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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  • GalaxyBrain [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    10·
    4 days ago

    Got back on the Discworld train for the first time since I was a teenager. I havent had so much fun reading in a long time. Guards! Guards! Is fantastic, I had only read Death and wizards stuff as a kid. I am soooo hooked on The Watch. This is such s joy to read

    • isame [he/him, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      5·
      3 days ago

      I hadn’t read them at all and then at some point in my late 20s I was on one of my random reading streaks and discovered them. I proceeded to read everything. Every last Discworld book, of which there are like 40. My memory is bad so I don’t remember a lot of the details, but I can obviously highly recommend all of it. I particularly love the Rincewind and Tiffany Aching storylines.

      • GalaxyBrain [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        2·
        3 days ago

        I already knew id really enjoy it, i watch The Hogfather mini series every December and was already familiar and has read a few as a kid. It was one of those things I already knew was completely up my alley, I am super picky about British shit and this hits exactly despite, I dont like Hitchhiker’s Guide that much cause it feels like its being clever for the sake of it and the satire is super shallow. I am 75 pages into Guards! Guards! And it doesnt have the self satisfied vibe i get from Adams. I am pro Monty Python, Blake’s 7 and The Young Ones. I am anti Hitchhikers Guide, Doctor Who and Shaun of the Dead. These are weird distinctions but I stand by them.

        I’m also really stoked to finish this do i can lend it to my pal who says he is primarily a fantasy fan but after 5 years of working together I can say his interests in fantasy start and end at DnD. I am an advertised non fantasy fan and I have enjoyed more fantasy than he has read. He didnt know who Brandon Sanderson is, never heard of Discworld when the topic of favorite Christmas special came up, hasn’t read Tolkien. His favorite movie is The Princess Bride, which is a great choice, but he didnt know it was based on a book. However he has written more than he has read and we collab on his DnD campaigns cause im s medivalism nerd and also sometimes just have cool ideas like a dungeon that is also a jenga tower beong played by giants. We have an ongoing thing based on a super old YouTube thing called Fantasy Fiction where each week 2 people wrote a fantasy story based on 2 randomly selected prompts from the comments. Prompts were sruff like ‘spears’, ‘amulets’, skeletons, castles and they’d pick 2 at random to bith write say A Tale of Skeletons and Amulets where that story needed both. Terry is like…the S rank version of how I write my stories. I use so many footnotes and written puns that dont work when spoken and written puns you miss unless theyre resd out loud and the frequent class commentary. I didnt know how amazing he was at it until now. I took it from Dave Barry