The dispute in the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company was another legacy of 1913. On that occasion Connolly’s predecessor, Jim Larkin, fought a three-month strike to secure 30s for a 60-hour week, or 6d an hour—the ‘dockers’ tanner.’ As in 1913, the City of Dublin company refused to follow the lead of the other shipping lines, which had agreed new rates with the ITGWU in 1915. For his part Connolly was determined to exploit the growing labour shortage caused by the war to regain ground lost in the lock-out. While the other shipping companies dressed up the pay rise as a ‘war bonus’ to mask very real increases in wages, to between 37s and 42s a week, the City of Dublin refused to countenance any increase. Instead it tried to invoke the Munitions of War Act (1915), which outlawed strikes and lock-outs in industries essential to the war effort. The Munitions Tribunal rejected the company’s application, and the strike began on 27 October.
In yet another echo of 1913, the company appealed to Dublin Castle to make a show of force, break up the pickets and have the Admiralty requisition its ships. Connolly responded with a warning that an Admiralty requisition of the ships would be regarded as an act of war. He offered to provide weapons for the pickets from the Citizen Army arsenal. William Martin Murphy backed the company and urged carriers to lock their ITGWU members out, just as they had done in 1913. However, history was not due to repeat itself. The Under-Secretary for Ireland, Sir Matthew Nathan, declined to involve the Admiralty in such a volatile situation. The carriers ignored Murphy’s advice and, when their own employees threatened sympathetic strike action in support of the dockers, bought them off with a pay rise. Nor were Citizen Army members anxious to step up the dispute by lending weapons purchased with hard-earned cash to the strikers.30
The ITGWU strikers were soon joined by the seamen and firemen working on the City of Dublin vessels. Edward Watson, a senior director of the company and a leading figure in the unionist community and Dublin Chamber of Commerce, called on Nathan to use the Defence of the Realm Act (1914) to deport the ringleaders in the dispute. The government had already deported Irish Volunteer officers and Sinn Féin members under the act for making seditious speeches, but Nathan was of the opinion that the employer was to blame for the present crisis. He was also mindful of the politics of the ITGWU and its leader’s dual role as acting general secretary of the ITGWU and commander of the Citizen Army. Ironically, he partly justified his refusal to allow the authorities to intervene on the grounds that the union ‘was not merely a labour organisation.’31 As with Colonel Maurice Moore and his complaint about missing guns for the National Volunteers, Dublin Castle felt the less involvement the better.
It was a view shared by Sir George Askwith, the industrial relations trouble-shooter who had been involved in an unsuccessful attempt to settle the 1913 Lock-out. He now headed the Committee on Production, regulating the shipbuilding and engineering industries, and the company’s stance confirmed him in his poor opinion of Dublin employers. Even other Dublin employers had little time for the City of Dublin’s intransigence and appealed privately to Nathan to suspend the government mail boat contracts in order to bring Watson and his fellow-directors to their senses.32 In contrast, there was strong popular support for the strikers. More than a thousand workers turned out for a meeting called by the trades council in November 1915. The lone voice in opposition came from the renegade Labour councillor John Saturninus Kelly, who used corporation meetings to denounce the ‘pro-Germans’ in Liberty Hall and called for the ITGWU to be declared an illegal organisation.
By 24 February 1916, when the Board of Trade finally offered to intervene, the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company was willing to treat; but now it was Connolly’s turn to overplay his hand. He turned down mediation, on the grounds that all the company had to do was pay the going rates in the port. He was probably concerned that anything less would unravel the agreements with other employers. The City of Dublin management boxed clever by conceding an increase of 5s a week to ships’ crews and approaching the National Transport Workers’ Federation in Britain for recruits. When the Workers’ Republic threatened to publish the names of the ‘Brit-Huns’ who scabbed on fellow trade unionists, Watson demanded protection for the strike-breakers and the suppression of the paper. Nathan supplied extra police protection but continued to avoid a direct confrontation with Connolly and the Citizen Army.
The strike would drag on until 27 June 1916, when Askwith finally intervened on behalf of the Board of Trade and awarded the dockers basic pay of 37s a week and 8d an hour overtime. This brought their earnings more or less into line with other shipping companies. By this time Connolly was dead and many other labour leaders in prison, and credit for the settlement was claimed by the new member of Parliament for the constituency, Alfie Byrne.33
In the meantime almost three thousand building workers began what would be the biggest strike of the year. On 1 April 1,500 carpenters and bricklayers demanded an increase of 2d an hour and plasterers 1d an hour; the Building Trades Employers’ Association offered between ¼d and ½d. More than 1,250 labourers, other craft workers and builders’ suppliers were laid off as a result.34
Like the City of Dublin strike, this dispute threatened to drag on indefinitely, until the fighting in Easter Week destroyed most of the commercial area around Sackville Street and caused extensive damage elsewhere. Reconstruction now became the priority. As the Irish Independent commented, ‘with half the principal street of Dublin in ruins it would be little short of a crime if the building trade were allowed to delay for a single day the work of reconstruction.’35 Captain Fairbairn Downie of the Ministry of Munitions, which was at a critical stage in developing a National Shell Factory in Parkgate Street, was appointed arbitrator. At the end of May and in early June he awarded a series of increases that meant most building workers received pay increases of 1½d an hour, including 1d an hour war bonus. The bonus would cease once the ‘articles of peace’ had been signed. This raised average earnings from £100 14s 6d a year to £115 17s, an increase of slightly less than 15 per cent.36
Dublin Castle’s reluctance to intervene in trade disputes was in marked contrast to events in Britain, where trade union militants in such areas as the Tyne and Clydeside were arrested under the Defence of the Realm Act and threatened with conscription under the Military Service Act (1916), even though they worked in protected war industries. Wholesale arrests and deportations were used to smash shop stewards’ committees, because disruption to industry had serious implications for the war effort. Dublin’s peripheral role proved a blessing as far as trade unions were concerned. Workers were benefiting from the compromise hammered out in Britain under which unions were compensated for greater controls imposed on industry, including a ban on strikes in essential industries, by the introduction of state arbitration bodies to handle claims for better pay and conditions.37 As Theresa Moriarty has pointed out, ‘compulsory arbitration, which trade unions feared as industrial conscription, conversely encouraged trade unionism.’38 The mere threat of a strike would often spur state intervention in disputes, in the form of binding arbitration. Irish trade unions found they had de facto recognition in many industries, and workers flocked to them in a way they never did to the British army.
Of course there were political complications militating against a heavy hand with trade unions in Dublin, especially if they involved raids on Liberty Hall. Just before Christmas 1915 the newly elected nationalist MP for North Tipperary, Lieutenant John Esmonde, told Connolly, on behalf of the Irish Party leadership, that he must call off the docks strike. Connolly told him to ‘go to hell.’39 On 24 March 1916 the police finally raided the building, looking for copies of the Gael, a short-lived separatist weekly whose previous week’s issue had managed to simultaneously infuriate Dublin Castle and ridicule John Redmond. They beat a hasty retreat when Connolly produced a revolver and threatened to shoot them. From then on the hall had a permanent armed Citizen Army guard.40
A few days later Connolly would address his last strik
e meeting with workers of the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company. Easter Week was approaching, and the union leader cum revolutionary socialist, who had always stressed the complementary role of trade union and political work, was now heading down a road to insurrection that diverged sharply from the political practice of a lifetime.
In some respects it is hard to understand Connolly’s pessimism about class politics in the deepening crisis caused by the war. Labour members of Dublin Corporation now formed the second-largest block, after the United Irish League, and stood a real chance of winning parliamentary representation in some constituencies. They worked effectively with Sinn Féin councillors and some of the more radical members of the nationalist block to push a progressive agenda in such areas as housing and education.
One reason for Connolly’s disillusionment with electoral politics may have been the deep antipathy that existed between him and the leading Labour councillor, P. T. Daly. Daly had been much closer to the absentee ITGWU leader Jim Larkin than Connolly had been. In fact he had been Larkin’s preferred choice to deputise for him while in America. Daly was far more gregarious than Connolly, more urbane and a snappier dresser, where Connolly was often dour in manner and appearance. Connolly’s ‘prickly integrity’ and his insistence on mastering opponents in debate on important political and ideological issues militated against the sort of horse-trading that occurred in City Hall. Daly was a fine public speaker, possibly better than Connolly, and an able tactician. However, a chequered political and financial past dogged him. A printer by trade, he had risen fast in the ranks of the trade union movement and in the IRB. His early career demonstrated the strong organic links between craft unionism and Fenianism in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Dublin.
As a member of the IRB he made a fund-raising tour of North America in 1903 but used some £300 of the money raised to help provide for his family. While Daly’s explanation of the loss was accepted, shortly after his return to Dublin he was purged from the IRB leadership by Tom Clarke. Clarke was intent on reviving the IRB’s revolutionary potential and rooting out the drinking-club elements, along with any taint of corruption, financial or political. Daly, who had also served as a Sinn Féin city councillor, defected to Labour, but his past was a malign legacy. Opponents within the Labour movement would revive the rumours from time to time, and Daly’s weakness for drink sometimes played into their hands.41
However, no-one represented the cause of workers more effectively in the council chamber. A major issue was that of wages and war bonuses for corporation employees. By early 1916 the price of many basic foodstuffs and of fuel had increased by 50 per cent, but wages lagged behind and there were widespread complaints that even the increases that had been approved, such as the 2s a week war bonus, were not being paid to many corporation workers. Unskilled and casual employees were worst affected.42 Daly not alone championed the right of all corporation employees to the war bonus but proposed raising the minimum wage for general labourers to 25s for a 50-hour week and that of ‘light labourers’ to 20s.43 He also proposed an incremental scale of 2s for every five years of service, up to a maximum of 35s.
He faced stiff opposition from a combination of nationalist, unionist and independent councillors, mindful of the ratepayers who would have to foot the bill. Alderman Andrew Beattie, a former unionist now operating under the ratepayers’ standard, proposed referring the matter to the Estates and Finance Committee. He was seconded by a UIL stalwart, Sir Joseph Downes, the confectionery entrepreneur known affectionately to Dubliners as ‘Lord Barmbrack’.
The amendment was carried by a slender margin of 25 to 21 in January 1916. Besides the Labour vote, Daly’s supporters included several nationalist councillors, including Laurence O’Neill and the new MP for the overwhelmingly working-class Harbour division, Alfie Byrne. By contrast, Sinn Féin split, with the group’s leader, the grocer and wine merchant William T. Cosgrave, putting the ratepayers’ interests first and voting with the nationalist and unionist majority.44
Daly returned to the attack with a slightly reduced claim on 14 March. While the minimum rate demanded was still 25s a week for unskilled labourers and 20s for men doing ‘light’ work, the incremental scale was halved to an extra 1s a week every five years, to a maximum of 30s. This time attempts to defer a decision, though supported by the Town Clerk on financial grounds, were comfortably defeated, by 31 votes to 12. Eventually only seven members voted against the new pay scale, including unionist members, Beattie, and the Lord Mayor, the tobacco magnate James Gallagher.45
Daly’s political skill was also demonstrated in his simultaneous campaign to include the notorious Newfoundland Street area of the north docks in the city’s housing programme. ‘Newfoundland’ was bounded by Lower Sheriff Street, Guild Street, Lower Mayor Street and Commons Street. Nationalist councillors from more prosperous wards blocked the proposal at first but were worn down by the continuous attacks from Daly, other Labour members and some Sinn Féin councillors. A plea from the parish priest, Father James Brady, in which he described in graphic detail the appalling conditions of the area, helped swing the vote. Eventually enough nationalist councillors supported Daly’s invocation of part I of the Housing of the Working Classes Act (1885) to begin the long process of slum clearance in Newfoundland. Again Alfie Byrne was to the fore among the nationalists realigning with Labour and Sinn Féin.46
By 1916 the effect of the war on municipal politics was making itself felt in other ways. There was an interesting trial of strength at a corporation meeting on 6 March when Alfie Byrne joined with the leader of the Sinn Féin group, William T. Cosgrave, to propose a motion condemning the increasing tax burden on Ireland. Resentment was all the worse because of the negative effect the war was having on Irish trade and industry. The main nationalist grouping around the UIL proposed an amendment, requesting the Irish Party in the House of Commons ‘to resist by every means in their power any proposal for increases in tax.’ There was no difference in substance between the wording of the two motions, yet the amendment supporting the Irish Party was accepted by only 23 votes to 18.47
Eighteen months of enduring the hardships of a war John Redmond had endorsed was fracturing nationalist unity. Barely a week later, on 14 March 1916, the former Unionist councillor Andrew Beattie was proposing a motion protesting at the failure of the government to give Ireland ‘orders for Munitions of War in fair and reasonable amounts, in proportion to our increased taxation and per capita of the population as compared with the populations of England, Scotland and Wales.’48 It was passed unanimously, although some saw it as an implicit criticism of the failure of Redmond and the Irish Party to lobby effectively for war contracts. But Dublin was shortly to make its own unique contribution to the Great War.
A foretaste was provided on St Patrick’s Day, when the Irish Volunteers held a church parade in the city, effectually taking over College Green and the streets leading into it. The Green was a traditional parade ground for the British army as well as of the original Irish Volunteers in the eighteenth century. Every 4 November the military had fired a volley to celebrate the birthday of King William III, whose equestrian statue dominated the scene. The parades had ended in the early nineteenth century and Orange parades some time afterwards, but King William still sat astride his horse, though frequently daubed with paint, and worse. The Green also contained the old Irish Parliament building, now housing the Bank of Ireland, and so the symbolism of the Volunteers’ occupation of this space was not lost on Dublin’s citizens, or the occupants of the Castle.
After contingents attended mass at the Pro-Cathedral and SS Michael and John’s Church in Exchange Street,49 the Volunteers reassembled along College Green and Dame Street for inspection by their chief of staff, Dr Eoin MacNeill. Sentries with fixed bayonets prevented vehicles, including trams, from disrupting the proceedings. A car containing British officers tried to force its way through until the commandants of the 3rd and 5th Battalions, Éamon de Valera and the recen
tly appointed Thomas Ashe, turned them back. Ashe told his men to use their bayonets if necessary.
Otherwise there were no incidents, or even speeches, but leaflets were distributed calling on Irish men to join the Volunteers and assert the nation’s sovereignty at home. The newspapers estimated that between 1,600 and 2,000 men turned out, equipped with ‘a very miscellaneous collection’ of weapons, including about eight hundred serviceable rifles and many revolvers.50
In contrast, the Irish Party continued its recruitment campaign for the British army. In company with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, John Field, the veteran Parnellite MP for St Patrick’s division, told recruiting meetings at the James’s Street Fountain and Dolphin’s Barn that Irishmen were fighting side by side with Welsh, English and Scottish colleagues ‘for freedom, fatherland and Christianity.’ His audience could thank the vigilance of the Irish Party that Ireland had been spared conscription, and the onus was now on the citizenry to come forward and keep up the numbers of the Irish battalions on a voluntary basis. He suggested that the government should allow members of the Constabulary to join the colours to help make up the numbers.
A local publican and UIL councillor, John Scully, presided at the meetings, while members of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers said it would be shameful to leave ‘95 per cent’ of the fighting to Englishmen. The Irish Times reported that the recruitment procession was headed by boy scouts with torches, but it did not say how many recruits stepped forward.51
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