All were to be disappointed. The Local Government Board notified the two Poor Law unions, now to be amalgamated as one Dublin Union, that the army authorities did not pay compensation for the use of workhouses. Nor were ratepayers happy that the North Dublin Board of Guardians agreed to top up pensions for redundant employees by crediting them with, in some cases, as much as twenty-five years’ extra service.
On the positive side, the forced amalgamation did not pose the serious accommodation problem it might have done a few years earlier. The advent of Lloyd George’s old-age pension and the establishment of outdoor relief had seen the number of inmates fall drastically. The workhouse was no longer the inevitable destination of working-class people who had outlived their capacity to support themselves: if they survived long enough to claim the pension—to the age of seventy—they could live out their days in the community.
Although the elderly still made up 30 per cent of the population of Dublin’s workhouses in January 1915, the figure had fallen to 20 per cent by January 1919. The number of other poor people seeking admission also fell. The total population of Dublin’s two workhouses was only 4,800 in 1916 and 3,500 in 1919. By then there was more than enough room for all those seeking shelter in the South Dublin complex, which had housed 5,000 people at the beginning of the century.
On the other hand, the number claiming outdoor relief rose from 1,980 in 1916 to 3,009 in 1919; and this upward trend would continue when the post-war recession struck. While the cost of the old-age pension fell on the British exchequer, as did the newfangled unemployment and health insurance schemes, the cost of relieving the poor, either inside or outside the workhouse, continued to fall on the ratepayer.
Wartime inflation aggravated the upward spiral in the poor rate. The increase in rates was particularly sharp for ratepayers on the south side with the amalgamation of the two Poor Law unions, because of the disproportionate number of poor north-siders claiming either outdoor relief or indoor sanctuary. The North Dublin poor rate had been 3s 6¼d in the pound (17½ per cent) in 1914 and the South Dublin rate 1s 10½d (9½ per cent). By 1918 the North Dublin rate was 4s 9½d (24 per cent) and the South Dublin rate 4s 0½d (20 per cent). On amalgamation the joint rate was set at 4s 6d (22½ per cent). It would continue to rise over the next four years that led to the establishment of the Irish Free State.3
An amalgamation driven by military imperatives did not augur well for inmates either. While some unmarried mothers with young children were banished to Pelletstown and rural isolation, others found themselves sharing living quarters with the elderly, the mentally handicapped, and beggars.4
Not that life was easy in the outside world. In August 1918 Dublin experienced a wave of strikes generated by rising prices. The biggest group to come out were the city’s ten thousand building workers; but yard men in the shipping companies, bakers, butchers, printers, hotel and restaurant workers, coalmen in Kingstown and agricultural labourers in the county also pursued pay increases.
Building workers sought an increase of 3½ an hour and had been offered ¾d before striking on 19 August. The original claim on the Dublin Building Trades Employers’ Association had gone in during July and was based on a 12½ per cent increase in war industries conceded by the government’s Committee on Production.5 Building employers resisted, on the grounds that they had already paid an increase of 16s 8d a week in April and that conceding union demands would cost another £4 a week. Besides, they were outside the Committee on Production’s arbitration system. The strike dragged on for almost a month, during which time work stopped on all public works, including the restoration of the bombed-out area around the GPO. The sheer number of unemployed building workers also hit shopkeepers and other businesses hard. An agreement was eventually arranged through the Lord Mayor, Laurence O’Neill, which conceded 1½d an hour to the men, or a minimum of 6s 3d a week. This was a doubling of the original employers’ offer but less than half the amount sought.6
The hotel and restaurant strike was also settled through negotiation under the aegis of the Lord Mayor. Some waiters had been earning as little as 6s a week, while some received only tips. They were seeking a standard wage of 25s a week for male waiters and 15s for female waiters in hotels, with 17s 6d for men in restaurants and 12s 6d for women. Chefs were looking for an extra £1 a week. Other male manual workers sought an extra 15s a week, and female non-waiting workers were looking for an extra 7s 6d. All the major hotels and restaurants were closed, except Bewley’s, which agreed to pay an increase as an advance on whatever was finally agreed.7
Negotiations for the Hotel Workers’ Union were undertaken by the president of the ITGWU, Tom Foran. He managed to secure most of the strikers’ objectives by the following Saturday, showing how strong the demand for hotel space was in Dublin during the latter stages of the war. Many of the travellers discommoded by the dispute were Americans en route to Britain and France.
Similar success was achieved in the agricultural labourers’ dispute in Co. Dublin. With the harvest coming in, the ITGWU had picked its time well. The settlement demonstrated the growing power of the union, and the rates finally struck with the Agricultural Wages Board were higher than those achieved in England, Scotland or Wales. The rate for summer work was increased by 3s 6d a week and for winter work by 4s 6d, bringing the top rate to 28s 6d for both summer and winter work. The age at which full wages were paid was reduced from twenty-one to twenty. The maximum rent for a labourer’s cottage was set at 1s 6d a week.8
By contrast, industries covered by state arbitration bodies, or having relativities with war industries, remained relatively trouble-free in late 1918. A new pay claim by general labourers and craft workers in Dublin Corporation was practically inevitable after the concessions to the building workers in the summer strike, especially as the Lord Mayor had brokered the agreement. But there was no industrial action. Nor was there any action on the part of such unions as the United Building Labourers or the United Brassfounders’, Turners’, Finishers’ and Gasfitters’ Society, which had put in claims to the corporation the previous May. They were not adjudicated upon until mid-October, and backdating varied considerably, but the general result allowed for increases ranging from 1s 9d a week for boys to 12s 6d for some craft workers. In contrast to the uncontrolled sector, the existence of arbitration structures meant that these increases were determined without the loss of an hour’s pay or production. This did not prevent the Citizens’ Association and their champions in the corporation fighting a vigorous rearguard action to block the increases, but the decisions of the Committee on Production and the Wages Regulation Orders took precedence over Dublin’s ratepayers’ concerns.9
By 1918 a new phenomenon was clearly emerging in pay resolution for Dublin workers, whereby unions representing workers in uncontrolled industries based claims on the outcome of the arbitration awards for workers in the controlled sector; this in turn led workers in controlled industries to put in new claims based on restoring their eroded differentials with the uncontrolled sector. It was the invention of a ‘pay round’ system that would re-emerge during the Second World War, but on this occasion it was less structured and was swept away by the employers’ counter-offensive of 1921.
It should be stressed that the controlled and uncontrolled sectors were not the same as the present-day public and private-sector systems of collective bargaining. The controlled sector did include many public employments but it also included any area of economic activity considered essential to the war effort.
Nor did it mean that all was plain sailing where the military exercised control. In a tightening labour market there was a bad employment scare in the autumn of 1918 solely attributable to the military. The owners of Boland’s Mills announced on 4 September that they would have to close, as no compensation had been paid by the military authorities since they appropriated the plant in May 1917 to meet the needs of the army. As a result almost four hundred bakers, labourers, van men and yard men faced the dole. Once again th
e British state’s dispute resolution machinery swung into action and a mutually acceptable agreement was reached by 9 September under the auspices of the Flour Mills Control Committee in London.10
The growing air of militancy in Dublin displayed itself in other ways. The British government thought it had achieved a coup for its recruitment campaign when the home-rule MP Arthur Lynch, former commander of one of the Irish Brigades that fought for the Boers, agreed to join the army, with the rank of colonel. But when he made his debut as a recruiting officer at one of Dublin’s traditional recruitment hustings, the Fountain in James’s Street, he was met with ‘a veritable tornado of cheering and booing.’ Every time he tried to speak sections of the crowd would sing ‘The Soldier’s Song’ or cry ‘Up de Valera,’ or ‘What about MacBride? Why weren’t you with him?’ Lynch’s ‘brigade’ in fact had been little more than a company, and its record had been much poorer than that of the illustrious unit led by the 1916 martyr—a fact not lost on the crowd. Eventually Lynch had to be escorted from the meeting by a detachment of twenty DMP men. He met a similar response at another meeting in the more salubrious setting of Kildare Place in Rathmines. There he told the hostile crowd that he had ‘endured great trials and faced great dangers in the cause of home rule.’
Heckler: ‘Why not stop in Ireland and share our dangers?’11
‘Colonel Lynch—Stop in Ireland and share your cowardice. [Hisses] Hide your cowardice behind the high-sounding name of patriotism.’12
Industrial unrest subsided in the autumn, and the police reported to Lord French that the attention of the Executive Council of the ITUC was turning towards election strategy as an end to the war appeared to be in sight. Sinn Féin was doing likewise, and police reports informed the Lord Lieutenant that ‘great efforts’ were being made by some trade union leaders ‘to bring about a compromise so as to enable Sinn Fein to obtain the full support of the working classes.’13
In August, when the ITUC&LP had still been riding high on the back of its success in the anti-conscription campaign, and widespread industrial militancy was achieving improvements in pay and conditions, it announced that it would be contesting the post-war general election. However, it soon became clear that there was considerable disagreement on electoral strategy within its ranks.
Because of the large membership among Protestant workers in Ulster who were loyalists, the ITUC&LP could not take a clear position on what, if any, constitutional link there should be with Britain. Many Dublin trade unionists, including P. T. Daly, secretary of the ITUC&LP and leader of the Labour group in the corporation, saw the defeat of the Irish Party as the priority, because of its corruption and its close ties with the employers. By contrast, relations with Sinn Féin remained cordial. That organisation appreciated the need to keep a good working relationship with Labour, especially in Dublin, if it was to defeat the constitutional nationalists.
A year earlier Daly had warned the Dublin Trades Council that Sinn Féin was setting its sights on ‘legitimate’ Labour seats. William O’Brien, as president, had cut Daly out of the ITUC&LP delegation to the anti-conscription conference in the Mansion House, ostensibly because of the need for wider geographical representation by including delegates from Cork and Belfast; but Daly’s hostile attitude at the time towards Sinn Féin may also have been a factor in O’Brien’s thinking.14
But in late 1918 the men’s roles were reversed. In September O’Brien led a delegation that met Sinn Féin and asked the latter to give Labour a clear run in Dublin. Then, at the October meeting of the Dublin Trades Council meeting, it was Daly’s turn to argue that a clear field should be given to Sinn Féin to beat the Irish Party across the country.
Daly’s proposal was defeated, by 27 votes to 9. He was then nominated, along with O’Brien and three other candidates, including the absent Jim Larkin, to fight one of the Dublin constituencies. Daly declined the nomination and was replaced by Louie Bennett, who was now the leading woman trade unionist in the city, having taken over direction of the IWWU. In the event the decision proved immaterial, as the Sinn Féin campaign had gathered so much momentum that it proved impossible for Labour to find credible candidates willing to run elsewhere in the country.
Nor was the problem restricted to the provinces. By October, Dublin Trades Council was being informed by the National Union of Railwaymen that its members would be supporting Sinn Féin; and Tom McPartlin, one of the leading figures in the 1913 Lock-out, who had been nominated to contest a Dublin seat only a few weeks earlier, was told by his own members in the Tailors’ Society that they would not vote for him if he ran against Sinn Féin.
Prominent members of the Irish Citizen Army, such as Constance Markievicz and Kathleen Lynn, had already joined Sinn Féin, as had several rank-and-file Citizen Army members. The experience of the rising had forged new bonds. Neither Markievicz nor Lynn was entirely satisfied with Sinn Féin’s social programme, especially as it related to women, but they saw the national movement as capable of being remoulded and realised in their different ways that the national question had claimed centre stage. Both were, above all, ‘doers’. Markievicz would soon run as a Sinn Féin candidate in the general election, while Lynn would gain prominence as joint director of the Sinn Féin Public Health Department with Dr Richard Hayes, a dispensary doctor from Lusk who had been a close comrade of Thomas Ashe.15 The Public Health Committee was one of a number of committees set up by Sinn Féin to explore initiatives for transforming Irish life once it assumed state power.
It was yet another indication of the new political reality that, while Sinn Féin was transforming itself from a niche political party into a movement for national liberation, Labour was transforming itself from a movement for social and economic liberation into a niche political party. Ironically, Labour’s success in bridging the sectarian divide in the economic field crippled it in a situation where the survival of the link with Britain was the defining issue of the day. As the historians of Dublin Trades Council put it,‘in essence Labour was the trade unions in politics … With Nationalists, Republicans and Unionists in the trade unions the leadership was bound to compromise.’
If the increasingly bitter and open rivalry between O’Brien and Daly damaged Labour’s strategic ability to deal with the Sinn Féin challenge, the political ground had shifted since 1916 in ways that Labour was no better equipped to tackle than its old protagonists in the UIL and AOH. The moratorium on municipal elections since 1915 had also deprived the party of its usual platform on the hustings to make its distinctive voice heard. By 1918 Labour in Dublin no longer represented the aspirations of the majority of the city’s workers.16
Another force in more permanent decline was Dublin unionism, although it had one final surprise for Sinn Féin in the coming general election. Meanwhile, on Saturday 5 October 1918, the unionist establishment in the capital held a Mammoth Auction in aid of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers Prisoners of War Fund. It opened at the Mansion House and continued until the following Tuesday. Some five thousand items were sold to help the men held in captivity.
It was fitting that the last great public outing of this former political elite should be dedicated to demonstrating its continuing support for the war effort and a celebration of the coming allied victory by remembering the remnants of the ‘Dublins’ in German prison camps. The patron was Lord French, the president was Lady Arnott, and the other officers and organisers included Viscount Powerscourt, Sir Edward Shortt (Chief Secretary), Andrew Jameson (of the distilling dynasty), Robert Moore (Rotary Club), Sir James Campbell (Lord Chancellor and Lord Chief Justice of Ireland), Sir Maurice Dockrell, and Henry Hanna KC. The latter two individuals were to run as unionist candidates in the general election, while the Lord Chancellor, James Campbell, was a former Unionist MP for the University of Dublin.
The prices of the items sold were an indicator of the continuing relative wealth and social exclusiveness of the milieu. A satinwood writing table donated by Andrew Jameson sold for £17, a Sheraton escri
toire donated by Millar and Beatty also sold for £17, while a spray brooch donated by Rose Vernon sold for £26 and a gold, sapphire and enamel necklace donated by Mrs Ernest Guinness of the brewing dynasty was sold for £27. The event culminated on Tuesday with the auction of a ‘hold fast’ letter from the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, to Lord Powerscourt and a stone of sugar. Both items were sold and resold until they reached a combined value of £116 15s.
Political niceties were also observed. The auction had been planned for Merrion Square, then the property of Lord Fitzwilliam, but strong winds blew down the tents on the Friday night. The Lord Mayor, Laurence O’Neill, readily agreed to put the Mansion House at the disposal of the committee. Apart from this ecumenical gesture there appears to have been no involvement by any leading representative of the nationalist tradition. The DMP, Dublin Schools Cadet Corps and Rotary Club were mobilised to transfer the items for auction from Merrion Square to the Mansion House.17
Two days after the auction ended, on 10 October 1918, the Leinster was sunk by a German submarine, with the loss of 587 of the 780 passengers on board. It was almost as great a loss of life as that during the rising; but after the initial shock public memory subsided almost as rapidly as the Leinster itself. It was one of the ironies of the naval war that submarine activity in the Irish Sea intensified only after convoys were introduced for transatlantic shipping in late 1917. The vessels were now easier targets after they shed their escorts at Queenstown (Cóbh) and dispersed for Dublin and Liverpool.
A City in Wartime Page 36