In keeping with the Lockout theme, Bookworm has cast the net a bit wider for this issue, which means that the first and most obvious book to mention is a novel: James Plunkett’s classic Strumpet city (Gill & Macmillan, €10.99pb, 560pp, ISBN 9780717156108). Plunkett’s epic was chosen for the Dublin Public Libraries ‘One City, One … Read more
Speaking at the golden jubilee meeting of the Workers’ Union of Ireland (WUI) in September 1974, historian F.X. Martin supported the union’s attempt to have a monument erected on Dublin’s O’Connell Street in memory of James Larkin, the WUI’s inaugural general secretary from 1924 to 1947: ‘This burly, brass-throated orator with the magnificent frame which … Read more
In the short term, the Lockout was a pyrrhic victory for the employers. They did not abandon their central demand, the ban on Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU) members, but only its inspirer, Murphy, and a few others enforced it. The union was weaker but it survived. Its example inspired workers to organise … Read more
Throughout the winter of 1913 the unskilled workers of Dublin were persistently labelled in print by respectable Catholic opinion as ‘scum’, ‘roughs’, ‘degenerates’ and ‘undesirables’. A brief review of provincial nationalist opinion reveals the profound antagonism towards the strikers’ plight and the visceral contempt for their very struggle to survive, indicative of the deep social … Read more
Labour-related violence plagued Dublin from February 1913 to February 1914. During August and September 1913 alone there were fifteen distinct and separate riots, a number of which resulted in large-scale clashes between workers and the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP). Twelve occurred on Saturday 30 and Sunday 31 August (five and seven respectively). The findings of … Read more