View source for Dublin lock-out

{{Short description|Major industrial dispute which took place in Dublin, Ireland}}
{{other uses of|Lockout}}
{{more footnotes needed|date=August 2013}}
{{EngvarB|date=October 2013}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=May 2021}}
{{Infobox civil conflict
| title        = The Dublin lock-out
| side3        =
| partof       =
| image        = [[File:1913lockout.jpg|300px]]
| caption      = [[Dublin Metropolitan Police]] break up a union rally
| date         = 26 August 1913 – 18 January 1914
| place        = [[Dublin]], [[Ireland]]
| coordinates  =
| causes       = {{blist|Poor working conditions|Lack of workers' rights|Inability to unionise}}
| goals        = {{blist|Improved working conditions|Granting of right to unionise}}
| methods      = Strikes, rallies, walkouts
| status       =
| result       = {{blist|Strikers go back to work|Many workers sign pledges not to join ITGWU|ITGWU badly damaged|Principle of unionisation accepted|Formation of the [[Irish Citizen Army]]}}
| side1        = '''Workers organizations'''
{{blist|[[Irish Transport and General Workers' Union|ITGWU]]|[[United Builders' Labourers' Union|UBLU]]|[[Irish Citizen Army]]}}
'''Supported by'''
{{blist|[[Trades Union Congress|TUC]]}}
| side2        = '''Employers & companies'''
{{blist|[[Dublin United Transport Company|DUTC]]|[[Dublin Building Trades Employers' Association|DBTEA]]}}
'''Supported by'''
{{blist|[[Dublin Corporation]]|[[Dublin Metropolitan Police]]|[[Catholic Church in Ireland|Roman Catholic Church]]}}
| leadfigures1 = [[James Larkin]]<br>[[James Connolly]]<br>[[Jack White (trade unionist)|Jack White]]
| leadfigures2 = [[William Martin Murphy]]
| leadfigures3 =
| howmany1     = 20,000 workers
| howmany2     = 300 employers
| howmany3     =
| casualties1  =
| casualties2  = 200 policemen injured
| casualties3  = 2 dead, several hundred injured
| injuries     =
| fatalities   =
| arrests      =
| detentions   =
| charged      =
| fined        =
| casualties_label =
| notes            =
}}
The '''Dublin lock-out''' was a major [[industrial dispute]] between approximately 20,000 workers and 300 employers that took place in [[Dublin]], Ireland. The dispute, lasting from 26 August 1913 to 18 January 1914, is often viewed as the most severe and significant industrial dispute in [[Irish history]]. Central to the dispute was the workers' [[labour rights|right to unionise]].

==Background==
===Poverty and housing===
{{see also|Tenement#Dublin|History of Dublin#Early 20th century}}
Many of Dublin's workers lived in terrible conditions in [[tenement]]s. For example, over 830 people lived in just 15 houses in [[Henrietta Street, Dublin|Henrietta Street]]'s Georgian tenements. At 10 Henrietta Street, the [[Religious Sisters of Charity|Irish Sisters of Charity]] ran a [[Magdalene laundries in Ireland|Magdalene laundry that was inhabited by]] more than 50 single women.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/exhibition/dublin/poverty_health.html |title=Exhibition - Poverty and Health |publisher=[[National Archives of Ireland]] |access-date=9 July 2015}}</ref> An estimated four million pledges were taken in pawnbrokers every year. The [[infant mortality rate]] among the poor was 142 per 1,000 births, extraordinarily high for a European city. The situation was made considerably worse by the high rate of disease in the slums, which was worsened by the lack of health care and cramped living conditions. The most prevalent disease in the Dublin slums at the time was [[tuberculosis]] (TB), which spread through tenements very quickly and caused many deaths among the poor. A report, published in 1912, found that TB-related deaths in Ireland were 50% higher than in [[England]] or [[Scotland]]. The vast majority of TB-related deaths in Ireland occurred among the poorer classes. The report updated a 1903 study by Dr [[John Lumsden]].

Poverty was perpetuated in Dublin by the lack of work for unskilled workers, who did not have any form of representation before trade unions were founded. The unskilled workers often had to compete with one another for work every day, with the job generally going to whoever agreed to work for the lowest wages.

===James Larkin and formation of ITGWU===
[[James Larkin]], the main protagonist on the side of the workers in the dispute, was a [[stevedore|docker]] in [[Liverpool]] and a union organiser. In 1907, he was sent to [[Belfast]] as a local organiser of the British-based [[National Union of Dock Labourers]] (NUDL). In Belfast, Larkin organised a [[Belfast Dock Strike, 1907|strike of dock and transport workers]]. It was also in Belfast that Larkin began to use the tactic of the [[sympathetic strike]] in which workers who were not directly involved in an industrial dispute with employers would go on strike in support of other workers, who were striking. The Belfast strike was moderately successful and boosted Larkin's standing among Irish workers. However, his tactics were highly controversial and so Larkin was transferred to Dublin.

Unskilled workers in Dublin were very much at the mercy of their employers. Employers who suspected workers of trying to organise themselves could [[blacklisting|blacklist]] them to destroy them any chance of future employment. Larkin set about organising the unskilled workers of Dublin, which was a cause of concern for the NUDL, which was reluctant to engage in a full-scale industrial dispute with the powerful Dublin employers. It suspended Larkin from the NUDL in 1908. Larkin then left the NUDL and set up an Irish union, the [[Irish Transport and General Workers' Union]] (ITGWU).

The ITGWU was the first Irish trade union to cater for both skilled and unskilled workers. In its first few months, it quickly gained popularity and soon spread to other Irish cities. The ITGWU was used as a vehicle for Larkin's [[syndicalist]] views. He believed in bringing about a [[socialist revolution]] by the establishment of trade unions and calling [[general strike]]s.

The ITGWU initially lost several strikes between 1908 and 1910 but after 1913 won strikes involving carters and railway workers like the [[1913 Sligo Dock strike|1913 Sligo dock strike]]. Between 1911 and 1913, membership of the ITGWU rose from 4,000 to 10,000, to the alarm of employers.

Larkin had learned from the methods of the 1910 [[Tonypandy riots]] and the [[1911 Liverpool general transport strike]].

===Larkin, Connolly and Irish Labour Party===
Another important figure in the rise of an organised workers' movement in Ireland at the time was [[James Connolly]], an [[Edinburgh]]-born [[Marxist]] of Irish parentage. A talented orator and a fine writer, he became known for his speeches on the streets of Dublin in support of socialism and Irish nationalism. In 1896, Connolly established the [[Irish Socialist Republican Party]] and the newspaper ''The Workers' Republic''. In 1911, Connolly was appointed the ITGWU's Belfast organiser. In 1912, Connolly and Larkin formed the [[Labour Party (Ireland)|Irish Labour Party]] to represent workers in the imminent [[Home Rule Act 1914|Home Rule Bill]] debate in the [[British Parliament]]. Home rule, although passed in the House of Commons, was postponed by the start of the [[First World War]]. The plan was then suspended for one year, then indefinitely, after the rise of [[Irish republicanism|militant nationalism]] after the [[1916 Rising]].

===William Martin Murphy and employers===
[[File:Vulture of dartry hall.jpg|thumb|Cartoon of [[William Martin Murphy]] preying over [[James Larkin]]. ]] Among the employers in Ireland opposed to trade unions such as Larkin's ITGWU was [[William Martin Murphy]], Ireland's most prominent capitalist, born in [[Castletownbere]], [[County Cork]]. In 1913, Murphy was chairman of the [[Dublin United Tramway Company]] and owned Clery's department store and the [[Imperial Hotel, Dublin|Imperial Hotel]]. He controlled the ''[[Irish Independent]]'', ''[[Evening Herald]]'' and ''[[The Irish Catholic]]'' newspapers and was a major shareholder in the [[B&I Line]]. Murphy was also a prominent [[Irish nationalist]] and a former [[Irish Parliamentary Party|Home Rule]] MP in Parliament.

Even today, Murphy's defenders insist that he was a charitable man and a good employer and that his workers received fair wages. However, conditions in his many enterprises were often poor or worse, with employees given only one day off in 10 and being forced to labour up to 17 hours a day. Dublin tramway workers were paid substantially less than their counterparts in Belfast and Liverpool and were subjected to a regime of punitive fines, probationary periods extending for as long as six years and a culture of company surveillance involving the widespread use of informers.<ref>''Rebel City- Larkin, Connolly and the Dublin Labour Movement'', by John Newsinger, Merlin Press Ltd 2004</ref>

Murphy was not opposed in principle to trade unions, particularly craft unions, but he was vehemently opposed to the ITGWU and saw its leader, Larkin, as a dangerous revolutionary.<ref>Morrissey, Thomas, ''William Martin Murphy'', 1997</ref> In July 1913, Murphy presided over a meeting of 300 employers during which a collective response to the rise of trade unionism was agreed. Murphy and the employers were determined not to allow the ITGWU to unionise the Dublin workforce. On 15 August, Murphy dismissed 40 workers whom he suspected of ITGWU membership, followed by another 300 over the next week.

==Middle==
[[File:Big-Jim-Larkin.jpg|thumb|left|200px|Statue of James Larkin on O'Connell Street ([[Oisín Kelly]] 1977)]]

===Escalation===
[[File:Such Meeting or Assemblage is seditious... (9621476054).jpg|thumb|right|Proclamation banning a meeting in Sackville Street on 31 August 1913]]
The resulting industrial dispute was the most severe in the [[history of Ireland]]. Employers in Dublin locked out their workers and employed [[blackleg labour]] from Britain and elsewhere in Ireland. Dublin's workers, despite being some of the poorest in the [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland|United Kingdom]] at the time, applied for help and were sent £150,000 by the British [[Trades Union Congress]] (TUC) and other sources in Ireland, doled out dutifully by the ITGWU.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://multitext.ucc.ie/d/James_Larkin|title=Multitext - James Larkin|access-date=9 July 2015|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150711203151/http://multitext.ucc.ie/d/James_Larkin|archive-date=11 July 2015}}</ref><ref>The TUC assistance would be worth over €16m in 2014 values.</ref>

The "Kiddies' Scheme" for the starving children of Irish strikers to be temporarily looked after by British trade unionists was blocked by the [[Roman Catholic Church]] and especially the [[Ancient Order of Hibernians]], which claimed that Catholic children would be subject to [[Protestant]] or [[atheist]] influences when in Britain. The Church supported the employers during the dispute and condemned Larkin as a socialist [[revolutionary]].<ref>Kostick, C., (1996), "Revolution in Ireland: Popular Militancy 1917 to 1923", p. 18</ref>

Notably, [[Guinness]], the largest employer and biggest exporter in Dublin, refused to lock out its workforce. It refused to join Murphy's group but sent £500 to the employers' fund. It had a policy against sympathetic strikes and expected its workers, whose conditions were far better than the norm in Ireland, not to strike in sympathy; six who had done so were dismissed. It had 400 of its staff who were already ITGWU members and so it had a working relationship with the union. Larkin appealed to have the six reinstated but without success.<ref>Guinness 1886–1939, SR Dennison & Oliver McDonagh (Cork Univ. Press 1998). {{ISBN|1-85918-175-9}} See: Chapter 8, "The employees; work and welfare 1886–1914", and chapter 9, "Industrial Relations 1886–1914".</ref>

The [[Industrial Workers of the World]] (IWW) leader, [[Bill Haywood]], was in [[Paris]] when he heard of the lockout. He collected 1000 francs to aid the strikers and travelled to Dublin where he addressed a crowd in front of City Hall.<ref>{{cite book |title=Transnational Perspectives on Modern Irish History |date=2014 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |page=20}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |editor1-last=Kok |editor1-first=Jan |title=Rebellious Families Household Strategies and Collective Action in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries |date=2002 |publisher=Berghahn Books |page=122}}</ref>

Strikers used mass pickets and intimidation against strike-breakers, who were also violent towards strikers. The [[Dublin Metropolitan Police]] carried out a [[baton charge]] at worker's rallies. On 31 August 1913, the DMP attacked a meeting on Sackville Street (now known as [[O'Connell Street]]) that had been publicly banned. It caused the deaths of two workers: James Nolan and John Byrne. Over 300 more were injured.

The baton charge was a response to the appearance of James Larkin, who had been banned from holding a meeting, to speak for the workers. He had been smuggled into William Martin Murphy's Imperial Hotel by [[Nellie Gifford]], the sister-in-law of [[Thomas MacDonagh]], and spoke from a balcony. The event is remembered as Bloody Sunday, a term used for three subsequent days in 20th-century Ireland and for the murderous charge of police in the Liverpool general strike. Another worker, [[Alice Brady (labour activist)|Alice Brady]], was later shot dead by a strike-breaker as she brought home a food parcel from the union office.  Michael Byrne, an ITGWU official from [[Dún Laoghaire|Kingstown]], died after he had been tortured in a police cell.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.anarkismo.net/article/470|title=The Dublin Lock-out of 1913|access-date=9 July 2015}}</ref>

Connolly, Larkin and ex-[[British Army]] [[Captain (British Army and Royal Marines)|Captain]] [[Jack White (labour unionist)|Jack White]] formed a worker's militia, the [[Irish Citizen Army]], to protect workers' demonstrations.

For seven months, the lock-out affected tens of thousands of Dublin families. Murphy's three main newspapers, the ''[[Irish Independent]]'', the ''[[Sunday Independent (Ireland)|Sunday Independent]]'' and the ''[[Evening Herald]]'', portrayed Larkin as the villain. Influential figures such as [[Patrick Pearse]], [[Constance Markievicz|Countess Markievicz]] and [[William Butler Yeats]] supported the workers in the media.

==End==
[[File:1913 Bileog.jpg|right|200px|thumb]]
The lock-out eventually concluded in early 1914, when the TUC in Britain rejected Larkin and Connolly's request for a sympathetic strike. Most workers, many of whom were on the brink of starvation, went back to work and signed pledges not to join the ITGWU. It was badly damaged by its defeat in the Lockout and further hit by the departure of Larkin to the United States in 1914 and the execution of Connolly, one of the leaders of the [[Easter Rising]] in 1916.

The union was rebuilt by [[William O'Brien (trade unionist)|William O'Brien]] and [[Thomas Johnson (Irish politician)|Thomas Johnson]]. By 1919, its membership had surpassed that of 1913.

Many of the blacklisted workers joined the [[British Army]] since they had no other source of pay to support their families, and they found themselves in the trenches of [[World War I]] within the year.

Although the actions of the ITGWU and the smaller UBLU had been unsuccessful in achieving substantially better pay and conditions for workers, they marked a watershed in Irish labour history. The principle of union action and workers' solidarity had been firmly established. No future employer would ever try to "break" a union as Murphy had attempted to with the ITGWU. The lock-out had damaged commercial businesses in Dublin, with many forced to declare bankruptcy.

==W. B. Yeats' "September 1913"==
[[September 1913 (poem)|''September 1913'']], one of the most famous of [[W. B. Yeats]]' poems, was published in ''[[The Irish Times]]'' during the lock-out. Although the occasion of the poem was the decision of Dublin Corporation not to build a gallery to house the [[Hugh Lane]] collection of paintings (Murphy was one of the most vocal opponents of the plan), it has sometimes been viewed by scholars as a commentary on the lock-out.<ref>Marjorie Howes, "[https://books.google.com/books?id=Qbzycw7rjbMC&pg=PA67 Postcolonial Yeats: Culture, Enlightenment, and the Public Sphere]", ''Field Day Review'', Volume 2 (2008), p. 67 and footnote</ref> In the poem, Yeats wrote mockingly of commerciants who "fumble in a greasy till, and add the halfpence to the pence" and asked:

<poem>
Was it for this [[Flight of the Wild Geese|the wild geese]] spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this [[Lord Edward FitzGerald|Edward Fitzgerald]] died,
And [[Robert Emmet]] and [[Wolfe Tone]],
All that delirium of the brave?
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.</poem>

== See also ==
{{Portal|Organized labour}}
* [[Great Unrest]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}<!--added above External links/Sources by script-assisted edit-->

=== Bibliography ===
* Conor McNamara, Padraig Yeates, 'Dublin Lockout 1913, New Perspectives on Class War and its Legacy' (Irish Academic Press, 2017).
* {{Cite book| last1 = Brockie | first1 = Gerard
  | last2 = Walsh   | first2 = Raymond
  | title = Modern Ireland
  | publisher = [[Gill & Macmillan]]
  | year = 2004
  | isbn = 0-7171-3516-0 }}
*  [https://www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/the-dublin-1913-lockout/ Padraig Yeates, ''The Dublin 1913 Lockout'', History Ireland, 2001.]
* Dublin Disturbances Commission (HMSO 1914)
** [https://archive.org/details/op1256383-1001 ''Report''] [Cd. 7269] [[Command paper]]s, 1914: Vol. XVIII p.&nbsp;513
** [https://archive.org/details/op1256384-1001 ''Minutes of Evidence and Appendices''] [Cd. 7272] Command papers, 1914: Vol. XVIII p.&nbsp;533

==External links==
{{Wikisource|Responsibilities/September_1913#September_1913|September 1913}}
* [http://www.theirishstory.com/tag/1913-lockout/#.UitLstKshNd The Irish Story archive on the Lockout].Retrieved 2013-07-09
* {{cite web
 |title       = History Podcast with Lockout:1913 author Pádraig Yeates
 |url         = http://nearfm.ie/podcast/the-history-show-episode-eight/
 |access-date  = 4 April 2013
 |url-status     = dead
 |archive-url  = https://archive.today/20130625095258/http://nearfm.ie/podcast/the-history-show-episode-eight/
 |archive-date = 25 June 2013
}}
* {{cite web
  | title = Brief background to dispute
  | url=http://www.spartacus-educational.com/ITdublin.htm
  | access-date = 24 June 2007 }}
* {{cite web
  | title = Biography of James Connolly
  | url=http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/james_connolly.htm
  | access-date = 24 June 2007 }}
* [http://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1913/11/children.htm] Church opposition to sending children to England
* {{cite web
  | title = Dublin in 1913
  | url=http://www.theirishstory.com/2010/06/02/dublin-in-1913/
  | access-date = 12 July 2010}}
* {{cite web
  | title = Class War in Dublin
  | url=http://www.theirishstory.com/2010/06/07/class-war-in-dublin-the-lockout-of-1913/
  | access-date = 12 July 2010}}
* {{cite web
 |title       = Siptu article on the Lockout
 |url         = http://www.siptu.ie/AboutSIPTU/History/The1913Lock-Out/
 |access-date  = 12 July 2010
 |url-status     = dead
 |archive-url  = https://web.archive.org/web/20100415010143/http://www.siptu.ie/AboutSIPTU/History/The1913Lock-Out/
 |archive-date = 15 April 2010
}}

{{History of Dublin}}
{{Authority control}}

{{Ireland topics}}

[[Category:History of Ireland (1801–1923)]]
[[Category:1913 labor disputes and strikes]]
[[Category:1914 labor disputes and strikes]]
[[Category:History of County Dublin]]
[[Category:Labour disputes in Ireland]]
[[Category:Labour disputes in the United Kingdom]]
[[Category:1913 in Ireland]]
[[Category:1914 in Ireland]]