The 1913 Lockout

On this day, 112 years ago the great Dublin ‘Lockout’ or strike began and led by James Larkin. This major industrial dispute lasted from August 1913 to January 1914. It was a major conflict between Dublin employers, led by William Martin Murphy, and approximately 20,000 workers of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union (ITGWU), led by James Larkin. The Dublin employers refused to recognise the right of workers to unionize or to allow workers to join the ITGWU and demanded they sign a pledge to leave the union. The dispute resulted in widespread poverty and hardship for the workers and their families.

Writing in the Irish Press in 1985, ‘SJL’ reminds us that Irish newspaper editors were not so kind to ‘Big Jim’ during the lockout and tried everything to denigrate his character:

During the weeks and months of the great 1913 Lockout, newspaper correspondents as much as leader writers in Dublin papers exhausted their powers of vituperation and innuendo on James Larkin. He had become the great ogre of the merchant and middle classes whose every act was reported as if it were fresh evidence of a new assault on Christian civilisation.

"For how much longer will you abuse our patience, Larkin and mock us with your violence?" demanded an anonymous writer in a Dublin daily of October 16, 1913. "Do all the soldiers in the Castle Yard, the signs of force in our police packed city, the people's terror and the convent of all sound men, the ever-seeing eye of Government, the sad - faced crowds that follow you with hunger in their looks, not break your resolution?" "Oh age and manners! This the Lieutenant-Governor of our country and his appointed band of Privy Councillors can see and yet you still work on —aye, and meet us in the Council Chamber as if partaking public care, while with your eye you mark and point each merchant to destruction . . . ." "There was once virtue in our country when law would have restrained your wholesale malice more than the deadliest foe. We have that law, James Larkin, still for you, and you will find it in the judgement of the people; rusted and dulled it can still leave it's sheath; once drawn it will cast you down." A lengthy editorial in the same paper was devoted to congratulating Prince Arthur of Connaught on his marriage to the Duchess of Fife.

For more information search the pages of the Irish Newspaper Archive (www.irishnewsarchive.com )