3rd edition (revised)
Published by
The
Limerick Soviet Commemoration
Committee
2003
Preface
The Nature of the Irish National
Struggle
One of the more disagreeable features of
the struggle between Irish historical ‘traditionalist and ‘revisionists’
is not their clashes but their de- facto readiness to agree on major issues
without investigation. The traditionalists do have the excuse that they
drafted the line on these issues in the first place, the revisionists
pretend that they question everything.
One such matter of implicit agreement is
the socio-politica1 nature of the revolutionary struggle after 1916, the
traditionalists are happy with the historic perspective of a ‘pure’
nationalist political-military military campaign with no social or
economic aspects. The revisionists are happy to go along with this. The
first school fears lest too careful research provides ammunition to shake
the status quo. Its opponents, or, at least, too many of them, want to
change the status quo only in the political sense and are happy to accept
their opponents’ terms of reference as producing the ammunition they need
in their task of defaming the national struggle for its alleged lack of
social content.
In this matter, both sides are wrong.
The atmosphere in Nationalist 1re1and between 1916 and 1923, and in
Unionist Ireland to 1920, differed from the periods before and afterwards
more than they differed from each other. Partly because of organisational
and political weaknesses in the revolutionary camp itself; this potential
was either strangled at birth or just neutralized by its enemies. It had
been there, however, and it had enough reality to be part of the overall
picture of the years of the national struggle.
For example this was the period when
Ireland led Britain and, indeed, the world outside Russia, on women’s
political rights. This cannot be separated from the rise of Shin Féin. The
only two women running in Ireland in the general election of l918 were
candidates of that party. Had its electoral triumph been much less than it
was, it is likely that Constance Markievicz would not been these
islands‘ first woman MP and that she would not have been the world’s second
woman government minister. Later, with the limited independence given by
given by the Treaty. Women under thirty got the vote on equal terms with
men six years before their sisters elsewhere on these islands.
Such advances were paralleled by the
fact that clerical influence was unusually low. At the time of the l9l7
Sinn Féin unity convention a Catholic priest objected that he was not
seated by right of his cloth alone, as he was at similar Home Ruler
assemblies. Though the Dail cabinet came down at last against democratic,
rather than clerical control of education, it did so after a struggle that
would not be seen again for more than seventy years. It is not really
surprising, then, that the majority of the Catholic bishops remained
hostile to the first Dails and their Republic even after the leaders of
the Home Rule party had accepted the fact that events had overtaken their
programme.
Finally, there was the fact of
internationalism. Republican propagandists translated nationalist works of
other lands. Until 1920 the Irish Theatre struggled to bring to Dublin the
best of foreign drama. None of this meant that Sinn Féin headed a
socialist movement. It did mean that it headed a revolutionary democratic
mass movement. Such
bodies have to face the fact at last
that bourgeois society cannot support too much democracy and that they
must either advance further than the leaders of that society would like in
the direction of Socialism or accept that their programmes be diluted.
The potential approached Socialism into
be sympathetic to Irish national aspirations and the struggle to achieve
them, it was to keep them at arms length, and mobilise only against
specific anti democratic actions on the part of the British occupier. An
attempt by Connolly’s friend, William O’Brien to maintain a Labour
presence within the broad revolutionary front that would become a single
Sinn Féin party without that presence was undermined by the opposition of
his labour allies.
They were not altogether to blame. The
organisation of their movement united as a single entity the industrial
and political movements, so as to make labour politics simply a function
of the Irish Trade Union Congress. The independent Socialist Party of
Ireland remained little more than an infrequently productive publishing
house. This constituted an empirical form of syndicalism: the idea that
one big union was all that was needed to emancipate the working class. It
had been expected to aid recruitment on a clear class basis. In reality,
it made political division a major hazard to the unions as well as the
party that they constituted, and made unity a premium to be achieved, if
necessary through a strategy based on the lowest common denominator.
In a
land where workers were divided politically, like everyone else, between
Unionists, Constitutional Nationalists and Republicans, this meant a
necessary fudge on the national question. Until 1920, this seemed to work.
Membership of the 1.T.U.C.’s affiliates, trades unions and trades
councils, rose from 130,000 at the end of 1916 to 320,000 in August 1920.
The bastion of syndicalism, the I.T.G.W.U., made up the largest part of
this, growing from 5,000 to 120,000 in the same period This growth did not
quite parallel that of the reviving Republican movement after 1916. What
became the new Sinn Féin expanded steadily although 1917, as did the
Volunteers; both appealed beyond the working class to tenant farmers and
small businessmen who made up the broad social front termed
unscientifically ‘the men of no property’. Labour advanced more slowly
until the October revolution in Russia showed it what workers could do and
inspired the Irish along with others.
The national struggle could still affect
Irish Labour positively as was shown the following April. The British
government move to conscript Ireland was met by petitions, pulpit
denunciations and by the constitutional nationalist MP’s taking the Sinn
Féin line of abstention from Westminster. Labour organized the first
political general strike in these islands: the first successful political
general strike in western Europe. Admittedly with aid from the Irish
Volunteers in some non- unionised areas, the stoppage was nearly 100 per
cent successful outside the Unionist north, and it might have been
successful there, had the Belfast Trades Council been able to protect a
previous anti-conscription meeting against loyalist interference. As a
result, 1918 saw Labour and the I.T.G.W.U. breakthrough in areas where
they had been unknown.
lf the 1918 general strike had shown the
possibilities for Labour in advancing the national struggle, the end of
the year gave it a warning against being too detached from it.
Self-determination was bound to become the central feature of the December
general election campaign in Ireland. Labour found too late that it had
allowed Sinn Féin to identity the cause with its strategy of principled
abstention from Westminster. Labour could either oppose Sinn Féin, with
the almost certain prospect of losing, or it could run in tandem with it,
alienate many constitutional nationalist workers and accept paramouncy of
the projected Dai] Eireann over a trade union congress that saw itself as
the prospective, syndicalist ‘Parliament of Labour? Except in four
Unionist constituencies in Belfast, the Labour candidates withdrew. Yet,
as the anti-conscription strike had shown, and as was borne out by
Volunteers and other Sinn Féin supporters joining local general strikes
for better conditions, the Irish working class linked nationalism and
syndicalism ‘in its revolutionary consciousness’, as Leon Trotsky had put
it. It was inevitable that this combination would be expressed more than
would be welcome to the Labour or Republican leaderships.
The Anglo-Irish War, Irish Labour and
Limerick
On 2lst January, 1919, Dail Eireann held
its opening session and the Irish Volunteers drew their first mortal blood
since 1916 at Soloheadbeg, Co.
Tipperary. These facts have set the seal for subsequent historians of the Hist
months of the year. Yet such an emphasis is the product of subsequent
events rather than of judgment of contemporary news. The first Dail
session and Soloheadbeg were, in their time, isolated incidents in a
period that was more notable for industrial unrest. The
Belfast engineering strike
began within days of those two nationalist events and, before the end of
the month, Peadar O’Donnell was leading the Soviet occupation of Monaghan
Asylum. These were just the immediate outstanding stoppages.
That such facts have been downgraded has
a material justification. The existence of the Dail provided a long term
institutional focus for the national struggle that the social ones could
not match, either in the lTGWU or in the Irish Labour Party and Trade
Union Congress. The continuing refusal of these bodies to seek to seize
from the Dail the consistent lead in the Anglo-Irish War enabled the
latter to dominate what labour had allowed to become the initial struggle
against British imperialism. In this position, it won many from the
economic struggle as the national struggle that it led had superseded the
economic issues in intensity by 1920. On the other hand, the Labour
leaders’ justification for their inaction – the need to maintain a single
trade union movement and Labour Party would betray itself in the end when
James Larkin split both.
Although the Irish Labour leadership did not try to take the lead in the
independence struggle, it did act, on several occasions, to advance it by
means - the strike weapon - that it alone could command. On four occasions
from April 1919 to December 1920, the strike was used to assert democratic
rights against lreland’s imperial occupiers. (Another general strike, the
Mayday holiday, was an international initiative). Three of these were
called because of spontaneous rank and tile action rather than the
inspiration of Labour’s National Executive. The remaining one occurred as
the result of rank and tile demand. Two of them (as well as the Mayday
holiday) strengthened rather than weakened Irish Labour as a whole.
Industrial struggles, the proportion of organized Irish workers on strike
in 1919 (70,800 out of 229,786) was lower than that of organised workers
in industrialised Britain (2,901,000 out of 7,926,000); the difference was
more than filled by the political strike figures, which created, in turn,
an industrial atmosphere in which economic strikes were less necessary.
The two exceptions failed, ultimately, due to specific problems. The Motor
Permits Strike of the winter of 1919- 20 was handicapped by inter-union
squabbling. The Munitions of War Strike of 1920 came at a time when the
Labour leadership’s lack of perspective on the national question left it
unable to oppose the Black and Tans; significantly, this political strike
was the last effective one in the Anglo-Irish War.
The remaining example of rank and file
working class action to oppose imperialism is the subject of this
pamphlet. Like the other two examples of such initiatives, it was
handicapped by Labour’s national leadership. Yet, partly because of its
regional character, this handicap did not have as debilitating an effect
on the general Labour struggles of the time as it was to have in the
context of the Motor Permits and Munitions of War strikes.
The Limerick General Strike of April
1919 was, in its way, a classic example of the dialectical synthesis - the
mutual interaction - of the Labour movement’s methods of struggle with the
cause of Irish self-determination. It was not accidental that it should be
a spontaneous initiative of the workers’ syndicalism.
As long ago as 1899, Limerick had elected a local Labour Party, under the Republican, John Daly, to
a majority on its corporation, though disillusion with what had become
another constitutional nationalist iiont had contributed to the
achievement being eclipsed by the notorious anti-Jewish pogrom of 1904. In
1916, Limerick’s Bishop Edward O’Dwyer had been, greatly to everyone’s surprise, the
member of the Catholic hierarchy who had condemned the British executions
of the Easter Rising leaders. In January 1918, its Mayor, Stephen Quin,
had accepted a British Knighthood causing him to be replaced within a
month by a Sinn Féin mayor, Alphonsus O’Mara of the bacon-curing firm,
Dormelly’s. O’Mara was re-elected the next year. This was at a time when
the municipal councils of Ireland were still those elected in the years up
to 1915 and were dominated by councillors who had been supporters in one
way or another of constitutional nationalism. Meanwhile at the general
election of December 1918, Michael Collivet was returned unopposed for Sinn
Féin.
This nationalism had to affect the
city’s United Trades and Labour Council. At the same time, that body was
affected by the working-class’s other contemporary revolutionary current:
syndicalism. This had been slow to appear. Unlike other major Irish
cities, Limerick got no I.T.G.W.U. branch until July 1917. Even then, half the trade
council’s affiliated membership was in non-syndicalist British based
unions. Yet Syndicaist militancy affected all. The council chairman, Sean
Cronin of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters had been very critical of
the influence of ‘Dublin Socialists’ in his movement. By April 1918, he
was hailing the general strike as evidence that his class ‘really ruled
Ireland’.
This had a narrower side. In November
1918, the Irish Labour Party and Trade Union Congress amended its
constitution to allow for some form of political intervention on its side
by individuals outside the unions. The Trades Council of Limerick, along
with those of Cork and Waterford, led the opposition to this breach of
syndicalist principle. This militancy was increased by the fact that the
expansion of the l.T.G.W.U. caused a clash between the Condensed Milk
Company of Ireland and the 600 employees at its plant at Lansdowne. The
workers in all the concerns managed by the Cleeve family combine that ran
the
Condensed Milk Company sent delegates in
April 1919 to form a Munster Council of Action which threatened strike
action for better conditions in the Condensed Milk Company’s factories.
The Company retaliated with a policy of ‘divide and rule’. First of all,
it awarded a 48 hour week at a wage of 11l/4d
per hour (45/ - per week) to its 600 workers at Lansdowne (where it had
its headquarters). At the same time, it sacked the factory’s l.T.G.W.U.
shop steward.
While this proceeded, events were
occurring which led to the clash which would show how the traditions of
nationalism and syndicalism affected the Limerick United Trades Union and
Labour Council’s response to a concrete instance of military repression.
The Limerick Soviet Begins
On Sunday, 6th April 1919, the Co.
Limerick Volunteers went into action. Their mission was to rescue one of
their number, Robert J. (Bertie) Byrne. Byrne was a prominent trade
unionist, a member of the trades council, who had lost his job as a
telegraph operator for his part in organising his colleagues in his union
and (officially) for attending John Daly’s funeral without leave. On 2lst
January 1919, he was victimized thither, this time for his Republican
views. A British Army court martial found him guilty of possessing a
pistol. On 1st. February 35 unions affiliated to the Limerick United
Trades and Labour Council passed a motion of protest against the treatment
of the political prisoners and the inactivity of the visiting justices and
of the medical officer. The motion called on the local deputies and
councillors to ensure the prisoners political status.
None of this had any result. On 3rd
February, Byrne was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment with hard labour.
As the senior officer of the Volunteers imprisoned there he began a
campaign for political status. At last, the prisoners wrecked their cells
and destroyed the fittings. In retaliation, the warders beat them, removed
their boots and clothing and handcuffed their leaders day and night, on a
bread and water diet, in solitary confinement. The prisoners went on
hunger strike. Byrne’s own condition became such that, on 12th
March, he was transferred, under police guard, to Limerick
Workhouse Hospital (now St.
Camillus). It was here, at 6 pm., on 6th April, that his volunteer
comrades tried to rescue him. They failed. A constable T was shot dead, a
second was wounded mortally, and Byrne himself was taken away by the
rescue party, but he had been injured fatally in the struggle. His dead
body was found and carried to Limerick Cathedral to lie in state there.
The Limerick Board of Guardians paid tribute to him as having been "a
self-effacing patriot".
The government of the United Kingdom
could not accept such a statement without acting against it. Limerick city
was proclaimed a “special military area" under the control of the British
Army. At Byrne’s funeral, the route of the procession was lined by British
troops with fixed bayonets; the procession itself was passed by parading
armoured cars while military aeroplanes flew overhead. Two of Byrne’s
cousins were arrested and charged with murdering the constables but the
military controllers of the area doubted their ability to prove the case.
(In fact, both of them were released subsequently). Republicanism had to
be suppressed, somehow, in a city that was in many ways the most
rebellious in Ireland.
So, on Friday 11th April, a large area
in and around the Borough of Limerick was declared to be under martial law
as from the following Tuesday. The area proclaimed included all the city,
save the part of it north of the River Shannon, with the townlands of
Killalee, Monamuck, Park and Spittleland and those parts of the townlands
of Rhebogue and Singland that lay to the west of the
railway line from Limerick to Ennis.
The Workhouse
Hospital where the shooting had occurred was outside the boundary, as were
several factories including the condensed milk factory.
Anyone who wished to enter this area
could do so only if they carried permits, bearing their photographs and
signatures, that were issued by the British military on the recommendation
of the Royal Irish Constabulary (R.I.C.). No exception was
to be made for workers commuting to and from jobs that were
often outside the proclaimed area. This fact was to be declared by Sean
Cronin, the Chairman of the United Trades and Labour Council, to be the
decisive cause for the events that were about to begin.
On Saturday 12th April, the workers in
the Condensed Milk Company’s Lansdowne Factory, most of whom would be
affected by the permit order, struck work in protest against it. ‘This
initiative has been credited to Sinn Féin members amongst the workers
(Cahill, 1991) and alternatively, to Connolly’s old comrade, the
administrator of future workplace seizures, Sean Dowling, I.T.G.W.U.
organiser for the area (C. Desmond Greaves, 1982). Both accounts may be
right; political strikes were in the air after the Russian revolution.
What is certain is that neither the national leadership of Sinn Féin nor
that of the l.T.G.W.U. (or, indeed, the Labour Party and T.U.C.) played
any role in inspiring it. The union leaders were unenthusiastic about
political strikes. Sinn Féin was unenthusiastic about any strike.
It was the unions that represented most
of the Lansdowne workers- the I.T.G.W.U. and the Irish Clerical & Allied
Workers Union - that were most vehement the next day, when the United
Trades & Labour Council held a special meeting on the issue at the
Mechanics’ Institute. After an argument that lasted over two sessions
(some feared a possible food shortage would result from the decision), it
was resolved at 11.30 p.m. to call a General Strike for the city as from 5
a.m., Monday 14th. April, until the ending of martial law. At a mass
meeting to proclaim this decision, Cronin threatened, also, to call out
the railwaymen. He stated that only the 48 hours they needed to get
permission from their Executive in London prevented him from doing so
immediately. In fact, they had given notice to their Executive in London
that they would strike from Wednesday 16th April, if it gave permission.
The United Trades & Labour Council
transformed itself into the Strike Committee; Cronin, as its Chairman,
remained at its head in its new form. Immediately, it took over a printing
press in Cornmarket Row, prepared placards explaining the strike, and had
them posted all over Limerick. This was the first of many publications
during the next fortnight: permits, proclamations, food price lists and a
Strike Bulletin. Besides the propaganda, the Committee detailed skeleton
staffs to maintain gas, electricity and water supplies.
The Strike is Organised
The strike had an immediate success.
Despite the suddenness of the decision, it was executed by 15,000 organised
workers. On Monday the 14th all that was operating were the public
utilities under their skeleton staffs some carriers with permits from the
Strike Committee to carry journalists to interview it, the banks, the
hotels, all government business (including the inquest on Robert Byrne) ,
the Post Office (albeit for the sale of stamps only), and the railways
(though the engineers struck work the next day).
Commemorative plaque at Thomond Bridge
unveiled by
Joe Harrington, Mayor of Limerick, 2nd May 1099
These last would become a
major issue for the stoppage. The next day, the Unionist Irish Time
described the strike as a 'Soviet`, though the American journalist, Ruth Russell, describes Cronin himself having admitted proudly to the name.
Certainly, nobody challenged it at the time.
But what did this mean? Quite simply,
the Trades Council/Strike Committee had local sovereignty over
Limerick during the Soviet's
forthnight. . The city council was irrelevant and the local bourgeoisie acceped it. The petty bourgeoisie, the small shop keepers, participated
in the strike readily enough. The Committee's Chairman, Cronin, was
careful not to develop his aims beyond the immediate struggle to remove
the Military Permit Order. As in the strike against conscription the cause
was an ideal/right (in this case people's and especially worker's freedom
of movement) over and above the national issue. Further, the military
alienated the larger capitalists. General Christopher S Griffin, the
British Officer in command of the area, vetoed Messrs Cleeve's offer that
it take, hold and distribute permits on behalf of its workers. On the
14th The whole Limerick Chamber of Commerce sent to Andrew Bonar Law (the
British Unionist leader and acting Prime Minister), to Viscount French,
the Lord Lieutenant and to Griffin, a statement condemning the permit
system. Sinn Fein had to back the strike and Mayor O'Mara refused to leave
the proclaimed area for his home, preferring to stay in a hotel through
the stoppage.
Naturally, and in view of the apparent
class collaboration; the Unionist press regarded the Soviet as no more
than a front for Sinn Féin. The point is that the authority exercised
during the two weeks of the Limerick Soviet was not that of the bourgeois
city council, such as Sinn Féin had always placed at the centre of its
strategies, but that of the local trades council, a working- class body.
Of course, the l.T.G.W.U. had connections with Sinn Féin, and the union
was one of the prime movers in the strike, nonetheless, lull subservience
to Sinn Féin would have meant continuing work. The Limerick Soviet
remained a working class strategy; executed by a conscious, if
undeveloped, labour movement. Sinn Féin, conceived from the start as a
capitalist body could not have directed it.
The one member of the Strike Committee
not of the working class was the farmer, Michael Brennan, Commandant of
the East Clare Brigade of the Irish Volunteers. He was co-opted so that
the Soviet could have not only its own pickets but a body of armed men in
reserve. That this was only a contingency is shown by the fact that
Brennan was the choice. There was too much rivalry between the Limerick
brigades for them to allow any nominee from one of them to be their sole
representative; rather than have one from each, the outsider, Brennan was
appointed.
The Committee had soon to escalate the
struggle. The threatened food shortage began to appear on the first day.
Accordingly, the Committee ordered the rationing of hotel meals. In the
evening, it granted permits (to be enforced by picket) for shops to sell
bread, milk and potatoes from 2 to 5 p.m., as from the next day, and for the bakeries to maintain production.
On 15th April, it allowed the butchers
and on Wednesday 16th April, the coal merchants to open similarly. The
immediate results made it clear that more organisation was needed: fearing
shortages, the customers at the open shops staged buying sprees. By the
end of April 15th, the shops selling potatoes in the poorer parts of
Limerick had to close down. After their experience the next day, the six
largest coal merchants refused to re-open for the rest of the fortnight of
the Soviet, though the Strike Committee commandeered some of their coal.
To avoid a food shortage, the Strike
Committee established a subordinate body of four city councilors with
control over the local volunteers to organise the supply of food to
Limerick. It opened a food depot on the north bank of the River Shannon to take
supplies (mainly of milk, potatoes and butter) from the farmers of Co.
Clare, whose supply organisation was run by Fr. William Kennedy of
Newmarket-on-Fergus.
By the end of the first week the
sub-committee was promised food from elsewhere in Ireland and from trade
unions in Britain. At night, boats with muffled oars, and by day, hearses
from the Workhouse Hospital that were empty of any corpse brought the
supplies into the city. A ship that had arrived in the port was given a
permit that it might be unloaded of its cargo of 7,000 tons of grain. In
Limerick city itself the sub-committee operated four distribution depots from
which it was fixing the retail prices for its sales. It even organised the
supply of hay for cart horses. Profiteers were closed down immediately.
Eventually, the sub-committee had to set up its own sub-committee to deal
with the different aspects of its task.
Other sub-committees under directors
were established to supervise the pickets and propaganda. The first body
dealt with the pickets that executed police duties in the area; these
included enforcing the hours of trading, the regulation of queues and the
holding of permits. It enforced a ban on cars and hackney cabs that
appeared on the streets without permits and without displaying the notice
"Working Under Authority of the Strike Committee?
The story is told of an officer of the
United States Army who arrived in Limerick on his way to visit relatives
living near, but outside, the city. Alter receiving his permit, he
expressed his bewilderment at "who rules in these parts. One has to get a
Military Permit to get in, and be brought before the Soviet to get a
permit to leave".
On the more normal duties of police
work, in which they supplanted the R.I.C., the pickets sub-committee’s
success can be measured by the fact that there was no looting and,
consequently, no cases brought before Petty Sessions. Indeed, as Thomas
Farren of the Dublin Trades Council and the Labour Party National
Executive was to remark at the Drogheda Congress of the Irish Labour Party
& Trade Union Congress in August 1919, there was not a single arrest made
during the entire strike. At the end of the first week, this
sub-committee, too seems to have split in two: one for permits and one for
transport
The Propaganda sub-committee was
responsible for the Strike Committee’s publications, most notably, its
daily Workers’ Bulletin. This maintained publication throughout the period
of the stoppage, although, until Thursday 17th April, three out of the
four local (bourgeois) newspapers appeared, licensed by the Strike
Committee.
Another sub-committee was soon
established. On 18th April, Cronin announced a fund to supply the Soviet
with money as it was to need cash both for purchases from outside and to
keep its circulation inside its area. A sub-committee was established to
plan this fund. It was composed of competent accountants and employees in
the finance departments of Limerick firms.
The Strike gained international
publicity due to one coincidental fact. Preparations were being made for a
transatlantic air race, and one of the competitors therein, Major Wood,
was planning to refuel at the neighbouring Bawnmore field. Accordingly,
many reporters were in the city including representatives of the Chicago
Tribune, the Paris Matin, and the Associated Press of
America, an agency serving 750 papers. All these reporters came under the
authority of the Strike Committee. As good newspapermen, they reported the
fact.
Major Wood himself feared lest his plans
be jeopardised by the Soviet’s control of Bawnmore’s supplies. Through the
ex-Lord Mayor of Limerick, Sir Stephen Quin, he asked the Committee’s
permission to use the landing field. This permission was granted on the
understanding that he openly acknowledge it. ln practice, he did not have
to carry out his part of the bargain. On his way home England in his
plane, he crashed in the Irish Sea.
Two Powers
By Good Friday 18th April, Dual Power
(the division of Government authority) in Limerick had developed to its
fullest. On the one hand there was the British state. It had brought in an
extra 100 police at the time of the inquest on Robert Byrne. It had
considerable military forces including an armoured car on
Sarsfield Bridge and a tank
(nicknamed "Scotch and Soda"). It had the routes into the proclaimed area
barred with barbed wire. At the same time, it was careful not to show any
reluctance in granting the few permits that were demanded.
Against the colonial power was the full
force of organised labour in Limerick, albeit with the backing of Sinn
Féin. Only the largest coal merchants (with the protection of the R.I.C.)
had opposed the Strike Committee and this was less out of principle than
out of self-interest. All the other sections of the community accepted the
Committee’s rules. The public houses were closed (and stayed so throughout
the fortnight of the stoppage, thus contributing, no doubt, to the lack of
crime). On the other hand, by Good Friday, the picture house was permitted
to open, with its profits going to the strike fund. Bruff Quarter
Sessions had to be adjourned because Limerick solicitors and court
officials refused to attend. Limerick pig-buyers had absented themselves from the fairs of Nenagh and
Athlone. The farmers of the neighbourhood were accepting that, due to the
closure of the Lansdowne creamery and condensed milk factory, the price of
their milk had fallen to 1/-per gallon and that the Soviet was enforcing
its retail at 4d per quart. According to Cronin, the British Army was
affected: a Scots regiment had to be sent home hastily when it was found
that its soldiers were allowing workers to pass in and out of the city
without demanding their permits.
Already there had been one trial of
strength between the two powers. On the 17th April, Griffiin offered the
terms that he had refused Messrs Cleeve to the Limerick Chamber of
Commerce for its affiliated and shopkeepers in respect of customers. The
Chamber (which included Francis Cleeve of the said firm) referred the
terms to the Strike Committee. He appealed to the citizens of Limerick as
a whole, blaming “certain irresponsible individuals" for forcing him to
impose the permit system on the people. The Strike Committee replied that
it had no wish to take the step it had taken, but that the military
authorities had given it no alternative; to prevent others suffering the
permit system at a later date, it had no option but to move. Its statement
was backed independently by a number of the city clergy, headed by the
Bishop, Dr Denis Hallinan, who denounced the permits order as
"unwarrantable" and inconsiderate and, also, attacked the military’s
handling of Robert Byme’s funeral.
On Easter Sunday, 20th April,
they maintained their position, congratulating the citizens of Limerick on their exemplary discipline. That evening Lord Mayor O’Mara
organised a public meeting which passed unanimously motions demanding the
ending of martial law and the surrender of all foodstuffs to the Strike
Committee.
Matters could not remain thus. Either
the strikers or the British had to win (any compromise would be, in
practice, merely a form of victory for one of the two sides) or the whole
struggle would be enveloped in an escalation that might bring Irish labour
to seek state power. The most definite move in the last possible direction
would have to be taken by the railwaymen. These had given massive support
to the strike.
They were refusing to handle freight for
Limerick except where it was
permitted by the Strike Committee itself
or where it was under military guard. It was expected that they would
expend this action into a full- scale railway strike. Cronin had expected
this when the strike was called, On Good Friday, he expressed his hopes
once again. Meanwhile, the Strike Committee’s delegates were reporting to
it favourable replies to the call to spread the strike. What held them
back was the inaction of the National Executive of the Irish Labour and
Trade Union Congress. Partly because of its unwieldy nature, (the members
were drawn from all parts of the country, its current President, Thomas
Cassidy, being based in Derry nor was there any provision for a standing
committee within it), partly because of the strike’s ending of
telecommunications with Limerick, the Executive was unable to discuss the
strike immediately. On Wednesday 16th April, its Dublin members
agreed informally to send the Party & Congress Treasurer (and ideologist),
Thomas Johnson, to Limerick. What was more, after two of the strikers had brought a report of the
situation in the city, they summoned a meeting of the full Executive for
the next day.
This meeting declared that the strike
concerned the workers basic right of travel and it appealed to all workers
and people of the world to support it. But it did not make any
recommendations or call for broadening the strike, preferring to wait
until the bulk of its membership could go to Limerick. This was the beginning of Easter weekend, the next day was Good
Friday and on Easter Monday, both Cassidy and the influential Drapers
Assistants Association leader, Michael O’Lehane, had meetings of their own
unions.
So the Executive decided to remain
inactive until Tuesday the 22nd. However, Saturday’s Voice of Labour
included a stop-press report of the Soviet along with an exhortation to
workers elsewhere to “be ready" to strike in sympathy. Meanwhile,
tendencies were developing to weaken the stoppage.
Worker’s Militancy Increases.
On the 19th, (against the Mayor’s
opposition), the Resident Magistrates appealed to Griffin to extend the
boundaries of the proclaimed area. On Wednesday 23rd April, the Chamber of
Commerce discussed seriously whether its members should organise scab, as
they were beginning to be hurt by the money shortage. They decided against
it for the time being.
On Easter Monday the 21st, a major blow
was delivered in London. H.R. Stockman, speaking on behalf of the British
T.U.C. and, in particular, of those trade unions whose members were
involved in the struggle, declared it to be political and instructed the
said unions accordingly to refuse strike pay to those of their members
that were involved.
This move was denounced the next day by
Sean Cronin. He insisted that the dispute was entirely a labour question
rather than that it was an elementary right to strike for democratic
freedoms. At a higher political level, support from Britain was offered by
the tiny British Socialist Party (later the nucleus of the Communist Party
of Great Britain) and by the Independent Labour Party. Stockman himself
offered subsequently to discuss the matter with the Irish Labour Party.
However, his statement was supported particularly by me Executive of the
National Union of Railwaymen which ordered its Irish members to avoid
action unless it directed it. This was not necessarily a course of action
that was acceptable to the said members, as was shown later by its
delegates at the Drogheda annual meeting of the Irish Labour Party and
T.U.C. It did place further, isolated, onus on that body’s Executive.
While the Strike Committee was attacked
by local bourgeoisie and by British trade union bureaucrats, it had
headaches, also, from its rank and tile. Their militancy increased
steadily. On Saturday, 19th April, there was an incident when a sentry had
to disperse a crowd of boys.
On the following Monday, there was a
more serious affair. A hurling match was held at Caherdavin, on the north
bank of the Shannon, outside the area proclaimed. Many used the opportunity to "trail
their coats". On returning to the city that evening, some 300 individuals
refused to show their permits (or denied possession of such) at
Sarsfield
Bridge check-point. The sentries there were reinforced swiftly by 50
constables and the tank and armoured car. With remarkable discipline, the
protesters paraded in a circle, stopping at the checkpoint only for each
to deny possession of a permit. Later some crossed the river by boat, The
majority, including Thomas Johnson, organised a
midnight concert, dance and supper at St. Munchin’s Temperance Hall in nearby
Thomondgate. The women stayed the night at supporters’ houses, while the
men slept in the Hall or in the open.
The next day, the protesters boarded
a train for Limerick at
Longpavement station and avoided a military cordon at the city terminus by
getting out at the opposite side of the platform to where the troops were
waiting. The garrison was reinforced to prevent a repetition of this
incident. On the 23rd shots were fired by troops at the Munster Fair
Green when people avoided showing permits, but no one was hit. On the same
day too, the army used their guns against a more definite, if alleged,
attempted blockade breaker, but did not kill or wound him.
Another headache for the Strike
Committee was the shortage of money. This was reduced by gills supplied by
outside trades councils and trade unions: the I.T.G.W.U. made up for an
initial failure to send strike pay by giving fl,000 to the strike fund —
not a large sum considering its claim to have 3,500 members in the city. Gifts
were sent by various sympathisers, including the G.A.A. and the Bishop,
the Sinn Féiner, Dr. Michael Fogarty and the clergy of the Killaloe
diocese. Nonetheless, these could help out only to limited extent The
Labour Party and T.U.C. National Executive estimated, later, that £7,000 -
£8,000 per week was needed to maintain the Soviet. Only £l,500 had arrived
when it ended after a fortnight.
The Finance Sub-Committee worked with
Johnson to prepare designs for special bank notes to be issued on the
credit of- Limerick and its Strike Committee. Such notes to the total value of thousands
of pounds were produced in sizes of £l, £5 and IO!-. According to John
McCann, (1946) “this money was accepted by numbers of shopkeepers upon the
promise of redemption by the Trades Council."
Ultimately, these notes were redeemed
leaving a surplus from a fund that had been subscribed to by sympathisers
in all parts of Ireland”. However, other sources suggest that the strike
ended before they could be put into general use. Meanwhile, the stoppage
continued to gain support amongst the workers. On the 23rd, the clerks at
the Union workhouse joined it.
Union Bureaucrats Make Their Move
On Easter Sunday, the 20th, two more
members of the Labour Party National Executive had arrived in Limerick. That night, at the meeting called by Mayor O’Mara, Cronin offered, on
behalf of the Strike Committee, to hand power to them. lf he felt
inadequate, part of the reason was that he knew what had to be done to win
the strike and believed that the National Executive members would be able
and willing to expand the struggle. He had already talked of calling out
the railwaymen; now he declared that the National Executive would make
Limerick the headquarters of Ireland’s
national and social revolution.
The other members of the National
Executive arrived in Limerick over the two days, Tuesday and Wednesday,
22nd and 23rd April. On the latter date, they talked with the Strike
Committee far into the evening. Cronin’s hopes were dashed. The delegation
stated that it had no power to call a national General Strike without the
authority of a special conference of the Party and Congress. In any case,
such a strike could only be for a few days as, in Thomas Farren’s words,
“under the existing state of affairs they were not prepared for the
revolution".
What the delegation proposed, instead,
was at once limited and totally utopian. Johnson is reported as describing
it at Drogheda thus... "that the men and women of Limerick, who, they believed, were
resolved and determined to sacrifice much for the cause they were
lighting, should evacuate their city and leave it as an empty shell in the
hands of the military. They had made arrangements for housing and feeding
the people of Limerick if they
agreed to the Executives proposition. Many of the men in Limerick with
whom they consulted were in favour of that proposition. The Executive then
placed it before the local committee and having argued in favour of it,
left the matter in the committee’s hands. They decided against it. That
was the last word. The Executive did not go to Limerick to take out of the
hands of the Limerick Strike Committee the conduct of their own strike".
What this meant was quite simple. The
Executive was prepared to go to any lengths to avoid confrontation with
the occupying forces lest it alienate unorganised workers whose
recruitment was considered indispensable before Labour could take state
power. Although Limerick was far from the size it is now, it was still
Ireland’s fifth largest city. For the
Labour Party to organise its evacuation would have been an intolerable
burden on it. At the same time, it would not have deterred the British
Army, whose role in Limerick would have become more boring, but certainly simpler.
The only conceivable result of the
proposal would have been to ruin Labour as quickly as the national General
Strike it feared to call, without embarrassing British imperialism in the
least. The limitations of the politics of pure protest have seldom been
more evident. Quite correctly, the Strike Committee rejected this
proposal. Politically, if not elsewhere, nature abhors a vacuum. The left
had failed to use its opportunities. Now the time was ripe for the
strikers’ bourgeois allies to change sides. The evacuation scheme itself
had been inspired by a suggestion from Richard Mulcahy, Chief of Staff of
the Volunteers that the city’s women and children be evacuated. Now his
local supporters took the initiative. The day after the Executive had met
the Strike Committee, the Mayor and the Bishop of Limerick visited General
Grifflin
What happened at this meeting is
unknown. Subsequent events point to them having obtained what might have
been considered a compromise: the Soviet should end and, if for a week
after that, there was not trouble in the proclaimed area, he would
withdraw the Military Permit Order.
Faced with this offer, backed as it was
by the leaders of bourgeois Limerick, spiritual and temporal, deserted by
the National Executive of its organisation, politically, and by now, save
for Johnson, personally, the Strike Committee began to retreat.
Defeat
On the same day as the Mayor and the
Bishop met the General, it declared that strike notices were withdrawn for
those working within the boundary of the proclaimed area. For the others,
the strike would continue. Indeed, Johnson was cheered at a meeting
outside the Mechanic's Institute when he promised a special conference to
discuss the strike. The next day, he called for more financial aid.
However, and especially in Thomondgate
where the workers commuted to their jobs in the proclaimed area, there was
considerable bitterness and copies of the proclamation limiting the strike
were torn down. Many talked of a “second Soviet", threatening to refuse
permits. At Sarsfield Bridge on Saturday, 26th April, demonstrators stopped permit holders from
crossing until they were themselves dispersed by the constabulary. As yet,
only half the strikers had returned to work. The bacon-curing factories
remained closed though this was due in a pig shortage rather than permits;
they were in the proclaimed area, More significantly, the Condensed Milk
Company's factory stay closed.
Hallinan and O’Mara increased their
demands for the total ending of the strike. On the Sunday, in the pulpit
of St. Michael's, Fr William Dwan, denounced the strike as having been
called without consulting the Bishop and clergy. Even without this, the
Strike Committee could not resist the pressure. The Bishop and the Mayor
had at least some scheme of action (or rather, inaction) the Committee had
none. On the same day as Dwan’s attack, it declared the Limerick General
Strike to be at an end.
The next day, save for mills and the
bacon factories, the city was back to normal. Seven days later the
proclamation was withdrawn and permits to enter the area covered by them
were declared unnecessary as from midnight, Sunday-Monday, 4th - 5th May.
On the 10th of the same month, the Chamber of Commerce found the voice
that popular feeling had forced it to suppress. It denounced the Strike
Committee for not consulting it and for not giving adequate notice to the
city’s employers as a whole. It hinted that, had it been asked, it could
have worked with the Trades Council to take (unspecified) joint action
such as would have prevented the "disastrous strike". It remarked that if
it had acted to lock out its members' employees without consultation, the
Trades Council would have "bitterly resented it". Separately, it estimated
the strike as having caused losses of £42,000 in wages, and £250,000 in
turnover.
The Limerick Soviet’s defeat, for such
was what it was in the long run, was caused immediately by the Strike
Committee’s acceptance of bourgeoise leadership. However, this was itself
caused by the refusal of the National Executive of the Labour Party and
T.U.C. to embark on a struggle that might have caused major problems, but
which could have led to the Worker’s Republic.
In his speech to the Party’s Drogheda
Congress, Johnson was to justify this position. "'l here were times when
local people must take on themselves the responsibility of doing things
and taking the consequences, and this, he asserted, was one of them. But
when that action had been taken there must be due consideration given to
any suggestion of an enormous extension of the action. They could never
win a strike by downing tools against the British Army. But there was
always the possibility in Ireland that aggressive action on this side
might prompt aggressive action on the other side of the Channel. It was
for them as an Executive to decide whether this was the moment to act in
Ireland, whether there was a probability of a response in England and
Scotland, and their knowledge of England and Scotland did not lead them to
think that any big action in Ireland would have brought a responsive
movement in those countries.
A General Strike could have been legitimately
called in Ireland on 12 occasions within the last two years. But it was
not a question of justification It was a question of strategy. Were they
to take the enemy’s time or were they to take their own? They knew if the
railwaymen came out the soldiers would have taken on the railways the
next-day. They knew if the soldiers were put on the railways, the railways
would have been blown up. They knew that would have meant armed revolt.
Did they as trade unionists suggest that it was for their Executive to say
such action shall be taken at a particular time, knowing, assured as they
were, that it would have resulted in armed revolt in Ireland? He believed
that it was quite possible that it would be by the action of the Labour
Movement in Ireland that insurrection
would some day be developed. There might be occasion to decide on a down
tools policy which would have the effect of calling out the armed forces
of the Crown. But Limerick was not the
occasion".
Johnson’s assumptions were shared by the
vast majority of delegates present. Only D.H. O’Donnell of the Irish
Clerical and Allied Workers’ Union criticised the strategy that had been
followed. Two notable past and fixture critics of the party’s line, RT.
Daly, former Secretary of the National Executive, and Walter Carpenter of
the International Tailoring Machinists and Pressers Union, (later to be a
founder member of the Communist Party of Ireland) hastened to declare
their support for what had been done. Sean Dowling, Limerick’s I.T.G.W.U.
organiser, offered to second a vote of confidence in the National
Executive. Cronin was not present: doubtless his old suspicions of ‘Dublin
Socialists’ had been revived by his soviet experience and he could see no
point in debating them. Yet, with the benefit of hindsight, the
assumptions that guided this strategy can be seen to be incorrect. They
imply that the Limerick Soviet was a protest, and, more importantly, only
to be kept as a protest. The time for more serious action was not yet (as
Carpenter remarked). But when was it to be?
Johnson, the man who talked of the
labour movement finding its own time was the man whose strategy had kept
it from finding its own time. Now he was concurring in the I.T.G.W.U.’s
obstruction of the Irish Citizen Army without which, as a bare minimum no
time would ever be found that would be truly favourable to Irish labour.
Nor had Johnson any understanding of the political handicap that the
single organisation of the Irish Labour Party and T.U.C. had on the
development of working-class politics. Because of the dead weight
represented by the politics of thousands of raw untrained recruits who had
entered the movement on an industrial basis there was a standing excuse
for the movement’s leadership to avoid any radical political initiative.
One man who tried to deal with this
problem in the form it had taken at Limerick was MJ O’Lehane of the Irish
Drapers’ Assistants’ Association. He put a motion calling for a Special
Conference to give the Executive power to call and veto strikes (including
general strikes), to control propaganda and to pay strikers and lock-out
victims from a special levy.
Despite opposition, mainly from craft
unionists and the railway unions, this motion was carried and forgotten.
O’Lehane himself died early in 1920. In any case, simply giving such power
to the National Executive on its present basis was not the answer to
Labour’s organisational problems. When the grassroots demand was strong
enough, (as with the national General Strike on behalf of the
hunger-strikers the following year), the Executive would take such powers
without apology. Its debility lay in the fact that it was elected by the
delegates of a politically undifferentiated working-class organisation to
lead initiatives that required a politically tested revolutionary party.
So it gave support to Johnson and his
colleagues in a material situation that would prove catastrophically
wrong. Soon would come Tan War, Civil War, national partition and the
weakening of the working class, both nationally and internationally. Even
in the short run, Johnson’s prophecy of the dreadful results of national
political railway strike was to be disproved by the events of the
following year, when Irish railwaymen were to strike work on the munitions
issue in a context far less to their advantage. Neither the Irish Labour
Party nor the trade union movement - before or after its break with the
former - nor indeed the Irish Communist parties have ever come to terms
with this political failure.
As for
Limerick itself; the after
effects of the strike do not give support to the idea that the National
question got in the way of the Social question. Admittedly, there was
some superficial evidence of this. Following immediately on the end of the
strike, Limerick had to be allowed
exemption from the Irish National "holiday” (in effect a general strike)
in celebration of May Day 1919 (The only time this day has been celebrated
thus in Irish history until the 1990s). The city’s workforce accepted
that Limerick needed to get its economy back in order as soon as possible.
Nor did
Limerick see within it such
occupations of workplaces by the employees as occurred in Cork, Waterford
and in various towns in Munster and elsewhere during the succeeding four
years. Its Trades and Labour Council called for the ending of the
Munitions Strike in 19QO before the struggle was finally ended
nationally. It is also true that, when at last the Labour Party and Trade
Union Congress did decide to fight a general election for the third Dail
in June 1923, the Limerick united Trades and Labour Council did not run a
candidate, showing itself to be, in this matter, in line with the
consistent Republicans who opposed the Articles of Agreement.
Yet this evidence is more than negated
by other facts. Certainly the Limerick workers were by no means backward
in the industrial struggles during the remaining period of the War of
Independence and Civil War. Its Trade Council’s defeatist moves came only
a week before the rest of the country, after a six and a half month fight
in which the city had suffered more than any comparable one in the
country. Even more significant than the tactical withdrawal of the
Limerick workers from the May
Day holiday was the fact that, when the Condensed Milk Company’s Lansdowne
employees resumed work, their shop steward continued amongst them without
trouble, his dismissal forgotten by the company.
That the factory was not occupied in May
1922, like the other plants of the Condensed Milk Company was due to the
fact that its workers had been on strike for a month before the issue of
the dismissal notices that provoked the occupations and that Limerick was
garrisoned by the new National (Saorstat) Army which protected the
company’s property more determinedly than did the Anti-Treaty Forces,
elsewhere. The city had an organised unemployment movement and an
organised tenants movement, the latter of which organised the occupation
of houses in Garryowen in 1922. The next year, too, a strike of printers
resulted in Limerick in the strikers running their own Limerick Herald.
That the Trades Council did not contest
the 1922 general election seems to be due as much to its continuing
anti-parliamentary syndicalism (and the stimulus to this by the
spontaneous social struggles of the time) as to any Anti-Treatyite
influence. In 1923, when the workers' class struggles as well as the
national struggle were being defeated, the council ran candidates for the
twenty- six county Dail.
Even though Limerick city and county
were not soon again to play the pre-eminent role played by the city in
April 1919, this was only because they were surpassed, particularly, in
the sphere of class struggle by counties Cork and Tipperary, who were also
republican hotbeds. Limerick does not need to apologise for its Soviet. It was the leadership of
the working class movement that betrayed it (albeit buttressed by the
contemporary form of party organisation). This ensured that the Limerick
Soviet would not have the place in Irish history that its opposite number
in St. Petersburg had in the
history of Russia. Limerick’s fusion of syndicalism and nationalism
embarrassed trade unionists and nationalists alike. Indeed until its
fiftieth anniversary, its Soviet was buried from memory more completely
than the workplace occupations of the period. Between 1920 and l969 only
one chapter of one book (McCann’s War by the Irish) gave it any sort of
detailed treatment. Since 1969, matters have been different. The
seventieth and eightieth anniversary were occasions for celebration in the
city. That was only just; for two short weeks, Limerick had shown Ireland
the vision of the Workers’ Republic.
This 3rd edition of
" The Story of The Limerick Soviet "
is published by
The
Limerick Soviet Commemoration
Committee
Limerick May 2003
This committee was originally set up to
organise a weekend of activity in April 1999 to mark the 80th Anniversary
of the Limerick Soviet. We wish to acknowledge the support of The Lipman Miliband
Trust, a Socialist research and education
organisation. We would also like to acknowledge the
kind and patient support of the late Mary Hennessy of Cratloe.
"This pamphlet is a competent and
workmanlike account of the fourteen days of the Limerick Soviet O ’Connor
Lysaght gives a concise day by day account of the Soviet. Several pages
are devoted to an analysis of the political conditions of its defeat. The
pamphlet is a welcome addition to a small body of work on an important
episode in labour and national history”
Saothar
The Sources of this
work are the contemporary newspapers, The William. O’Brien papers in The
National Library, The Richard Mulcahy papers in the National University,
The minutes of the 25th Annual Meting of the Irish Labour Party and the
TUC., John McCann’s account in War by the Irish (Tralee 1946), Michael
Brennan’s The War In Clare (Dublin 1980) and C. Desmond Graves, The
History of the ITGWU. (Dublin 1982) -
The first edition of this pamphlet was
based on the text of a paper delivered by D.R. O’Connor Lysaght at a
public meeting held in the Mechanic's Institute in Limerick on 27th
September 1979, and published by the Limerick Branch of People’s Democracy
(PD.), Limerick to mark the 60th anniversary of the Soviet.
A revised second
edition was published in April 1981.
This new edition incorporates material
from a paper delivered by D.R. O’Connor Lysaght at the 11th international
Conference of the Soar Valley College Irish Studies Workshop in Leicester,
England on 26th March, 1994
Other publications on the Limerick
Soviet are :-
Liam Cahill, Forgotten Revolution,
Dublin 1991
Jim Kemmy, “The Limerick Soviet" in Limerick Socialist
ll - IX, 1973-74
Typesetting, Cover Illustration and
Print by Eurograf, 27 Mallow St, Limerick
Photography by Fintan Ward
For a general history of the Republic of Ireland, you should read
The Republic of
Ireland written by D.R. 0’Connor Lysaght , published by Mercier Press.
Publications:
Socialism made
Easy. James Connolly,
(with an
introduction by DR. O’Connor Lysaght)
The Communists and
the Irish Revolution, Volume 1,
Edited by DK
O’Connor Lysaght
Prisoners of Social
Patrnership, Craig
The above
publications available from
D.R. O 'Connor
Lysaght, 38 Clanawley Road Killester;
Dublin 5
The Committee wish
to acknowledge the solidarity and
financial support of B.A.T.U. and Mandate
D.R O'Connor Lysaght signing copies of
the 3rd edition.
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