A chara, – Jonathan Kelly (Letters, September 7th) clearly knows his history and correctly states that the first Bloody Sunday of the 20th century was “Labour’s Bloody Sunday” which took place on August 31st, 1913, during the Lockout. Therefore I hope that he will not think me churlish if I point out that the baton charge that afternoon was carried out not by the RIC as he stated but by the equally disliked Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP).
The DMP charged a group of union members waiting for James Larkin to address them in O’Connell Street (then Sackville Street) and inflicted horrific injuries on both workers and curious onlookers alike.
Over 400 were injured and two innocent workers, James Nolan and John Byrne, were beaten to death. British Liberal MP Frederick Handel Booth, who was present, stated that the police “behaved like men possessed, wildly striking with their truncheons at everyone within reach”.
Ernie O’Malley, a future TD, wrote in his memoirs of seeing women being knocked and kicked on the ground and described hearing “the crunch as heavy sticks struck unprotected skulls”.
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Later, Michael Byrne, an Irish Transport and General Workers Union official from Dún Laoghaire, died after being tortured in a police cell. Another worker, Alice Brady, was shot dead by a strike breaker as she brought home a food parcel from the union office. That night drunken groups of DMP rampaged in the north inner city, breaking into workers’ homes and destroying their possessions. It was largely because of these events that James Connolly and Capt Jack White formed the Irish Citizens Army to protect themselves against violence from the police. – Is mise,
KEVIN P McCARTHY,
Killarney,
Co Kerry.