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Home , Donal Nevin, Irish Citizen Army, James Larkin, Lockout (industry)

1913 The Great : 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 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 , 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 28ˆth, 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 . 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 , 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 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 , mil- or on behalf of my employers itancy, and strikes to build workers con- and, further, I agree to imme- sciousness, culminating in a 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 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 ‘’ 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 , 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 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 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. . 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 20ˆth cen- Also worth referring to is Between tury. Comrades10, the letters and correspon- In February 1914, as the strike went dence of James Connolly, which give a real down to defeat, in the Scottish socialist pa- flavour of the lockout and the political re- per Forward, Connolly lashed the British lationship and the tensions that arose be- trade union bureaucrats who had sacrificed tween Larkin and Connolly in the course the workers of Dublin ‘in the interests of of the lockout. A collection of the polit- sectional officialism’. In this article there ical cartoons of Ernest Kavanagh11, who is no talk of a ‘drawn battle’. He spells out contributed to the Irish Worker, was pub- the terrible defeat they suffered: lished in 2012. Kavanagh consistently at- And so, we Irish workers must tacked William Martin Murphy and the go down into hell, bow our Dublin Metropolitan Police exposing them backs to the lash of the slave as thugs controlled by politicians and em- driver, let our hearts be seared ployers. by the iron of his hatred, and instead of the sacramental wafer of brotherhood and com- 1920-1970 mon sacrifice, eat the dust of defeat and betrayal.7 James Connolly said to his daughter Nora on the eve of his execution in : A year later in April 1915 in The New ‘The Socialists will never understand why I Age, a British socialist paper, Connolly re- am here. They all forget that I am an Irish- flected on the lessons of the great unrest man’.12 Connollys role during the 1916 ris- for the trade union movement. Despite the ing dominated the historical literature of fact that the ‘New Amalgamated Unions’ the as they tried to de- had overcome the sectional divisions of the velop a political analysis of the relationship old craft unions, Connolly points out that between nationalism and follow- the amalgamations and federations are be- ing his execution in 1916. For the following ing carried out: fifty years, with few exceptions, the politi- by officials absolutely destitute cal lessons of the lockout and the implica- of revolutionary spirit...into tions for building a revolution movement the new bottles of industrial or- in Ireland were generally ignored. ganisation is being poured the Sean O’Casey, in many ways the first old, cold wine of Craft Union- revisionist, in his pamphlet on the history 8 ism. of the Irish Citizen Army13 published in This article is still very relevant and 1919 was one of the first to explore the re- lays out the core socialist argument for lationship between the workers movement rank and file control of the unions.9 and the nationalist movement, against the 7Connolly, Collected Works, Vol. 1 p. 415. 8Connolly, Collected Works, Vol. 1 p. 514. 9 This article was reprinted as Old Wine in New Bottles, (ITGWU, Dublin, 1921). 10James Connolly, Between Comrades: Letters and Correspondence 1889-1916, Ed. Donal Nevin, (Gill & Macmillan, Dublin, 2007) 11 Ernest Kavanagh, Artist of the Revolution, Introduced and Edited by James Curry, (Mercier Press, , 2012). 12W. P. Ryan, The Irish Labour Movement, (Talbot Press, Dublin, 1919), p. 248. 13Sean O’Casey, The Story of the Irish Citizen Army, (Maunsel & Co., Dublin, 1919).

8 background of the lockout and the found- leading Irish Labour historians of the pe- ing of the Irish Citizen Army. It has riod. They were respectively members of few pretentions either as history or the- the Connolly Association in England and ory. This was a polemical piece to rein- the Communist Party of Great Britain. state the centrality of class in the ongoing Greaves was commissioned to write the debates. Similarly, W.P. Ryan in his his- official history of the ITGWU which ap- tory of the Irish Labour Movement pub- peared in 1982.17 The first volume cov- lished in 191914, was a lonely voice in a ers the period 1909 to 1923. The second history dominated by nationalist politics. volume never appeared for whatever rea- Of interest are the concluding chapters on son.18 This is a very useful and informa- ‘The Rise of Larkinism’ and ‘The Struggle tive history that gives adequate emphasis of 1913’. to the importance of the lockout but is The history of the lockout in the pe- marred, as John Newsinger notes, by the riod between 1920 and 1970 was domi- way Greaves used every opportunity ‘to nated by writers and historians influenced diminish Larkin, to call into question his by the rightwing reformist politics of the judgement and temperament’.19 Irish or those of the Con- Greaves also wrote what was for a sub- nolly Association in England, which had stantial period the standard biography of close ties to the Communist Party of Great James Connolly20, which was published in Britain. The 1913 lockout was generally ig- 1961 by Lawrence & Wishart, the Com- nored in the post-independence period by munist Party publishers. Here he argues Irish writers. In the few working class his- that Connolly had developed a ‘stages the- tories that were produced the revolution- ory’ of history. This meant the national ary syndicalist politics of Larkin and Con- question had to be resolved before it was nolly and the active participation of work- possible to undertake the fight for social- ers in the events that shaped the emerging ism. This, for Greaves and for the ma- state are absent. In these narratives, writ- jority of labour historians who were influ- ers such as R.M. Fox and William O’Brien enced by the Communist Party, explains downplay the lockout and instead empha- why Connolly led the Irish Citizen Army sise the role of the bureaucracy as the pre- into the GPO in 1916. It also explains why cursor of the modern trade union move- Greaves places the lockout in the context ment.15 of the national question in Ireland that Of far more consequence were the pub- 1913 ‘paved the way for 1916’. What is lications by C. Desmond Greaves and T.A. missing is any analysis of syndicalist poli- Jackson16, who were acknowledged as the tics, or why such a revolutionary upheaval 14 W. P. Ryan, The Irish Labour Movement, (Talbot Press, Dublin, 1919). 15See R.M. Fox, James Connolly: The Forrunner, (The Kerryman, , 1946), The History of the Irish Citizen Army, (Cahill, Dublin, 1943). William OBrien, Forth the Banners Go, (Three Candles, Dublin, 1969). Fifty Years of , (ITGWU, Dublin, 1959). 16T.A. Jackson, Ireland Her Own, (Cobbett Press, London, 1947). 17C. Desmond Greaves, The Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union, (Gill & Macmillan, Dublin, 1982). 18In 2009 SIPTU (formally the ITGWU) published a new history of the union. Francis Devine, Or- ganising History (Gill & Macmillan, Dublin, 2009), which makes a single reference to the Greaves book and devotes just 14 pages out of 1204 to the lockout. 19 John Newsinger, ‘Irish Labour in a time of Revolution’, Socialist History, No. 22, (2002), p.10. 20C. Desmond Greaves, The Life and Times of James Connolly, (Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1961).

9 failed to build a socialist party that could of his death. Surprisingly, this was the have been decisive in the forthcoming fight only issue that dealt with the lockout in against war and the British presence in Ire- any great detail. W. Moran’s article on land. Other publications from this period the British Labour movement and 1913 is includes a biography of James Larkin21 a useful analysis of the British TUC and its by Emmet Larkin, an American academic, failure to support the workers in Dublin. that is very useful on the details of the Dermot Keogh’s article on William Mar- lockout. This has the merit of understand- tin Murphy attempts to give a more bal- ing that the founding of the ITGWU and anced view of Larkins implacable enemy. the events leading up to the lockout were Keogh’s The Rise of the Irish Working the beginning of a revolutionary working Class, which followed in 1982, gives sub- class movement in Ireland. This cannot be stantial space to the lockout in a well re- said for Arthur Mitchell’s Labour in Irish searched series of chapters. However, this Politics22 which emphasises the role of par- is marred by his assertion that in 1913 liamentary politics over that of workers’ ‘trade union militancy should not be con- self activity. fused with social revolutionary zeal’ and his assertion that: 1970-2000 no significant section of the fledgling ITGWU, and this in- E. P. Thompson, in The Making of the En- cludes the ‘second string’ lead- glish Working Class (1963), set out ‘to res- ership with the exception of cue the... artisan... from the condescen- Connolly and Larkin, were ei- sion of posterity’. What came to be known ther politicised revolutionary as ‘history from below’ was one of the guid- socialists, or syndicalists.23 ing principles that inspired the founding of the Irish Labour History Society and There has always been a reformist cur- the publication of their journal Saothar in rent within the ranks of the contributors to 1973. Saothar that have rejected the revolution- Over the last thirty-seven issues ary implications of the events surrounding Saothar has provided an outlet for a new the lockout. Indeed, one of the founding generation of labour historians, imbued editors of Saothar, Emmet OConnor, in with the spirit of history from below. Doc- his book James Larkin24 instigated a ‘full ument studies, a series of Labour lives, scale assault on Larkin’s reputation... de- sources, reviews, labour history bibliogra- scribing him baldly as possessing an inse- phies, and essays have opened up labour cure and egotistical personality’.25 In ad- history to both academics, and more im- dition O’Connor has published A Labour portantly, to working class historians. History of Ireland 26 and Syndicalism in Saothar No.4 in 1997 devoted an issue Ireland 1917-1923 27, which are well re- to Jim Larkin on the fiftieth anniversary searched. In the opening chapter of Syn- 21 Emmet Larkin, , (Routledge & Keegan Paul, 1965). 22 Arthur Mitchell, Labour in Irish History, (Irish University Press, 1974). 23 Dermot Keogh, The Rise of the Irish Working Class, (Appletree Press, Belfast, 1982), p. 4. 24Emmet O’Connor, James Larkin, (Cork University Press, Cork, 2002). 25 Fintan Lane acknowledges the controversial nature of O’Connors book in the editorial of Saothar No. 28. Kieran Allen’s review in the issue contests O’Connor’s analysis. 26 Emmet O’Connor, A Labour History of Ireland, (Gill & Macmillan, Dublin, 1992). 27Emmet O’Connor, Syndicalism in Ireland, (Cork University Press, Cork, 1988).

10 dicalism in Ireland, O’Connor spells out 2000-2013 the influence of syndicalism on the Irish labour movement leading up to the lock- The dominant narratives of the lockout out. But too often O’Connor concentrates and of the life and politics of Larkin and on the clash of the leading personalities, Connolly in the last decade or so have been rather than the different politics and per- written by Donal Nevin and Padraig Yeats. spectives of those involved. Donal Nevin is the former General Sec- Another useful publication from the retary of the ICTU, who since his retire- political tradition of this journal is Kieran ment has been prolific in the production of Allen’s The Politics of James Connolly. a series of books that record the memoirs The section on the lockout is not extensive and assessments of historians and contem- but the strength of this book is that the poraries of Larkin and Connolly. Nevin’s 31 lockout is posed in political terms rather Trade Union Century , published in 1994 than economic or trade union terms: on the hundredth anniversary of the found- ing of the ICTU introduced a new style of labour history - one that was less ana- The lockout passed a decisive lytical, and less political. It is more com- test for all sections of society. memorative, but never the less very useful The rhetoric, prejudices and in making available a series of essays, ar- pretensions of all groups were ticles and documents that trace the devel- measured on the simple test: opment of the Irish trade union movement. which side were they on.28 This was followed by James Larkin: Lion of the Fold 32, a series of essays, lectures, documents, and assessments celebrating It is to Saothars credit that they the achievements of Jim Larkin. Also in- have always provided space for alternative cluded are the Thomas Davis lectures on views. John Newsinger, who also writes the lockout, which were presented on RTE in the tradition of this journal, has writ- in 1997. This publication was never in- ten a number of articles on the lockout tended to be a critical look at Larkin’s life. and on the politics of Larkin, that explore It is more of a compendium that brings to- the political lessons of the period.29 Hope- gether many voices, past and present, to fully, the 2013 issue of Saothar will explore give an overview of Larkin’s contribution the lockout as more than just an anniver- to Irish working class history. sary to be commemorated or explored, but Of far greater substance is Nevin’s bi- will also provide space for political analy- ography of James Connolly.33 Nevin is not sis and the relevance of the socialist pol- an ideologue, and in this expansive life of itics of Larkin and Connolly to the crisis Connolly he lays out the background and today. Worth a mention is the booklet is- history of the lockout from Connolly’s per- sued in 1982 by the Department of Educa- spective. Nevin’s book is useful in the way tion 1913: A Divided City 30, which should that he charts the division between eco- be reissued for the anniversary. nomics and politics - the three-legged stool 28Kieran Allen, The Politics of James Connolly, (Pluto Press, London, 1990), p. 117. 29See Saothar No 28, p. 125, No. 18, p. 101. 30 Curriculum Development Unit, 1912: Divided City, (O’Brien Press, Dublin, 1982). 31 Donal Nevin, Trade Union Century, (Mercier Press, Cork, 1994). 32Donal Nevin, James Larkin: the Loin in the Fold, (Gill & Macmillan, 1978). 33Donal Nevin, James Connolly: A Full Life, (Gill & Macmillan, Dublin, 2005).

11 that the syndicalism politics of Connolly to present an almost day by day account and Larkin rested upon the trade unions of the lockout. In telling this great story to fight for economic gains, the Labour Yeates provides a social and political sur- Party to contest elections, and a socialist vey of Dublin on the eve of the Great War party to propagandise for a socialist soci- and the 1916 . Yeats is at his ety. best in describing the sheer misery visited Nevin edited the two volumes of Con- upon the poor of Dublin and the heroic nolly’s Collected Works, and the Collected struggle that went down to a terrible de- Letters of Connolly. Both of these publi- feat. cations contain original material that sub- Yeates was in the past the industrial stantially adds to our understanding of the correspondent of the Irish Times and a for- lockout. They have the added benefit of mer member of the Workers’ Party and showcasing Connolly’s ability as a writer. this is reflected in the political analysis Almost everything that Connolly wrote is that runs through the book. Yeates sug- a master class in how to communicate with gests that the lockout was ‘an unnecessary a working class audience. Connolly’s writ- one’37 even if it was inevitable given the ings are totally accessible even when he is personalities of Larkin and Murphy. He advancing complex arguments. He has a suggests that the British trade union lead- prose style that all socialists should strive ers were unfairly criticised for their han- for. These volumes also show how much dling of the dispute by Larkin and Con- we have underestimated Connolly as a the- nolly in order to deflect criticism from orist. their own shortcomings. His thesis is that The biography of Larkins nemesis, Larkin was ‘deluding himself in thinking William OBrien34, has much to say about that the sympathetic strike could turn the lockout and the bureaucratisation of Dublin into the birthplace of a syndical- the ITGWU in the period following Con- ist revolution’.38 According to Yeates all nolly’s execution. The group of labour the evidence, which he backs up by Board historians that found an outlet in the of Trade statistics, points to the fact that pages of Saothar included women such as sectional strikes were more successful than Mary Jones, Mary Cullen, Marie Mulhol- mass sympathetic strikes. On the other land, Rosemary Cullen Owens, and Maria hand, he has no time for bureaucrats such Luddy, who went on to make important as William OBrien, who took over the IT- contributions on the role of women in the GWU after the death of Connolly and the lockout and in working class history.35 departure of Larkin to America. Padraig Yeates’s Lockout: Dublin Despite these political criticisms this is 1913 36 is a monumental work that will a wonderful book. Yeates can’t help but surely stand as the definitive history of the admire the heroic struggle of the Dublin lockout for years to come. Yeates leaves working class and the sheer force of per- no stone unturned or archive unconsulted sonality of Larkin and Connolly during the 34Thomas J. Morrissey SJ., William OBrien, (Four Courts, Dublin, 2007). 35See Marie Mulholland, , (Woodfield Press, Dublin, 2002). Rosemary Cullen Owens, Louie Bennett,(Cork University Press, Cork, 2001). Mary Cullen and Maria Luddy, Eds., Female Ac- tivists, (Woodfield Press, Dublin, 2001). Mary Jones, Those Obstreperous Lassies, (Gill & Macmillan, Dublin, 1988). 36Padraig Yeates, Lockout: Dublin 1913, (Gill & Macmillan, Dublin, 2002). 37 Yeates, p. 581. 38 Yeates, p. 586.

12 lockout. He also astutely observes the way ‘Great Unrest’ is dealt with in great de- that in the years following the lockout it tail in The Making of The Transport and suited the leadership of a range of politi- General Workers Union (the British based cal tendencies - from Fianna F´ailon the union now know as Unite).43 This book right to the union bureaucracy and the also provides an interesting insight into the Labour Party on the left - to leave the position of the British unions on the lock- ‘ideological lines blurred’.39 He also un- out. derstands that the message of 1913: ‘an The Great Unrest threw up a mass injury to one is the concern of all’ was movement in both Britain and Ireland, but burnt into the soul of the Irish working the syndicalist ambiguity about politics class, and that the ‘memory of 1913 is rou- and the emphasis on industrial struggle tinely invoked whenever there is a dispute meant it was unable to fuse together the over union recognition, or indeed any other industrial struggle with the fight against form of social injustice’40, a tradition that war, the fight for women’s suffrage, and needs to be sustained and rebuilt. the fight for Irish freedom, into a coherent block that could challenge the social and Summary political nature of the British state. In Ire- land, the failure of Larkin and Connolly to The Dublin lockout in 1913 was the high unite the economic, socialist, and national point of The ‘Great Unrest’.41 Leon Trot- struggle left a space for the growth of na- sky was not alone in suggesting that ‘dur- tionalism. After the 1916 Easter Rising the ing those days a dim spectre of revolution economic and social question was shunted hung over Britain’42, and he could have into the background. Had they built a net- added, in Ireland as well. The outcome work of activists out of the great upheavals of the ‘Great Unrest’ in both Britain and of 1910-1914, the political outcome of the Ireland would ultimately decide who con- War of Independence might have been very trolled the trade unions -the rank and file different. members or the bureaucracy. Despite the Perhaps this claims both too much, and militancy of the rank and file, the bureau- too little, for Connolly and Larkin. It cracy managed to impose their control over claims too much in the sense that no one the movement and this shift in the balance before the of 1917 had of power in the trade unions was decisive put forward the model of a revolutionary during the events that led to the establish- party that could steer a course between the ment of the conservative twin dangers of economic struggle and of state in 1922. liquation into the nationalist or reformist The strikes of 1910-1914 led to a growth movement. It claims too little in that it ob- in the unionisation of the general worker scures the explosion of a series of economic and a number of victories in Britain and and social struggles that was leading the Ireland for better pay and conditions. The workers of Ireland towards the need for a 39 Yeates, p. 581. 40 Yeates, p. 587. 41See Mike Hayes, ‘The British working Class in Revolt’, International Socialism, No. 22, Winter 1984, (International Socialism, London, 1884). 42L. Trotsky, ‘Where is Britain Going?’, Collected Writings and Speeches on Britain, (New Park, London, 1974), p. 8. 43Ken Coates & Tony Topham, The Making of The Transport and General Workers’ Union, 2 Vols., (Blackwell, London, 1991).

13 party that offered an alternative outcome which will have to be reckoned to the politically bankrupt Free State in with in the first Irish national 1922. Very perceptively the Russian revo- parliament.44 lutionary V. I. Lenin, writing in Pravda in September 1913 about the possibilities in- Despite the attempt by Connolly to herent in the class struggle in Dublin that purchase a place for Labour by partici- had ‘become accentuated to the point of pating in the 1916 rising, the heroic at- class war’, observed that: tempts to build both the Communist Party of Ireland by and his com- The Irish nationalists are al- rades, and by Larkin and the Irish Work- ready expressing the fear that ers’ League in the early nineteen twen- Larkin will organise an inde- ties, militant socialist politics remained pendent Irish workers’ party, marginal in Ireland.

44 V. I. Lenin, ‘Class War in Dublin’, Collected Works, (Progress Publishers, , 1968), Vol. 19, p. 332.

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