"The orthodox politicians who have become the custodians of the republican principle have moved far from the policy of Connolly; they are neither qualified nor disposed to cut adrift from the environment or convention of graft and profit in which they were conceived and into which they were born as a party."
As pertinent as this comment on the state of the nation may sound, it is taken, in fact, from an editorial published in September 1922 in the Voice of Labour, the official organ of the ITGWU on the subject of the government's handling of a national postal strike.
What postal strike, cry those of you who have studied your history books and recall no reference to such an event? For although the strike dominated the headlines at the time, there has been little or no reference to it in subsequent histories of the period.
Postal strike
The postal strike of 1922, however, is a particularly significant episode in the history of the modern Irish State, as it was the first trades dispute faced by an independent Irish government, and how it dealt with it was to influence the course of labour relations in Ireland up to the present day.
The Government had provoked the strike by imposing a wage cut on all civil servants in March 1922, with the threat of further cuts to come. In response to the objections of the poorly-paid postal workers, whose wages had remained virtually static for 30 years, the Government agreed to set up an independent commission of inquiry into wages and conditions in the postal service.
The commission recommended a halt to the cuts and an immediate increase in wages for staff in the lower grades. The Government ignored these findings and announced a further cut at the beginning of September, leaving the postal workers no option but to take strike action.
When the strike began on September 10th the Government's response was draconian. It refused to recognise the right to strike of State employees and police and military were ordered to take whatever action was necessary to remove peaceful pickets from the streets.
Bulletins issued by the unions claimed that former Black and Tans, prisoners from Mountjoy, schoolchildren and indeed officials who had previously been dismissed and imprisoned for theft of correspondence were all being employed as strikebreakers.
Pickets run down
Armoured cars were used to run down pickets in the streets. One week into the strike a particularly dramatic incident occurred when Ms Olive Flood, a telephonist, was shot at close range by a soldier while she was on picket duty in Merchant's Arch. Fortunately for Ms Flood, a suspender buckle deflected the bullet so that she sustained only a flesh wound. But the shooting of a woman by the military in the course of an official trades dispute provoked public outrage and support for the strikers increased.
Military attacks on strikers continued, however. At the inquiry office in Limerick a Free State Army officer dressed as a woman, in skirt and shawl, attempted to pass the picket there. When addressed by a postal worker the officer, armed with a knuckle-duster, punched the man in the face. This was the signal for an all-out attack on the picket by about 20 soldiers. Fifteen strikers were seriously injured in this attack, five of them women.
The strike ended after three weeks. Along with hardship and hunger, the postal workers had had to contend with constant accusations by the Government of betraying the cause of national independence. They gained little beyond a promise of further investigation into pay and conditions and lost their pension rights.
Unacceptable threat
The strike as a political weapon against a colonial administration had had the full support of the Sinn Fein Party before independence. Now that Sinn Fein was in power, the use of the strike as a means for workers to protect their standard of living was perceived as an unacceptable threat to the stability of the State. It was becoming increasingly obvious to the labour movement in Ireland that a native government based on privilege was as inimical to the interests of workers as a foreign one had ever been.
A leading article on the postal strike from the Voice of Labour summed it up:
"A foreign flag generally, perhaps invariably, denotes slavery, but national independence and a national flag do no inevitably or invariably denote human freedom."; How true.