A resurgent union shaped by world events

The 1913 Lockout is the Cinderella of the Decade of Centenaries, as is appropriate for a rising of the marginalised and oppressed. Being a member of a trade union has always been a pathway to better living standards and upward social mobility in good times; as well as a defence of existing benefits when times are bad.

One of the great achievements of Jim Larkin was to break down the traditional barriers that barred unskilled workers from trade union membership. The other great achievement of Larkin and other Lockout leaders was ensuring the survival of the ITGWU from the counterattack led by William Martin Murphy in 1913.

Less well acknowledged was the role of the British war economy in helping, inadvertently, to ensure the union’s resurgence. One of the social consequences of a low wage economy was that large numbers of unskilled workers in the city had served in the British army and were now reservists.

Within days of the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914 thousands of men, including nearly 3,000 members of the ITGWU, were back in uniform and the labour market pendulum had begun to swing against the employers. Men blacklisted as union militants in the lockout were taken back, albeit often on a casual basis, although this did not apply to all sectors. For instance, many women locked out of Jacob’s were never taken back. Confectionery was not essential to the war effort.

Initially the decline in ITGWU membership continued. It had survived the lockout remarkably well, only falling from 30,000 at its peak in August 1913 to 26,000 in December. But the fall continued in 1914, possibly accelerated by Larkin’s departure to America in October.

By the end of the year union membership was 15,000, falling to 10,000 in 1915 and a mere 5,000 in 1916. There seems little doubt that Larkin’s successor, James Connolly, was increasingly preoccupied with the possibility of an armed uprising rather than rebuilding the union.

He was deeply disappointed by the poor performance of the “Larkinite” candidates in the Dublin municipal elections of January 1914. They polled an impressive 12,026 votes to 16,627 for the dominant nationalists, but only secured one seat. This was partly due to the restricted franchise, but also to a flawed electoral strategy. Unrealistic expectations deepened the disillusionment with electoral politics all the more.

Paradoxically the massive TUC support for Dublin during the Lockout spurred separatist tendencies as Irish trade union militants such as Connolly resented British efforts to direct their struggle.

Majority support for the war effort among British socialists led Connolly to resign from the Independent Labour Party. He told his political confidant, Bill O’Brien, “I am ready for any call”.

A mere four days after war was declared he wrote in glowing terms of "Our duty in the crisis" in the Irish Worker: "Ireland may yet set the torch to a European conflagration that will not burn out until the last throne and the last capitalist bond and debenture will be shrivelled on the funeral pyre of the last war lord."

Four weeks later at a public meeting organised by Eamonn Ceannt in the Gaelic League offices, Connolly said it was time to forge links with Germany and organise an insurrection. Under Connolly’s stewardship, the Irish Neutrality League that emerged from that meeting made no attempt to hide which side it was neutral on.

This growing involvement with radical nationalists such as Ceannt, Tom Clarke and Thomas Ashe had serious implications for the union. Connolly’s determination to succeed Larkin as acting general secretary was in part driven by his fear of the impact his rival PT Daly’s appointment would have on relations with them.

Although Daly outranked Connolly in length of service with the union, his position as secretary of the ITUC and de facto deputy leader of the Labour group on Dublin City Council, he had to settle for control of the union’s insurance section. Ironically it was mismanagement of IRB funds a decade earlier that led to Daly’s expulsion from the IRB’s Supreme Council.

Daly’s marginalisation within the ITGWU may also have affected the remarkable decision of the Dublin trades council not to contest the Harbour division byelection in September 1915. In June, another veteran of the lockout, Tom Farren, polled a creditable 1,816 votes to the 2,445 secured by the winner of the College Green byelection, John Dillon Nugent, national secretary of the Ancient Order of Hibernians.

The Harbour division was the most working class constituency in Dublin and the nationalists were badly split, with no less than three candidates going forward. Yet Connolly refused to contest it and Daly was not nominated. It went by default to a local publican called Alfie Byrne, who went on to become a pillar of the Free State and Dublin’s longest serving lord mayor in the 20th century.

While Labour was the second largest political bloc on the Corporation, larger than Sinn Féin or the Unionists, it pursued a “gasworks socialism” programme of incremental reform and promoting direct labour rather than offering a radical, let alone revolutionary programme. Thus it offered no serious challenge to the nationalists, despite the growing unpopularity of the first World War.

The Bachelor’s Walk massacre on July 28th, 1914, which saw three civilians killed outright and over eighty seriously injured by volleys from the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, after they were frustrated in their attempt to disarm Irish Volunteers, cast a pall over the outbreak of hostilities.

And, unlike rural Ireland, Dublin enjoyed little prosperity initially from the war’s impact. Rather the higher prices for farm produce meant spiralling food prices in Dublin shops. These were aggravated by fuel shortages and growing casualty lists.

Eventually British government policies to secure industrial peace by facilitating union recognition in war industries across the United Kingdom would play an important part in the revival of the ITGWU and other unions. But this development was in its infancy before the Easter Rising.

Ironically James Connolly’s elevation to martyrdom in 1916 ensured him a more effective role in reviving the fortunes of the ITGWU than he ever played alive.

Padraig Yeates is the author of the authoritative and substantial account, Lockout: Dublin 1913, and secretary of the 1913 Committee (1913committee.ie/blog)