and intimidation against strike breakers and the
Dublin Metropolitan Police in turn
baton charged worker's rallies. The DMP's attack on a union rally on Sackville Street (now known as
O'Connell Street) in August 1913 caused the deaths of two workers and hundreds more were injured. This was provoked by the illegal appearance of James Larkin to speak out for the workers. It is still known in the Irish Labour movement as "Bloody Sunday" (despite two subsequent days in 20th century Ireland that are also described in this way). Another worker was later shot dead by a strike breaker. In response, Larkin, his subordinate James Connolly and an ex-
British Army Captain Jack White formed a worker's militia named the
Irish Citizen Army to protect workers' demonstrations.
The Lockout Continues
For seven months the lockout affected tens of thousands of Dublin's workers and their families, with Larkin portrayed as the villain by Murphy's three main newspapers, the
Irish Independent, the
Sunday Independent and the
Evening Herald. Other leaders in the ITGWU at the time were
James Connolly and
William X. O'Brien, while influential figures such as
Pádraig Pearse,
Countess Markievicz and
William Butler Yeats supported the workers in the generally anti-Larkin media.
End of the Lockout
The lockout eventually concluded in early
1914 when the calls for a sympathetic strike in Britain from Larkin and Connolly were rejected by the TUC. Most workers, many of whom were on the brink of starvation, went back to work and signed pledges not to join a union. The ITGWU was badly damaged by its defeat in the Lockout, and was further hit by the departure of Larkin to
America in 1914 and the execution of James Connolly for his part in the nationalist
Easter Rising in 1916. However, the union was re-built by William O'Brien and
Thomas Johnson and 1919 its membership had surpassed that of 1913.
Although the actions of the ITGWU and the smaller UBLU were unsuccessful in achieving substantially better pay and conditions for the workers, they marked a watershed in Irish labour history. The principle of union action and workers' solidarity had been firmly established; no future employer would ever try to "break" a union in the way that Murphy attempted with the ITGWU. The lockout itself had been damaging to commercial businesses in
Dublin, many being forced to declare bankruptcy.
Yeats' "September 1913"
September 1913, one of the most famous of
Yeats' poems, was published in the Irish Times during the lockout, partly to express the poet's support of the worker's aims in contrast with his animosity towards the Catholic bourgeoisie and the church's influence upon them.
Bibliography
Further Information
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