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1913 the Great Lockout: a Survey

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1913 the Great Lockout: a Survey 1913 The Great Lockout: A Survey Paul O'Brien The 1913 lockout was a pivotal mo- the Irish Transport and General Workers ment in Irish history. This essay will Union (ITGWU) and the lockout in 1913. present a survey of the literature published He arrived in Belfast in January 1907. to date on the lockout. These publica- Within a year Larkin had established the tions together provide us with an impor- National Union of Dock Labourers in every tant archive documenting and analysing port in Ireland, but his militant methods the social and political context of 1913, alarmed the leadership of the union. In while at the same time examining the key December 1908 he was suspended from his strategic positions and events leading up position within the NUDL. A few weeks to and surrounding the lockout. They also later, on December 28^th, Larkin launched provide us with a valuable insight into the a breakaway union: the Irish Transport political men that were Jim Larkin and and General Workers Union. The ITGWU James Connolly. represented a new style of trade unionism The historical response to the lockout that reached out to the unskilled worker. can be divided into four waves. Firstly, that produced during, and in the immedi- ate aftermath, of the lockout. Secondly, that written in the period 1920 to 1970 when there was little interest in Labour history. Thirdly, the `new labour history' associated with the emergence of the Irish Labour History Society (1973) between 1970 and 2000. Lastly, a series of pub- lications, particularly the collected works, letters, and journalism of James Connolly published to coincide with the upcoming Jim Larkin during the Lockout centenary of the lockout. Comemorating the centenary of the lockout is made ever more resonant by the What came to be known as `Larkin- fact that in 2013, Ireland is in the deepest ism' was part of an international wave of social, economic and political crisis in the militancy and represented an Irish vari- history of the state. There are lessons to ant of syndicalism, or what has been be learnt and conclusions to be drawn from described more correctly by Bob Holton the history of the lockout for the contem- as `proto-syndicalism, something that is porary struggle. less than revolutionary consciousness, but more than trade union consciousness'.1 Background Syndicalism originated in France as a re- sponse to the failure of the existing so- Jim Larkin rather than James Connolly cialist parties to represent the economic or was the dominant figure in the founding of political interests of the unskilled worker. 1 Quoted in John Newsinger, `Irish Labour in a time of Revolution', Socialist History, no. 22, (2002), p. 5. 5 Syndicalism emphasised direct action, mil- or on behalf of my employers itancy, and strikes to build workers con- and, further, I agree to imme- sciousness, culminating in a general strike diately resign my membership where workers could take control of indus- of the Irish Transport and Gen- try and organise production for the benefit eral Workers Union (if a mem- of all. ber), and I further undertake Larkin succeeded in making Dublin one that I will not join or in any of the best organised trade union cities in way support this union. Europe. The ITGWUs use of the sympa- Dublin workers refused to sign this thetic strike and the doctrine of `tainted document and the Dublin lockout be- goods' was the cornerstone of its strategy gan. Thirty-seven Dublin unions sup- to force employers to recognise the union ported Larkin. Half-starved, without and negotiate for better wages and condi- funds, they held out for eight months. tions for the men and women who, up to When representatives of the British labour then, had been at the mercy of their em- unions attempted to negotiate a settle- ployers. Larkin set out to shift the bal- ment, the employers broke off negotiations. ance of class forces in Ireland in favour of Meetings were held in England, and both labour. Connolly and Larkin appealed to British The revolutionary syndicalist politics labour for aid. Only sympathetic strikes of the ITGWU were a direct threat to the in England could have secured the victory employers of Ireland. As William Martin of the Irish workers. In December 1913, a Murphy of the Employers Federation put Special Trade Union Congress was called in it; `either Larkin rules Dublin or we do'. England in order to deal with the demands Murphy understood better than most the that the British workers come to the sup- threat that the `new unionism' as devel- port of their brothers and sisters in Dublin oped by Larkin and Connolly posed. He by supporting strikes and a blockade of set about breaking the hold of the ITGWU Dublin. The officials of the British trade in Dublin. unions turned this Congress into an effort to defeat Jim Larkin. Without the sup- Locked Out port of British workers Dublin went down to defeat. In August 1913 William Martin Murphy, head of the Dublin employers group, in- formed dispatch workers of The Irish In- Contemporary Reports dependent that they must choose between The Irish Worker 2 (1911-1914) gives a real Larkin and their jobs. A similar ultimatum flavour of the both the heroism and suf- was given to the tramway workers. The fering endured by the working class over employers began a war of extermination the eight months of the lockout. However, against the unions, and against Larkin. Larkin never addressed the outcome of the The Federated Employers issued a docu- strike and the terrible defeat suffered by ment in which they demanded that the em- the workers of Dublin. Larkin was a leader ployees of 404 firms sign. It read: and an agitator, rather than a theoretician I hereby undertake to carry out and his contributions to the Irish Worker all instructions given to me by lack any political analysis of the strike and 2The index for the Irish Worker is published in O'Casey Annual No 3 (Macmillan Press,London, 1984), pp. 47-114. 6 what it meant for the class struggle in Ire- are in conflict with their em- land. Larkin, worn out by his efforts dur- ployers, that all other workers ing the dispute, left for America in 1914 should co-operate with them in and did not return to Ireland until 1923. attempting to bring that par- James Connolly's articles in the Irish ticular employer to reason by Worker during the strike are more polit- refusing to handle his goods.4 ical. Connolly's articles examine the role of the trade union bureaucracy, the rela- The lockout was a terrible defeat for the tionship between nationalism and social- working class of Dublin and for the revo- ism, international solidarity and the rela- lutionary syndicalist politics of Larkin and tionship between British and Irish workers. Connolly. Workers were forced to accept a He also poses the question of the need for a return to work on any terms offered by the workers militia, which found fruition in the employers. Membership of the ITGWU fell Irish Citizen Army formed during the lock- from 30,000 at the beginning of the strike out to protect the strikers and their fami- to 5,000 at the end. Thousands of work- lies. ers lost their jobs and many in desperation These articles are brought together in signed up for the killing fields of France a new two-volume edition of the Collected just a few months later. In November 1914 Works of James Connolly 3 and are an in- Connolly, in a review of Disturbed Dublin5 valuable insight into the political thinking by Arnold Wright, attempted to counter of the period. that propaganda of the Employers Federa- As the strike drew to a close and in the tion and claimed it was a `drawn battle': immediate aftermath of the dispute Con- nolly set out his analysis of the lockout in The flag of the Irish Transport a number of publications. Writing in Oc- and General Workers' Union tober 1913 in The Irish Review, a literary still flies proudly in the van magazine that was sympathetic to labour, of the Irish working class, and Connolly rehearsed the historical context that working class still marches of the strike and the political and economic proudly and defiantly at the policies of the ITGWU. His explanation of head of the gathering hosts the sympathetic strike stands even today who stand for a regenerated na- as a model of militant trade unionism: tion, resting upon the people industrially free.6 It is the recognition by the Working Class of their essen- In some ways Disturbed Dublin is an in- tial unity, the manifestation in teresting book. It purports to be a history our daily industrial relations of the lockout, but Wright was paid $500 that our brother's fight is our by the Employers Federation and Wright fight, our sister's troubles are amply repays his paymasters in his anal- our troubles, that we are all ysis of the strike. Despite this, it gives members one of another. In an insight into the emerging native Irish practical operation, it means ruling class and it also contains some use- that when any body of workers ful social and statistical information about 3 James Connolly, Collected Works, Ed. Donal Nevin. 2 Vols. (SIPTU, Dublin, 2011). 4Connolly, Collected Works, Vol. 1 p. 507. 5Arnold Wright, Disturbed Dublin, (London, Longman Green,1914) 6Connolly, Collected Works, Vol. 1 p. 491. 7 Dublin in the first decade of the 20^th cen- Also worth referring to is Between tury.
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