7/28/2019 Dublin Lockout Centenary in London

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The Great Dublin lockoutbegan on 26 August 1913and pitted two powerfulantagonists; Jim Larkin,leader of the Irish Transportand General Workers Unionand William Martin Murphy,leader of the Dublin Em-ployers Federation. Therewas good reason for discon-tent in Dublin in 1913. AsPadraig Yeats says:

Unskilled workers lived indesperate poverty. Housingconditions were deplorable. Overcrowdingwas a serious problem, and bred disease andinfection. Malnutrition was common. Thedeath rate in Dublin (27.6 per 1000) was badas Calcutta, and the citys slums wereamongst the worst in the world. Over 20,000families lived in one-room dwellings. There

were often morethan ten familiesin town housesthat were built forone upper-classfamily in the eight-eenth and nine-teenth centuries.These houses be-came dilapidatedwhen wealthy el-ites left them andmoved to the sub-urbs. The houseswere often taken

over by landlords who rented them out,room by room, to poor families, and theyquickly became slums. There was little pri-vacy. Facilities for cooking, cleaning, andwashing were wholly inadequate. Sanitaryconditions were worse. Many tenement

Main event: Saturday 24 August9.30 to 5pm.

Venue: Conway Hall, Red LionSquare, London WC1Confirmed Speakers: JohnMcDonnell MP, Bob Crow, RMTGeneral Secretary, Prof John

Newsinger, author ofRebel City:Larkin, Connolly and the DublinLabour Movement and TheBlood Never Dried: A People'sHistory of the British Empire,Sheila Coleman, Chair of theHillsborough Justice Campaign, aSinn Fein speaker, Keith Flett, au-thor ofChartism After 1848 : TheWorking Class and the Politics ofRadical Education, Cillian Gilles-

pie Irish Socialist Party, and Mi-chael Holden of the Irish Republi-can Prisoners Support Group inLondon.On Sunday 25th there are work-shops on the lessons of the Lock-out at the RMTs HQ, 39 Chalton

Street, London NW1 1JD.We will have a gig at the CockTavern 23 Phoenix Rd London,Greater London NW1 1HB on Fri-day night, 23 August and we willhave a gig in Conway Hall, afterthe Saturday Conference. The Re-

publican Network for Unity arehaving a launch gig in the Cock

Tavern on Sunday night, 26th.More details closer to the date.

London Centenary Commemoration of the1913 Dublin Lock-out

Jim Larkin rallying the troops in 1923

7/28/2019 Dublin Lockout Centenary in London

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buildings shared one lava-tory in a yard.

The beginning andcourse of the strike is wellknown and we will onlysketch it in outline herefrom Padraig Yeates:

Shortly after 10.00 a.m.on Tuesday, 26 August1913the first day of theDublin Horse Show, oneof the citys busiesteventsdrivers and con-ductors stopped their trams and abandonedthem in protest. About 700 of the 1,700

Tramways Companys employees went onstrike. The employers drew up a pledge forworkers to sign:

I hereby undertake to carry out all instruc-tions given to me by or on behalf of my em-ployers, and further, I agree to immediatelyresign my membership of the ITGWU (if amember) and I further undertake that I willnot join or in any way support this union.

Thousands who refused to sign were sacked.There was tremendous solidarity support inManchester. 130 NUR rail union branchescalled for action. In South Wales, rail work-ers and dockers went out on unofficialStrike. But on 9 December 1913 the TUCSpecial Conference met and predictablythere was a sell-out and betrayal of the Dub-lin strikers. It was Ben Tillett, the famousleader of the dockers tanner strike in 1889,a left winger who Larkin had considered astaunch supporter up to then, who de-nounced Larkin and proposed the motionnot to call industrial action in defence of theLockout. Larkin wrote bitterly:

These men who wore tall hats and frockcoats in London and bowler hats whenamong the boys were getting too big. Theyshould be weary of a man whom the capital-

ists pat on theback. They shouldalso be suspiciousof men who dinedand wined withthose who causedthe Dublin trou-bles.

Whilst pre-1916Sinn Fein and theIrish Parliamentaryparty opposed the

strike the radicalnationalist artists and republicans stronglysupported it. These included W. B. Yeats,George Bernard Shaw and AE (George Rus-sell), Countess Markievicz, Maud GonneMacBride and every signatory of the 1916Proclamation.

The Dublin workers were defeated but theITGWU soon revived. James Connollysexplained:

The battle was a drawn battle. The employ-ers were unable to carry on their businesswithout men and women who remainedloyal to their union. The workers were un-able to force their employers to a formalrecognition of the union and to give prefer-ence to organised labour. From the effects ofthis drawn battle both sides are still bearingscars. How deep these scars are none willreveal.

James Connolly and Jack White, an ex-British officer, founded the Irish CitizenArmy (ICA) in 1913 in response to policeviolence against the Lockout. This was thefirst and only armed workers militia in Brit-ain and Ireland, reflecting the revolutionaryspirit of that age in Ireland. Although num-bering a few hundred they remained intactafter the defeat of the Lockout and adoptedas their goal an independent and socialistIrish nation. This was the vehicle which pro-pelled Connolly into the 1916 Easter Rising.

'Big' Jim Larkin and James Connolly

campaigning in Liverpool in 1913.

Cheques payable to: CRAIC (Campaign for the Rights and Actions of Irish Communities) Austin Harney,Trade Union Room, Official Solicitors and Public Trustees Office, 81 Chancery Lane, London, WC2A 1DD