On this day in 1913, the Dublin Lock-Out began as hundreds of tram workers went out on strike, growing into one of most significant industrial disputes in Irish history. It involved ~20,000 workers and 300 colluding employers, and led to the founding of the Irish Citizen Army (ICA) to protect worker demonstrations.
In the years leading up to the strike, the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union (ITGWU) had been seeking to unionize and radicalize the Irish workforce. Founded by socialist revolutionary James Larkin in 1908, the ITGWU was one of the first Irish unions that catered to both skilled and unskilled workers.
In July 1913, three hundred businesses (led by capitalist William Martin Murphy) agreed to not allow the ITGWU to unionize the Dublin workforce. Murphy dismissed hundreds of workers of suspected of union membership soon after.
Many employers in Dublin then locked out their own employees, affecting tens of thousands of Irish workers, many of whom were already the poorest in the United Kingdom.
After outbreaks of violence between striking workers and strike-breakers occurred, James Connolly, Larkin and ex-British Army Captain Jack White formed a worker's militia, the Irish Citizen Army, to protect workers' demonstrations.
The lock-out concluded in early 1914, when the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in Britain rejected Larkin and Connolly's request for a sympathetic strike. Most workers, many of whom were on the brink of starvation, went back to work and signed pledges not to join the ITGWU, which was further weakened when Larkin fled to the United States and James Connolly was executed following the 1916 Easter Rising.
Many of the blacklisted workers joined the British Army, having no other source of pay to support their families, and quickly found themselves in the trenches of World War I. ITGWU eventually recovered and gained strength after WWI; by 1920 the ITGWU was Ireland's largest union with 120,000 members, compared with its pre-war peak of 24,135 at the start of January 1913.
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