Features

‘Bad, sad specimens of the human race’: nationalist opinion and the striking workers of 1913

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

Policing the Lockout: the role of the DMP

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

The girl orator of the Bowery: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Ireland and the Industrial Workers of the World

The bitter class warfare witnessed in Dublin in 1913 mirrored a series of similarly vicious struggles in the United States. Meredith Meagher outlines the part played in several of them by the charismatic Irish-American labour leader Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. On 25 May 1913 Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, an organiser and ‘soapboxer’ for the Industrial Workers of … Read more

The forgotten labour struggle: the 1911 Wexford lockout

The Wexford lockout was not merely a struggle between employers and workers; it also brought into sharp focus the visceral opposition of the Catholic Church to trade unionism in Ireland, the violent approach taken by the police authorities towards ordinary workers in the town and the distance between urban workers and their national representatives, the … Read more

Remembering Larkin and the dock strike of 1907

The Belfast dock strike of 1907 marked James Larkin’s arrival and first extraordinary impact in Ireland. It revealed that Belfast alongside a British economy had a very Irish one that governed the conditions of the unskilled. It marked the first substantial organisation of the unskilled in the city. Although relatively small-scale as a strike, it … Read more