Anniversary of the Dublin Lockout

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From  Mick Gilgunn  –  DUBLIN LOCK OUT CENTENARY EVENT IN LONDON

HI Comrades,

                    This year marks the centenary of the Dublin Lock out. A number of people,(including myself) have come together to hold an event in London on 24th August. Please see attachment .There have been a number of events in Glasgow, Manchester , Liverpool and notably Dublin,as well as other activities in Ireland marking the 6 month Lock out….There is a special event in Dublin on August 31st which I will be updating on.

The event in London takes place on 24th August at Conway Hall and is a day conference celebrating the Dublin Lock out of 1913, looking at the history and linking it with struggles in Ireland now and immigration of the Irish community in Britain.

Both Britain and Ireland went through a militant Trade Union movement period in history in the years of 1911 -1914, only to be interrupted by an imperialist war……a war that was summed up by a banner at Dublin's Liberty Hall (Irish Transport & General workers union and headquarters of the Irish Citizen Army)….."We serve neither King nor Kaiser, But an Irish Republic"

I will be posting some historical background to the Dublin Lock out 1913 in the built up to the events in Both London and Dublin……please pass on

"Remember Our Past, Organise Our Future"

Mick Gilgunn, Secretary, Islington Trades Union Council

[ALB]

Quote:

……a war that was summed up by a banner at Dublin's Liberty Hall (Irish Transport & General workers union and headquarters of the Irish Citizen Army)….."We serve neither King nor Kaiser, But an Irish Republic."

That slogan represented a derailment of the workers' movement in Ireland from the basic trade unionism expressed in resistance to the Dublin Lockout of 1913 into Irish nationalism, the "Irish Republic" in question being an independent Irish capitalist state.Now if the banner had proclaimed "We serve neither King nor Kaiser, But Internationalism Socialism" …. but it didn't.

[ALB]

I went to a meeting of Labour Heritage (a Labour Party history group) yesterday. One of the talks was by Ivan Gibbons,  Director of Irish Studies at St. Mary's University College in Twickenham, on "The Dublin Lockout of 1913 and its impact on the future of Labour in Ireland". It was quite an impressive analysis which punctured Irish leftwing Republican mythology both about the lockout and about James Connolly. Its main points can be found here:http://www.labour-heritage.com/Bulletin%20Autumn%202013.pdfHe also, perhaps inadvertently, brought out that, from the point of view of the material conditions of the working class, Irish "independence" made things worse. As he points out in the article, even before independence the IRA had sought to suppress labour unrest in the west of Ireland and one of the first acts of the Irish Free State was to use its new army to break a postal workers strike (its second act was to abolish divorce). A few years later pensions and other benefits were cut because the new State could not afford to keep paying them at the same level as in rest of the British Isles. There must be a lesson here for those who support Scottish "independence" on leftwing or "socialist" grounds.

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