The power of solidarity 1913-14: how Dublin's workers built their union

Submitted by AWL on 27 November, 2002 - 12:04

During the 1980s and 90s Margaret Thatcher's government introduced legislation to shackle the trade unions. New Labour has kept most of these anti-union laws. One of the central aims of these attacks was to end "secondary", or sympathetic strikes. The sympathetic strike has always been a tremendously powerful weapon in the arsenal of the working class. The Tories were trying to reverse working class gains of the 1960s and 70s, when solidarity strikes were used time and again.

When they come out in this kind of solidarity with other workers it is class action far more advanced than mere sectional trade union action. Implicitly, and sometimes openly, it challenges capitalist rule in society.

Although "secondary" action does not happen today because it is illegal that does not mean that there is no solidarity in the labour movement. More and more we are seing co-ordinated strike action: different unions striking on the same day, on the basis of legal ballots.

We will see real "secondary" action again - when groups of workers come out directly in aid of other workers' struggles. All over the world, wherever workers feel they have little to lose, but a lot of self-respect to gain, they will fight the bosses in this kind of way. Socialists have to keep alive the idea of sympathetic strikes.

Knowledge of working class history is one means of doing this.

The following articles by James Connolly explains the background to and general effects of the Dublin Labour War of 1913-14, in which Connolly was a central leader.

  • plus Frontline poetry: Workers of Ireland


James Connolly
, the son of Irish immigrants, was born in the Irish ghetto in Edinburgh in 1868. He left school at 10 and joined the army at 14. Back in Edinburgh, he married and with a job as a dustman collecting "night soil", stood as a socialist candidate in a local election, losing his job for doing it.

Although, like Larkin, he never ceased to be a Catholic, he was both a radical Marxist and a Fenian Irish Republican. In 1896, he went to Dublin and founded the Irish Socialist Republican Party. He adhered to the "De Leonites", a group of Marxists centred mainly in the United States who made the sort of criticisms of the official socialist movement Lenin would make over 10 years later, when that movement collapsed.

Between 1903 and 1910 Connolly was in the USA where he fell out with De Leon and became an organiser for the Industrial Workers of the World. He returned to Ireland in 1910 and became an organiser for the ITGWU in Belfast. He led the "Citizen Army" into the 1916 Rising and was badly wounded and shot - strapped in a chair - on 12 May 1916.

"First a fierce desire to save our brothers of the sea, a desire leading to us risking our own existence in their cause. Developing from that an extension of the principle of sympathetic action until we took the fierce beast of capital by the throat all over Dublin, and loosened its hold on the vitals of thousands of our class."

James Connolly was the chief lieutenant of Jim Larkin, the founder of the modern Irish labour movement, General Secretary of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, and leader of the workers during the 1913 battle.

Jim Larkin set up the Irish Transport and General Workers Union in 1908 after the leaders of a British-based union (GMB today) for which he was an organiser sold out a strike he was leading in Belfast. In the next few years he organised the "unskilled" workers - the coal heavers, dockers, carters, drivers - of Dublin, thereby creating a new Irish labour movement based on "general", "unskilled" workers. The standard of living in Dublin rose by about fifty percent in a few years.

Larkin used the the solidarity strike to build the union. No trade, no group of workers was left to fight alone. The weight of the whole union was brought into play on their behalf where necessary. He got the bosses on the run and created a new spirit of self-respect and self-reliance in the Dublin working class. Labour in Dublin was no longer a driven rabble but a movement conscious of itself as a class.

Until the ITGWU unions in Ireland had mainly been small, old-fashioned, skilled craft societies. Larkin was doing in Ireland what had been done in Britain at the time of the "matchgirls" strike and the great London Dock Strike of 1889, out of which had come Britain's great general trade unions.

The bosses fought back in Dublin. They organised a federation pledged to "destroy Larkin", put money into a common war chest which an individual employer would forfeit if he made peace, and then they gave the workers an ultimatum: leave "Larkin's union"; have nothing to do with the ITGWU; pledge yourself never to join it.

But the workers had felt their strength: everywhere they chose to be locked out, facing starvation rather than surrender.

In the course of the Labour War, three workers were beaten to death by the police and one, a young woman, Alice Brady, was shot dead in the streets by an imported scab. The war dragged on for months.

In the next issue of Solidarity we will print more of Connolly in which he tells how British workers responded to the plight of Dublin. Dublin's workers asked for industrial action in solidarity, but the British labour movement sent money and goods. Though rail workers in the North West took action, they were sold out by the leaders of their union, the NUR (now RMT). Rank and file militants in Britain called for a general strike to back Dublin. In December 1913 a special TUC conference rejected the call for solidarity action. Dublin was isolated.

"The struggle dictates our policy"

In the year 1911 the National Seamen's and Firemen's Union, as a last desperate expedient to avoid extinction, resolved upon calling a general strike in all the home ports. At that time the said Union, as the lawyers would say, was, more or less, of an ishmael among trade unions. It was not registered, in most places it was not even affiliated to the local Trades Union Councils, and its national officials had always been hostile to the advanced labour movement. They believed, seemingly, in playing a lone hand. Perhaps the general discredit into which it had been brought by the curiously inconsistent action of its leaders in closely identifying themselves with one of the orthodox political parties, and at the same time calling for the aid in industrial conflicts of the labour men whom they fought and slandered in political labour contests, had something to do with the general weakness and impending bankruptcy of the National Seamen's and Firemen's Union, at the time it issued its call in 1911.

At all events the call was in danger of falling upon vain ears, and was, in fact, but little heeded until the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union began to take a hand in the game.

As ships came into the Port of Dublin, after the issue of the call, each ship was held up by the dockers under the orders of James Larkin until its crew joined the union, and signed on under union conditions and rates of pay. Naturally, this did not please the shipowners and merchants of Dublin. But the delegates of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union up and down the docks preached most energetically the doctrine of the sympathetic strike, and the doctrine was readily assimilated by the dockers and carters.

It brought the union into a long and bitter struggle along the quays, a struggle which cost it thousands of pounds, imperilled its very existence, and earned for it the bitterest hatred of every employer and sweater in the city, every one of whom swore they would wait their chance to "get even with Larkin and his crew".

The sympathetic strike having worked so well with the seamen and firemen, the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union began to apply it ruthlessly in every labour dispute. A record of the victories it has won for other trade unions would surprise a good many of its critics. A few cases will indicate what, in the hands of Larkin and the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union, it has won for some of the skilled trades.
When the coachmakers went on strike the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union took over all the labourers, paid them strike pay, and kept them out until the coachmakers won. The latter body are now repaying us by doing scab work while we are out.

The mill-sawyers existed for twenty years in Dublin without recognition. The sympathetic strike by our union won them recognition and an increase of pay.

The stationary engine drivers, the cabinet-makers, the sheet metal workers, the carpenters, and, following them all the building trades got an increase through our control of the carting industry. As did also the girls and men employed in Jacob's biscuit factory. In addition to this work for others we won for our own members the following increases within the last two years: cross channel dockers got, since the strike in the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company, an increase of wages of three shillings per week. In the case of the British and Irish Company the increase, levelling it up with the other firms, meant a rise of six shillings per week. For men working for the Merchants' Warehousing Company three shillings per week, general carriers two shillings to three shillings, coal fillers halfpenny per ton, grain bushellers one penny per ton, men and boys in the bottle-blowing works from two shillings to 10 shillings per week of an increase, mineral water operatives four shillings to six shillings per week, and a long list of warehouses in which girls were exploited were compelled to give some slight modification of the inhuman conditions under which their employees were labouring.

As Mr Havelock Wilson, General Secretary, National Seamen's and Firemen's Union, has mentioned the strike on the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company as an instance of our erratic methods, it may be worth while to note that as a result of that strike some of his sailors got an increase of five shillings and six pence per week.

In addition to the cases enumerated I might also mention that the labourers on the Dublin and South-Eastern Railway got increases of six shillings per week, and those in the Kingstown Gas Works got increases varying from three shillings to 10 shillings per week per man.

All of these increases were the result of the sympathetic strike policy, first popularised by its success in winning the battle for the Seamen and Firemen - who are now asked to repudiate it.
These things well understood explain the next act in the unfolding of the drama. Desiring to make secure what had been gained, Mr. Larkin formulated a scheme for a Conciliation Board.
This was adopted by the Trades Council, at least in essence, and eventually came before the Employers' Executive, or whatever the governing committee of that body is named. After a hot discussion it was put to the vote. Eighteen employers voted to accept a Conciliation Board, three voted against. Of that three, William Martin Murphy was one. On finding himself in the minority he rose and vowed that in spite of them he would "smash the Conciliation Board." Within three days he kept his word by discharging two hundred of his tramway traffic employees for being members of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union, and thus forced on the strike of the tramway men. Immediately he appealed to all the Dublin employers who had been forced into a semblance of decency by Larkin and his colleagues, called to their memory the increases of wages they were compelled to pay, and lured them on to a desperate effort to combine and destroy the one labour force they feared.

The employers, mad with hatred of the power that had wrested from them the improved conditions, a few of which I have named, rallied round Murphy, and from being one in a minority of three he became the leader and organising spirit of a band of four hundred.

I have always told our friends in Great Britain that our fight in Ireland was neither inspired nor swayed by theories nor theorists. It grew and was hammered out of the hard necessities of our situation. Here, in this brief synopsis, you can trace its growth for yourselves. First a fierce desire to save our brothers of the sea, a desire leading to us risking our own existence in their cause. Developing from that an extension of the principle of sympathetic action until we took the fierce beast of capital by the throat all over Dublin, and loosened its hold on the vitals of thousands of our class. Then a rally of the forces of capital to recover their hold, and eventually a titanic struggle, in which the forces of labour in Britain openly, and the forces of capital secretly, became participants.

That is where we stand today. The struggle forming our theories and shaping the policy, not only for us, but for our class. To those who criticise us we can only reply: we fight as conditions dictate; we meet new conditions with new policies. Those who choose may keep old policies to meet new conditions. We cannot and will not try.

Daily Herald, 6 December, 1913

"The toilers are the only ones who matter"
Perhaps before this issue of The Irish Worker is in the hands of its readers the issues now at stake in Dublin will be brought to a final determination. All the capitalist newspapers of Friday last join in urging, or giving favourable publicity to the views of others urging the employers of Dublin to join in a general lock-out of the members of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union. It is as well. Possibly some such act is necessary in order to make that portion of the working class which still halts undecided to understand clearly what it is that lies behind the tyrannical and brow-beating attitude of the proprietors of the Dublin tramway system.

The fault of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union! What is it? Let us tell it in plain language. Its fault is this, that it found the labourers of Ireland on their knees, and has striven to raise them to the erect position of manhood; it found them with all the vices of slavery in their souls, and it strove to eradicate these vices and replace them with some of the virtues of free men; it found them with no other weapons of defence than the arts of the liar, the lickspittle, and the toady, and it combined them and taught them to abhor those arts and rely proudly on the defensive power of combination; it, in short, found a class in whom seven centuries of social outlawry had added fresh degradations upon the burden it bore as the members of a nation suffering from the cumulative effects of seven centuries of national bondage, and out of this class, the degraded slaves of slaves more degraded still - for what degradation is more abysmal than that of those who prostitute their manhood on the altar of profit-mongering? - out of this class of slaves the labourers of Dublin, the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union has created an army of intelligent self-reliant men, abhorring the old arts of the toady, the lickspittle, and the crawler and trusting alone to the disciplined use of their power to labour or to withdraw their labour to assert and maintain their right as men.

To put it in other words, but words as pregnant with truth and meaning: the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union found that before its advent the working class of Dublin had been taught by all the educational agencies of the country, by all the social influences of their masters, that this world was created for the special benefit of the various sections of the master class, that kings and lords and capitalists were of value; that even flunkeys, toadies, lickspittle and poodle dogs had an honoured place in the scheme of the universe, but that there was neither honour, credit, nor consideration to the man or woman who toils to maintain them all.
Against all this the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union has taught that they who toil are the only ones that do matter, that all others are but beggars upon the bounty of those who work with hand or brain, and that this superiority of social value can at any time be realised, be translated into actual fact, by the combination of the labouring class. Preaching, organising, and fighting upon this basis, the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union has done what?

If the value of a city is to be found in the development of self-respect and high conception of social responsibilities among a people, then the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union found Dublin the poorest city in these countries by reason of its lack of these qualities. And by imbuing the workers with them, it has made Dublin the richest city in Europe to-day, rich by all that counts for greatness in the history of nations. It is then upon this working class so enslaved, this working class so led and so enriched with moral purposes and high aims that the employers propose to make general war.

Shall we shrink from it; cower before their onset? A thousand times no! Shall we crawl back into our slums, abase our hearts, bow our knees, and crawl once more to lick the hand that would smite us? Shall we, who have been carving out for our children a brighter future, a cleaner city, a freer life, consent to betray them instead into the grasp of the blood-suckers from who,we have dreamt of escaping? No, no, and yet again no!

Let them declare their lock-out; it will only hasten the day when the working class will lock-out the capitalist class for good and all. If for taking the side of the tram men we are threatened with suffering, why, we have suffered before. But let them understand well that once they start that ball rolling no capitalist power on earth can prevent it continuing to roll, that every day will add to the impetus it will give to the working class purpose, to the thousands it will bring to the working class ranks and every added suffering inflicted upon the workers will be a fresh obstacle in the way of moderation when the day of final settlement arrives.
Yes, indeed, if it is going to be a wedding, let it be a wedding; and if it is going to be a wake, let it be a wake: we are ready for either.

Irish Worker, 30 August, 1913

Frontline poetry
Workers of Ireland

Jim Connell, author of The Red Flag, published this song in Jim Larkin's paper, the Irish Worker, in 1911. It goes to the tune of O'Donnell Abú

Workers of Ireland, why crawl ye like cravens?
Why clutch an existence of insult and want?
Why stand to be plucked by an army of ravens,
Or hoodwinked forever by twaddle and cant?
Think on the wrongs ye bear,
Think on the rags ye wear,
Think on the insults endured from your birth;
Toiling in snow and rain
Rearing up heaps of gain,
All for the tyrants who ground you to earth.

Your brains are as keen as the brains of your masters
In swiftness and strength ye surpass them by far
Ye've brave hearts that teach ye to laugh at disasters,
Ye vastly outnumber your tyrants in war:
Why then like cowards stand.
Using not brain or hand
Thankful, like dogs, when they throw you a bone!
What right have they to take
Things that ye toil to make?
Know ye not, comrades, that all is your own?

Rise in your might, brothers, bear it no longer,
Assemble in masses throughout the whole land;
Show these incapables who are the stronger,
When workers and idlers confronted shall stand.
Through Castle, Court and Hall
Over their acres all
Onward we'll press like the waves of the sea!
Claiming the wealth we've made,
Ending the spoilers' trade;
Labour shall triumph and Ireland be free!

Jim Connell

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