Tag: Dublin Lockout

The Dublin Lockout began on Tuesday 26^th August 1913, when tram drivers abandoned their vehicles in support of 200 colleagues who had been sacked the previous week for suspected membership of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU). It lasted into February 1914 and was one of the fiercest and longest strikes in Europe in the early twentieth century. August 31^st 1913 became the first of four dates in Irish history to be called ‘Bloody Sunday’ when Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) and Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) constables baton-charged a crowd listening to union leader James Larkin. Learning of this event, the British Trade Union Congress (TUC) pledged support to the strikers and supplied large quantities of fuel, food and money to the workers and their families.

Although principally a dispute between employers, led by William Martin Murphy, and trade union members under the leadership of James Larkin, it was also a protest against the social conditions of the time. Much housing was in such a poor state as to cause ill-health in a large proportion of the population and the tenement buildings at 66-67 Church Street collapsed on 2^nd September, killing seven people and making over 100 homeless.

In early 1914, a report to inquire into the housing conditions of the working classes in Dublin noted ‘There are many tenement houses with seven or eight rooms that house a family in each room, and contain a population of between forty and fifty souls. We have visited one house that we have found to be occupied by 98 persons, another by 74, and a third by 73. Generally the only water supply of the house is furnished by a single water tap which is in the yard.’ While there were several charitable orgnaisations such as the Iveagh Trust, the Dublin and Suburban Workmens’ Dwellings Company, the Housing of the Very Poor Association Limited, and the Artizans’ Dwelling Company, providing cheap housing, their efforts were not sufficient to cope with the scale of the problem. The report recommended greater Dublin Corporation intervention in the housing market.

Besides the multitude of scholarly research it has triggered, the Lockout has often been remembered in poetry, drama and fiction and will be commemorated by many events throughout 2013. Today sees the launch of the National Library of Ireland ‘s Lockout exhibition which will run until March 2014. To mark the centenary, the Manuscripts and Archives Research Library have mounted an exhibition in the Long Room on Dorothy Price and her good work among the poor in Dublin. November will see the Abbey Theatre perform James Plunkett’s ‘The risen people’ which was the forerunner to his novel ‘Strumpet City’ which just happens to be this years ‘Dublin: one city, one book‘ selection. In the coming days we will mount our own Lockout display in the BLU exhibition case – exhibits include ‘A capital in conflict: Dublin city and the 1913 Lockout‘ (Dublin, 2013), a series of essays to commemorate and contextualise the events of 1913. For a list of further events taking place throughout the year, the Lockout portal http://1913committee.ie/blog/ is an excellent resource.