Jolly Red Giant
15th June 2010, 23:44
Over the past few days a couple of people have contacted me and asked me to provide some details of the workers soviets in Ireland between 1919-1922. I have added this thread in order to facilitate these requests. As an introduction - I have copied and pasted information from the draft of a much larger body of work. As a result this post in parts will be disjointed and a lot of detail has been removed. I would ask people to understand this when commenting on the thread. I have removed the references for the detail provided in order to reduce the space required, but can provide them if anyone requires them. I am happy to respond to any questions or comments people might have about the information provided.
Ireland was engulfed in a strike wave beginning in 1918 and carrying on throughout 1919. During the two-year period three national general and at least eighteen local general strikes took place. The city of Limerick and the surrounding rural towns and villages were to be a significant player in these developments. From 1918-1992 a pre-revolutionary and then a revolutionary situation developed in Ireland. The story of the revolutionary opportunity that presented itself to the Irish working class has been systematically written out of Irish hostoriography.
The Labour Day protest on the first Sunday in May 1919 saw 15,000 people listen to speeches around three platforms in the Markets Field (a local football ground). An indication of how much class consciousness had developed can be seen from the fact that resolutions were passed paying tribute to ‘our Russian comrades who have waged a magnificent struggle for their social and political emancipation’ and adopting a ten point pledge that concluded ‘…we pledge ourselves in the name of the oppressed of every land in every age to use all means that may be deemed effective to achieve those objectives’. The resolutions and pledges were written by John Dowling, a Marxist and the local industrial organiser for the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU).
April 1919 saw one of the most momentous events in Irish labour history, the Limerick Soviet. The Soviet should not, however, be viewed in isolation. The frequency and intensity of strike activity, particularly involving the ITGWU, increased dramatically in the early months of 1919. In rural areas strikes were breaking out with increasing regularity and incidents of threats and assaults during industrial disputes began to emerge.
Republican speakers and publications regularly dismissed the suggestion that socialism was an option in Ireland. A week before the Limerick Soviet the 'New Ireland' carried an article questioning
‘Can any sane man really advocate the handing over of say, Limerick or Cork to the local Trades Council? A Soviet, as I understand it, is a Council of the local workers, exercising political and economic power…Anyone who knows anything of the inner state of Irish Labour must realise how uneducated and narrow-minded and incompetent the workers are as yet’.
Following the Limerick Soviet of course argument changed somewhat,
‘The Ideal (of a soviet) is a foreign importation…there are very grave religious and ethical problems in the sudden seizure of all political and economic control by a section of the community. Besides these workers are at present quite unfit to carry on the business of the country…’
On 11 April 1919 a prominent local IRA volunteer named Robert Byrne was killed during an attempt to rescue him from imprisonment. His funeral attracted in excess of 10,000 people and was viewed by the British authorities as an act of defiance by the population of Limerick. In response the British military declare Limerick a Special Military Area and imposed a curfew on the city. Workers were obliged to apply for a permit to pass through the military cordon around the city.
The following morning 600 workers, members of the ITGWU and the Irish Commercial Workers Union at the Cleeves plant at Landsdowne on the northside of the city, went on strike in opposition to the imposed permit system. On Sunday 13 April the Limerick United Trades and Labour Council (LUTLC) held a meeting that lasted 11 hours to discuss their response. Driven by the ITGWU delegates the LUTLC called a general strike in the city to begin the following morning. Over the subsequent ten days the Limerick Soviet ran all aspects of life in the city. Sub-committees were established to operate different aspects of the city’s infrastructure. The Soviet controlled which shops would open and the prices charged for goods. All transportation required the permission of the Soviet to operate.
The Soviet also organised for workers outside the city to collect food from the city’s hinterland and smuggle it into the city. Local fishermen smuggled food across the River Shannon at night by boat. There was a massive increase in the number of funerals as funeral hearses were used to smuggle food into the city by day. Alcohol was banned and not a single crime was recorded during the entire duration of the Soviet.
The Soviet was also impacting on the attitude of the soldiers forming the cordon around the city. In the Easter Monday issue of Soviet's newspaper, the "Workers' Bulletin", a writer expressed "the greatest feelings of joy that our fellow Trade Unionists in khaki are refusing to do the dirty work, which is only fit for such invertebrates as the RIC." Occasionally, the "Bulletin" referred to the RIC as "swine", sometimes as the "Royal Irish Swine" or "Royal Irish Cowards". On the other hand, the British soldiers were referred to as "Tommy", who was not the real enemy, merely "a tool of his Imperialistic, Capitalistic Government". A regiment of Scottish troops were removed from the cordon out of fear that they were becoming too friendly with the strikers and a Major in the British army was court-martialled for refusing to carry out work normally done by the RIC.
A political struggle within the Soviet committee also took place. Radical delegates from the ITGWU and ICWU pushed for appeals to be sent to other Trades Councils for solidarity strike action. Transport and dock workers in Dublin and Cork had already blacked goods destined for Limerick. Railworkers, members of the British based NUR offered to take solidarity strike action. However the more conservative leadership of the Soviet insisted on operating through the Irish Labour Party and Trade Union Congress (ILPTUC). Since the formation of the ITGWU in Limerick, the craft unions had manipulated voting rights on the Trades Council to minimise the impact of the ITGWU. They now used this to attempt to sideline the ITGWU during the strike.
Nationally, the leadership of the ITGWU and the ILPTUC (in effect the same people) privately promised to call a nationwide general strike in support of the Limerick Soviet. Publicly they avoided all mention of solidarity action. After a week of the Limerick Soviet the leaders of the ILPTUC proposed a daft plan that the workers of Limerick abandon the city to the British military. The proposal was rejected out of hand by the Soviet strike committee. At this point the Soviet was beginning to run out of steam. Local coal merchants were refusing to release coal supplies for the Soviet. The coal supplies were guarded by troops and the Soviet committee decided against a direct confrontation with the British military authorities.
With the ILPTUC refusing to call a nationwide general strike in support of the Soviet it was inevitable that the Soviet would come to an end. Sinn Fein had been pushing for a compromise since the start of the Soviet and seeing the difficulties now being faced by the workers they upped the ante. The local Sinn Fein mayor and the local Catholic bishop began negotiations to end the strike. The British military authorities agreed to remove the necessity for permits if the strike ended. On 24 April the Soviet Committee called off the strike. When the cessation of the strike was announced several thousand strikers congregated outside the Soviet Committees office demanding a continuation of the strike. Members of the ITGWU went around the city tearing down posters calling an end to the strike and burning them. But the Soviet had lost momentum and within a week all the striking workers had returned to work.
Republican criticism of the strike committee followed. An Phoblacht declared that the leaders had ‘bowed the knee in shameful submission to the army of occupation’. This is despite the fact that the Sinn Féin Mayor, Alphonsus O’Mara, worked with Bishop Hallinan in trying to get the strike committee to call off the strike. The London Times commenting at the end of the strike stated that ‘the collapse did not come before it demonstrated the power of labour to an impressive degree’. Constance Markewicz is quoted at this time as saying ‘Labour will swamp Sinn Féin’. The report received by the United States Secretary of State commented that the ‘Soviet’ was ‘not a trade dispute, not a strike against the military, but purely a labour demonstration of bolshevism served out with a flavour of Sinn Féin’.
In the aftermath of the Limerick Soviet, local ITGWU organiser John Dowling was heavily involved in the continuing labour disputes in rural Limerick. He became a founding member, along with a number of other ITGWU organisers, of the Revolutionary Socialist Party of Ireland (RSP). The RSP was formed in early May in Belfast by Jack Hedley, an English Marxist and a political ally of Dowling. Dowling, who was described as the ‘philosophical begetter’ of the Limerick Soviet, was joined in Limerick in June by another ITGWU organiser and RSP member, Jack McGrath. Between them, Dowling, McGrath and Hedley were to a pivotal role in the industrial disturbances and workplace soviets in Limerick city and county over the next three years.
A series of workplace occupations, threatened occupations and a localised general strike took place in County Limerick between 1920-1922. The first of these was the Knocklong Soviet, beginning on Sunday 16 May 1920 and lasting five days. The occupation of Knocklong Creamery involved workers also occupying twelve auxiliary creameries at Ballinamona, Gormanstown, Kilteely, Elton, Knockcarron, Hospital, Knockaney, Ballingaddy, Kilbreedy, Bilboa, Lisnakilla and Ballylanders. In contrast to the Limerick Soviet, which was to all intents and purposes a spontaneous affair, the Knocklong Soviet was a carefully planned and calculated act. While the occupation was primarily designed to secure an increase in wages and the removal of a hated creamery manager there was also a political dimension to the Knocklong Soviet.
When the Knocklong Soviet began, Jack Hedley, who was now using the pseudonym Sean O’Hagan, was installed as manager. Also in the office with O’Hagan was local ITGWU secretary John O’Dwyer, an employee of the creamery. John Dowling and Jack McGrath were present to ‘watch progress on behalf of the union’. The workers immediately painted the green entrance door red, removed the name-plate, substituting a new one with the inscription ‘The Knocklong Soviet Creamery’ and unfurled a banner with the slogan ‘We Make Butter Not Profit’. The red flag and the tricolour were hoisted over the building. Work continued as normal in the creamery and the auxiliaries. Ninety seven percent of farmers continued to supply the creamery and an output of two tons a day was reached. After several approaches from the owners, the Soviet agreed to hand back the property on the basis of a signed agreement guaranteeing the demanded wages increases, the permanent removal of Riordan, the creamery manager, plus other concessions. The Knocklong Soviet enormously increased the prestige of the ITGWU in the region and John O’Dwyer comments on the increased membership, including women workers, recruited as a result of the Soviet.
Land agitation around Ireland developed to a significant degree particularly during 1920. The ITGWU regularly accused farmers of ignoring or hoodwinking Department of Agriculture inspectors and profiteering by hiking up the price of foodstuffs. The Dáil Ministry for Home Affairs described the situation as ‘a grave danger threatening the foundations of the Republic’ and went on to say:
‘1920 was no ordinary outbreak…an immense rise in the value of land and farm products threw into more vivid relief than ever before the high profits of ranchers, and the hopeless outlook of the landless men and uneconomic holders…All this was a grave menace to the Republic. The mind of the people was being diverted from the struggle for freedom by a class war, and there was every likelihood that this class war might be carried into the ranks of the republican army itself which was drawn in the main from the agricultural population and was largely officered by farmer’s sons…’
Employers were becoming alarmed at the implications of the class nature of the struggle and were becoming particularly annoyed at the failure of the Republican movement to suppress law-breaking and violence during strikes. The Irish Farmers Union advocated the establishment of a body, the Farmers Freedom Force (FFF), intended to provide a ‘permanent organised body in each branch…capable of meeting force by force…in the interests of the country and of the farmer’. In response to agricultural labour strikes the ‘F.F.F. should take action as may be required’. The farmers’ organisations made clear their priority in political terms, ‘the F.F.F. is required as a national bulwark against Labour, Socialism and Bolshevism, irrespective of whatever political developments may take place in the country’.
Writing in the aftermath of the truce in 1921 between the British authorities and the IRA, Constance Markiewicz outlined that:
‘the unemployed are already looking to us to do something towards providing work…one has to face the fact that complaints have come to this office of men of the I.R.A. taking part in labour disputes. Evidence has also come to me that in some areas the workers are not willing to submit to the authority of their Executive and are beginning to get out of hand. What is to be feared in the near future is:- small local outbreaks growing more and more frequent and violent, the immediate result of which will be, destruction of property and much misery which will tend to disrupt the Republican cause’.
This document indicates the difficulty faced by the Dáil Cabinet in mid-1921. During 1921 the cause of labour was threatening to displace the cause of the republic throughout the country.
In August 1921 workers at the Cleeves’ plant in Bruree occupied the Flour Mill and Bakery. The dispute arose over the dismissal of a worker the previous November (three other workers were dismissed subsequently). In February 1921 the union demanded the re-instatement of the sacked workers and the payment of wages while they were laid off. Management refused and the dispute festered until the plant was occupied on 26 August 1921. John Dowling and Jack McGrath were again instrumental in organising the occupation. Local ITGWU representative, Patrick Doherty, was appointed manager. The customary red flag and tricolour were hoisted over the plant and a banner proclaiming ‘Bruree Workers Soviet Mills we make Bread not Profits’ was hung over the entrance. The workers awarded themselves a wage increase of 7s 6d and reduced prices for local people. Work in the flour mill and bakery proceeded with clockwork precision and a continuous stream of customers called to the bakery ‘all of whom seemed to appreciate the change’. Union officials claimed to have doubled the output of the bakery and that extra workers could be employed. The occupation ended as a result of a conference in Liberty Hall, Dublin on 2 September where Constance Markiewicz threatened to use the IRA to remove the workers from the plant. The Limerick Leader commented that, when a reporter visited Bruree the previous Friday, the ‘Soviet’ was found to be in control of the town, ‘both industrially and otherwise’.
The threat of the use of the I.R.A. to remove occupying workers also occurred in relation to the Castleconnell ‘Soviet’ some months later. The dispute at the Castleconnell fisheries, owned by Anthony Mackey a Sinn Fein councillor, had been ongoing for a considerable period. As far back as October 1920, under the threat of a strike notice, Mackey offered to submit to a Republican ‘Dáil Court’ for arbitration in the dispute. However, Mackey repeatedly avoiding attending the arbitration hearings and the workers eventually went on strike on 22 October 1921. The workers occupied the Castleconnell fisheries at the start of December.
On 2 December the Dáil Cabinet sanctioned ‘the Minister for Home Affairs to instruct police to proceed with the aid of volunteers to eject strikers from Mr. Mackey’s premises. Minister for Labour to interview ITGWU officials in the meantime with a view to having an organiser sent down to settle the dispute’. On 12 December Mackey signed an agreement that as soon as the premises was vacated, he would re-employ all the workers without victimisation and fully adhere to the May arbitration award. When the union representative went to hand back the premises the following day he discovered that Mackey intended to replace some of the men who had been on strike. The premises was eventually vacated on 22 December after Mackey agreed to a further round of arbitration that took place on 11 January. The arbitrator’s decision was announced on 18 January and awarded £53 0s 2d to ten men for wages due and a further £81 5s 0d for the five week period of the strike. The ITGWU was ordered to pay Mackey £60 in respect of rent and taxes during the occupation and a further £20 in respect of nominal damages and the use of gear and premises during the occupation.
Both nationally and locally employers were reacting to the economic recession of 1921 by demanding wage reductions and job losses. The suddenness and pace of the advance in the ITGWU since 1917, had lead to a largely independent rank and file. As the slump progressed, this independence of the rank and file was to create problems for the leadership of the union. The ability of the leadership of the ILPTUC and the ITGWU to control the actions of their organisers and of the rank and file became increasingly difficult as they got caught between their verbal support for militancy and their inability and unwillingness to move into direct class conflict with the employers and the Provisional Government. Thomas Johnson and the other Labour leaders, despite delivering speeches which effectively advocated revolution, never actually supported the workplace soviets around the country. Thomas Foran used the soviets at Knocklong and Arigna and other places at ILPTUC conference to promote the syndicalist idea of ‘one big union’ without giving any material support to the occupations. From the middle of 1921 onwards the workplace occupations that occurred were progressively becoming an alternative tactic outside the control of the ILPTUC, rather than playing an auxiliary role in wage disputes. The ability of the trade union movement in Limerick City and County to resist the onslaught of the employers finally rested on two long and very bitter disputes both involving the ITGWU.
The first of these disputes arose as a result of a demand by the ITGWU, on behalf of farm labourers, for the payment of a £4 harvest bonus, submitted to the farmers in the Bulgaden area near Kilmallock. The Republican ‘Dáil’ sent a written request to both parties asking for the case to be submitted to arbitration. The union agreed but the farmers refused. Workers went on strike during the first week of November 1921, but by 9 November widespread strike action and solidarity action was taking place.
At this stage the situation deteriorated rapidly. Workers at the dozen or so creameries in the locality refused to accept milk from the strike-bound farmers and as a consequence the farmers demanded action from the Dáil Cabinet. Bulgaden creamery closed down and shortly afterwards farmers house were raided at night and milk separators that farmers had purchased to process their own milk were dismantled. As a consequence four of the striking workers were arrested by the I.R.A. The ITGWU called a general strike in Kilmallock and 300 workers marched through Kilmallock behind a red flag demanding the release of the strikers. The striking workers took over the running of the town. The following day the workers were released and the general strike ended. The farm labourers strike continued with no prospect of settlement. On the 26 November the Limerick Farmer’s Association held a meeting in the Glentworth Hotel in Limerick and called on ‘all co-operative creameries not to refuse milk from any farmer who is a member of this Union at the dictates of the ITGWU or any outside body’.
Violence and sabotage continued. Sometime during the second week of January a local farmer, Patrick O’Donnell, was kidnapped. On the night of Friday 13 January another kidnapping took place near Mallow, this time of Major Hallinan who was a prominent employer in the Bulgaden area. The following night two lorries carrying IRA troops arrived outside an ITGWU meeting in Kilmallock. Local union organiser Michael Lenihan was asked to step outside where he was bundled into the back of one of the lorries and driven off. Patrick O’Donnell was released about a week after his disappearance with the others being released shortly after.
At this time a deputation from the Irish Farmer’s Union met with Arthur Griffith in Dublin demanding action be taken against the strikers. On 21 January 1922 Donncha O’Hannigan O/C of the East Limerick Brigade I.R.A. had declared martial law. Two hundred I.R.A. men were drafted into the Bulgaden area. Small parties of I.R.A. men protected local farmers and armed IRA troops patrolled the streets of Kilmallock night and day. Talks were organised by Hannigan and held on 23 January. Both sides agreed to submit to arbitration. Towards the end of February twenty cases were heard at the Parish Court in Kilmallock for breach of curfew during martial law and the commandant prosecuted the individuals and imposed nominal fines. The defeat for the strikers was complete when the Arbitration Board, comprising of Dr. Murnane and Sean Moylan Sinn Fein TD (Member of Parliament) and presided over by Rev. Fr. Higgins, issued its findings. The board found that the strike was subversive, that the workers had inadequate grounds for claiming the harvest bonus, rejected the claim for payment for the period of the strike and condemned the ‘wanton and cowardly destruction of property’.
The second dispute, while not involving the same level of violence, was far more widespread and its defeat had a greater impact on the revolutionary consciousness of workers in Munster. During December 1921 the Cleeves owned Condensed Milk Company of Ireland sought lay-offs and wage cuts of one third among its workforce in Limerick, Cork and Tipperary. On 22 December 1921 the ITGWU held a conference in Limerick Junction comprising twenty-three delegates representing the workers in sixty eight creameries owned by Cleeves. Jack McGrath and John Dowling outlined the current level of attacks by employers on dockers, railwaymen and farm workers all over the country. He called on the workers to stand solid and win this dispute. The workers unanimously rejected the proposed cuts in jobs and wages and formed a Workers Committee of Action.
On 3 January 1922 a national conference was organised by the Department of Labour and held at 18 Parnell Square in Dublin. The workers and bosses were located in separate rooms and no progress was made during negotiations. Divisions did appear amongst the ranks of the workers. James Carr who was attending as a representative of the IEU (a right-wing union promoted by Sinn Fein to split the left-wing British based ASE) stated that they were willing to do a deal with the Limerick Federation of Employers. Other craft unions followed suit and it was left to the ITGWU, the Irish Automobile Drivers and Mechanics Union (IADMU) and the ICWU to oppose the employers. All three unions opposed arbitration and the meeting ended with Cunningham, the company secretary of the Condensed Milk Company of Ireland, questioning why the workers would not trust the Republican government.
A strike broke out at the Cleeves plant in Landsdowne on 13 April 1922 . After four weeks, members of the ICWU and the IADMU accepted a wage cut but the ITGWU continued to refuse. As the situation deteriorated, two hundred workers in Clonmel occupied the Cleeves plant on 12 May. Workers in Carrick-On-Suir occupied the Cleeves creamery and the Condensed Milk factory the following day and before the weekend was out, the Cleeves premises in Kilmallock and Knocklong were also under the workers control. Under direction and co-ordination by John Dowling, Jack McGrath and Jack Hedley, the Workers Committee of Action organised widespread occupations. The Munster Soviets comprised of over 120 creameries, bakeries and factories with workers controlling dozens of towns and villages across north and east Munster.
The reaction of the pro-treaty administration was swift. In order to prevent striking workers occupying the Landsdowne plant, troops were placed on guard at the factory. Farmers demanded immediate action. At a meeting in Geary’s Hotel in Limerick, Mr B. Laffan (Sinn Fein leader of Limerick County Council) said that ‘this struggle threatened the very lives and liberties of the farmers’. He claimed that all lawful government was being ignored and he proposed a resolution stating that ‘we forbid our members to supply the red flag, which is the flag of revolution and anarchy…we look for protection from our government to assert our right as free citizens’. A meeting of the Executive of the Irish Farmer’s Union on 18 May took up the demands. The meeting stated that they did not want ‘communism’ in Ireland and delegates claimed that acts of sabotage were being carried out and that farmers were being forced to supply the creameries at gunpoint. Mr. M. Doran stated that ‘if the government would not govern they should be told to get out’, while Rev. Fr. Maguire from Co. Monaghan made an appeal ‘to those responsible for social order to expel those who had invaded private property’.
It must be remembered that these events were occurring precisely at the time that the country was sliding into Civil War. In the initial stages farmers did supply the creameries with full production continuing. Butter was sent to workers co-operatives in Scotland and Wales. The expelled manager at Carrick-on-Suir, J.Nolan, claimed that the pro-treaty administration requested the British Authorities to send a gunboat to intercept the Welsh cargo. The workers expected that the farmers would continue to supply the occupied creameries as workers at unoccupied creameries were refusing to handle diverted milk. In the early hours of 19 May machinery worth £3,000 was destroyed at the Cleeves creamery in Grange, while the Oakleigh Creamery at Caherconlish was burnt down after receiving milk diverted from other plants. However the farmer’s boycott was beginning to bite. Diverted milk, guarded by pro-treaty troops, was delivered to Bridgetown.
At the end of May the workers offered to accept a pay cut of twelve percent, but the company rejected the offer. After repeatedly been forced to back down against the determination of the union Cleeves wanted a final victory. The determination of the company coupled with the unwillingness of the ITGWU national leadership to actively support the workers increased the likelihood that the strike would be defeated. The strike continued for a further month until the strike committee officially called it off at the end of June.
Soviets continued in numerous towns and villages. As the Civil War progressed and Free State troops advanced into Munster, the Government was anxious not only to suppress armed resistance to the Treaty but also to deal decisively with ‘bolshevik’ agitation. One of the first acts of the troops when they arrived in a village or town was to immediately suppress any soviet they found and arrest the strike leaders. No support was forthcoming from an anti-treaty forces who did not want the additional difficulties of having to deal with rebellious workers and were hampered by the fact that the sympathies of many anti-treaty republicans lay with the farmers.
In the aftermath of this period factory occupations ceased as a tactic and the ITGWU struggled to maintain its presence and impact on the local industrial scene. The membership of the ITGWU collapsed. The leadership of the union used the defeats to remove the Marxist organisers who were causing the leadership such problems. The revolutionary consciousness of workers subsided and an opportunity for the emancipation of the Irish working class was lost.
Ireland was engulfed in a strike wave beginning in 1918 and carrying on throughout 1919. During the two-year period three national general and at least eighteen local general strikes took place. The city of Limerick and the surrounding rural towns and villages were to be a significant player in these developments. From 1918-1992 a pre-revolutionary and then a revolutionary situation developed in Ireland. The story of the revolutionary opportunity that presented itself to the Irish working class has been systematically written out of Irish hostoriography.
The Labour Day protest on the first Sunday in May 1919 saw 15,000 people listen to speeches around three platforms in the Markets Field (a local football ground). An indication of how much class consciousness had developed can be seen from the fact that resolutions were passed paying tribute to ‘our Russian comrades who have waged a magnificent struggle for their social and political emancipation’ and adopting a ten point pledge that concluded ‘…we pledge ourselves in the name of the oppressed of every land in every age to use all means that may be deemed effective to achieve those objectives’. The resolutions and pledges were written by John Dowling, a Marxist and the local industrial organiser for the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU).
April 1919 saw one of the most momentous events in Irish labour history, the Limerick Soviet. The Soviet should not, however, be viewed in isolation. The frequency and intensity of strike activity, particularly involving the ITGWU, increased dramatically in the early months of 1919. In rural areas strikes were breaking out with increasing regularity and incidents of threats and assaults during industrial disputes began to emerge.
Republican speakers and publications regularly dismissed the suggestion that socialism was an option in Ireland. A week before the Limerick Soviet the 'New Ireland' carried an article questioning
‘Can any sane man really advocate the handing over of say, Limerick or Cork to the local Trades Council? A Soviet, as I understand it, is a Council of the local workers, exercising political and economic power…Anyone who knows anything of the inner state of Irish Labour must realise how uneducated and narrow-minded and incompetent the workers are as yet’.
Following the Limerick Soviet of course argument changed somewhat,
‘The Ideal (of a soviet) is a foreign importation…there are very grave religious and ethical problems in the sudden seizure of all political and economic control by a section of the community. Besides these workers are at present quite unfit to carry on the business of the country…’
On 11 April 1919 a prominent local IRA volunteer named Robert Byrne was killed during an attempt to rescue him from imprisonment. His funeral attracted in excess of 10,000 people and was viewed by the British authorities as an act of defiance by the population of Limerick. In response the British military declare Limerick a Special Military Area and imposed a curfew on the city. Workers were obliged to apply for a permit to pass through the military cordon around the city.
The following morning 600 workers, members of the ITGWU and the Irish Commercial Workers Union at the Cleeves plant at Landsdowne on the northside of the city, went on strike in opposition to the imposed permit system. On Sunday 13 April the Limerick United Trades and Labour Council (LUTLC) held a meeting that lasted 11 hours to discuss their response. Driven by the ITGWU delegates the LUTLC called a general strike in the city to begin the following morning. Over the subsequent ten days the Limerick Soviet ran all aspects of life in the city. Sub-committees were established to operate different aspects of the city’s infrastructure. The Soviet controlled which shops would open and the prices charged for goods. All transportation required the permission of the Soviet to operate.
The Soviet also organised for workers outside the city to collect food from the city’s hinterland and smuggle it into the city. Local fishermen smuggled food across the River Shannon at night by boat. There was a massive increase in the number of funerals as funeral hearses were used to smuggle food into the city by day. Alcohol was banned and not a single crime was recorded during the entire duration of the Soviet.
The Soviet was also impacting on the attitude of the soldiers forming the cordon around the city. In the Easter Monday issue of Soviet's newspaper, the "Workers' Bulletin", a writer expressed "the greatest feelings of joy that our fellow Trade Unionists in khaki are refusing to do the dirty work, which is only fit for such invertebrates as the RIC." Occasionally, the "Bulletin" referred to the RIC as "swine", sometimes as the "Royal Irish Swine" or "Royal Irish Cowards". On the other hand, the British soldiers were referred to as "Tommy", who was not the real enemy, merely "a tool of his Imperialistic, Capitalistic Government". A regiment of Scottish troops were removed from the cordon out of fear that they were becoming too friendly with the strikers and a Major in the British army was court-martialled for refusing to carry out work normally done by the RIC.
A political struggle within the Soviet committee also took place. Radical delegates from the ITGWU and ICWU pushed for appeals to be sent to other Trades Councils for solidarity strike action. Transport and dock workers in Dublin and Cork had already blacked goods destined for Limerick. Railworkers, members of the British based NUR offered to take solidarity strike action. However the more conservative leadership of the Soviet insisted on operating through the Irish Labour Party and Trade Union Congress (ILPTUC). Since the formation of the ITGWU in Limerick, the craft unions had manipulated voting rights on the Trades Council to minimise the impact of the ITGWU. They now used this to attempt to sideline the ITGWU during the strike.
Nationally, the leadership of the ITGWU and the ILPTUC (in effect the same people) privately promised to call a nationwide general strike in support of the Limerick Soviet. Publicly they avoided all mention of solidarity action. After a week of the Limerick Soviet the leaders of the ILPTUC proposed a daft plan that the workers of Limerick abandon the city to the British military. The proposal was rejected out of hand by the Soviet strike committee. At this point the Soviet was beginning to run out of steam. Local coal merchants were refusing to release coal supplies for the Soviet. The coal supplies were guarded by troops and the Soviet committee decided against a direct confrontation with the British military authorities.
With the ILPTUC refusing to call a nationwide general strike in support of the Soviet it was inevitable that the Soviet would come to an end. Sinn Fein had been pushing for a compromise since the start of the Soviet and seeing the difficulties now being faced by the workers they upped the ante. The local Sinn Fein mayor and the local Catholic bishop began negotiations to end the strike. The British military authorities agreed to remove the necessity for permits if the strike ended. On 24 April the Soviet Committee called off the strike. When the cessation of the strike was announced several thousand strikers congregated outside the Soviet Committees office demanding a continuation of the strike. Members of the ITGWU went around the city tearing down posters calling an end to the strike and burning them. But the Soviet had lost momentum and within a week all the striking workers had returned to work.
Republican criticism of the strike committee followed. An Phoblacht declared that the leaders had ‘bowed the knee in shameful submission to the army of occupation’. This is despite the fact that the Sinn Féin Mayor, Alphonsus O’Mara, worked with Bishop Hallinan in trying to get the strike committee to call off the strike. The London Times commenting at the end of the strike stated that ‘the collapse did not come before it demonstrated the power of labour to an impressive degree’. Constance Markewicz is quoted at this time as saying ‘Labour will swamp Sinn Féin’. The report received by the United States Secretary of State commented that the ‘Soviet’ was ‘not a trade dispute, not a strike against the military, but purely a labour demonstration of bolshevism served out with a flavour of Sinn Féin’.
In the aftermath of the Limerick Soviet, local ITGWU organiser John Dowling was heavily involved in the continuing labour disputes in rural Limerick. He became a founding member, along with a number of other ITGWU organisers, of the Revolutionary Socialist Party of Ireland (RSP). The RSP was formed in early May in Belfast by Jack Hedley, an English Marxist and a political ally of Dowling. Dowling, who was described as the ‘philosophical begetter’ of the Limerick Soviet, was joined in Limerick in June by another ITGWU organiser and RSP member, Jack McGrath. Between them, Dowling, McGrath and Hedley were to a pivotal role in the industrial disturbances and workplace soviets in Limerick city and county over the next three years.
A series of workplace occupations, threatened occupations and a localised general strike took place in County Limerick between 1920-1922. The first of these was the Knocklong Soviet, beginning on Sunday 16 May 1920 and lasting five days. The occupation of Knocklong Creamery involved workers also occupying twelve auxiliary creameries at Ballinamona, Gormanstown, Kilteely, Elton, Knockcarron, Hospital, Knockaney, Ballingaddy, Kilbreedy, Bilboa, Lisnakilla and Ballylanders. In contrast to the Limerick Soviet, which was to all intents and purposes a spontaneous affair, the Knocklong Soviet was a carefully planned and calculated act. While the occupation was primarily designed to secure an increase in wages and the removal of a hated creamery manager there was also a political dimension to the Knocklong Soviet.
When the Knocklong Soviet began, Jack Hedley, who was now using the pseudonym Sean O’Hagan, was installed as manager. Also in the office with O’Hagan was local ITGWU secretary John O’Dwyer, an employee of the creamery. John Dowling and Jack McGrath were present to ‘watch progress on behalf of the union’. The workers immediately painted the green entrance door red, removed the name-plate, substituting a new one with the inscription ‘The Knocklong Soviet Creamery’ and unfurled a banner with the slogan ‘We Make Butter Not Profit’. The red flag and the tricolour were hoisted over the building. Work continued as normal in the creamery and the auxiliaries. Ninety seven percent of farmers continued to supply the creamery and an output of two tons a day was reached. After several approaches from the owners, the Soviet agreed to hand back the property on the basis of a signed agreement guaranteeing the demanded wages increases, the permanent removal of Riordan, the creamery manager, plus other concessions. The Knocklong Soviet enormously increased the prestige of the ITGWU in the region and John O’Dwyer comments on the increased membership, including women workers, recruited as a result of the Soviet.
Land agitation around Ireland developed to a significant degree particularly during 1920. The ITGWU regularly accused farmers of ignoring or hoodwinking Department of Agriculture inspectors and profiteering by hiking up the price of foodstuffs. The Dáil Ministry for Home Affairs described the situation as ‘a grave danger threatening the foundations of the Republic’ and went on to say:
‘1920 was no ordinary outbreak…an immense rise in the value of land and farm products threw into more vivid relief than ever before the high profits of ranchers, and the hopeless outlook of the landless men and uneconomic holders…All this was a grave menace to the Republic. The mind of the people was being diverted from the struggle for freedom by a class war, and there was every likelihood that this class war might be carried into the ranks of the republican army itself which was drawn in the main from the agricultural population and was largely officered by farmer’s sons…’
Employers were becoming alarmed at the implications of the class nature of the struggle and were becoming particularly annoyed at the failure of the Republican movement to suppress law-breaking and violence during strikes. The Irish Farmers Union advocated the establishment of a body, the Farmers Freedom Force (FFF), intended to provide a ‘permanent organised body in each branch…capable of meeting force by force…in the interests of the country and of the farmer’. In response to agricultural labour strikes the ‘F.F.F. should take action as may be required’. The farmers’ organisations made clear their priority in political terms, ‘the F.F.F. is required as a national bulwark against Labour, Socialism and Bolshevism, irrespective of whatever political developments may take place in the country’.
Writing in the aftermath of the truce in 1921 between the British authorities and the IRA, Constance Markiewicz outlined that:
‘the unemployed are already looking to us to do something towards providing work…one has to face the fact that complaints have come to this office of men of the I.R.A. taking part in labour disputes. Evidence has also come to me that in some areas the workers are not willing to submit to the authority of their Executive and are beginning to get out of hand. What is to be feared in the near future is:- small local outbreaks growing more and more frequent and violent, the immediate result of which will be, destruction of property and much misery which will tend to disrupt the Republican cause’.
This document indicates the difficulty faced by the Dáil Cabinet in mid-1921. During 1921 the cause of labour was threatening to displace the cause of the republic throughout the country.
In August 1921 workers at the Cleeves’ plant in Bruree occupied the Flour Mill and Bakery. The dispute arose over the dismissal of a worker the previous November (three other workers were dismissed subsequently). In February 1921 the union demanded the re-instatement of the sacked workers and the payment of wages while they were laid off. Management refused and the dispute festered until the plant was occupied on 26 August 1921. John Dowling and Jack McGrath were again instrumental in organising the occupation. Local ITGWU representative, Patrick Doherty, was appointed manager. The customary red flag and tricolour were hoisted over the plant and a banner proclaiming ‘Bruree Workers Soviet Mills we make Bread not Profits’ was hung over the entrance. The workers awarded themselves a wage increase of 7s 6d and reduced prices for local people. Work in the flour mill and bakery proceeded with clockwork precision and a continuous stream of customers called to the bakery ‘all of whom seemed to appreciate the change’. Union officials claimed to have doubled the output of the bakery and that extra workers could be employed. The occupation ended as a result of a conference in Liberty Hall, Dublin on 2 September where Constance Markiewicz threatened to use the IRA to remove the workers from the plant. The Limerick Leader commented that, when a reporter visited Bruree the previous Friday, the ‘Soviet’ was found to be in control of the town, ‘both industrially and otherwise’.
The threat of the use of the I.R.A. to remove occupying workers also occurred in relation to the Castleconnell ‘Soviet’ some months later. The dispute at the Castleconnell fisheries, owned by Anthony Mackey a Sinn Fein councillor, had been ongoing for a considerable period. As far back as October 1920, under the threat of a strike notice, Mackey offered to submit to a Republican ‘Dáil Court’ for arbitration in the dispute. However, Mackey repeatedly avoiding attending the arbitration hearings and the workers eventually went on strike on 22 October 1921. The workers occupied the Castleconnell fisheries at the start of December.
On 2 December the Dáil Cabinet sanctioned ‘the Minister for Home Affairs to instruct police to proceed with the aid of volunteers to eject strikers from Mr. Mackey’s premises. Minister for Labour to interview ITGWU officials in the meantime with a view to having an organiser sent down to settle the dispute’. On 12 December Mackey signed an agreement that as soon as the premises was vacated, he would re-employ all the workers without victimisation and fully adhere to the May arbitration award. When the union representative went to hand back the premises the following day he discovered that Mackey intended to replace some of the men who had been on strike. The premises was eventually vacated on 22 December after Mackey agreed to a further round of arbitration that took place on 11 January. The arbitrator’s decision was announced on 18 January and awarded £53 0s 2d to ten men for wages due and a further £81 5s 0d for the five week period of the strike. The ITGWU was ordered to pay Mackey £60 in respect of rent and taxes during the occupation and a further £20 in respect of nominal damages and the use of gear and premises during the occupation.
Both nationally and locally employers were reacting to the economic recession of 1921 by demanding wage reductions and job losses. The suddenness and pace of the advance in the ITGWU since 1917, had lead to a largely independent rank and file. As the slump progressed, this independence of the rank and file was to create problems for the leadership of the union. The ability of the leadership of the ILPTUC and the ITGWU to control the actions of their organisers and of the rank and file became increasingly difficult as they got caught between their verbal support for militancy and their inability and unwillingness to move into direct class conflict with the employers and the Provisional Government. Thomas Johnson and the other Labour leaders, despite delivering speeches which effectively advocated revolution, never actually supported the workplace soviets around the country. Thomas Foran used the soviets at Knocklong and Arigna and other places at ILPTUC conference to promote the syndicalist idea of ‘one big union’ without giving any material support to the occupations. From the middle of 1921 onwards the workplace occupations that occurred were progressively becoming an alternative tactic outside the control of the ILPTUC, rather than playing an auxiliary role in wage disputes. The ability of the trade union movement in Limerick City and County to resist the onslaught of the employers finally rested on two long and very bitter disputes both involving the ITGWU.
The first of these disputes arose as a result of a demand by the ITGWU, on behalf of farm labourers, for the payment of a £4 harvest bonus, submitted to the farmers in the Bulgaden area near Kilmallock. The Republican ‘Dáil’ sent a written request to both parties asking for the case to be submitted to arbitration. The union agreed but the farmers refused. Workers went on strike during the first week of November 1921, but by 9 November widespread strike action and solidarity action was taking place.
At this stage the situation deteriorated rapidly. Workers at the dozen or so creameries in the locality refused to accept milk from the strike-bound farmers and as a consequence the farmers demanded action from the Dáil Cabinet. Bulgaden creamery closed down and shortly afterwards farmers house were raided at night and milk separators that farmers had purchased to process their own milk were dismantled. As a consequence four of the striking workers were arrested by the I.R.A. The ITGWU called a general strike in Kilmallock and 300 workers marched through Kilmallock behind a red flag demanding the release of the strikers. The striking workers took over the running of the town. The following day the workers were released and the general strike ended. The farm labourers strike continued with no prospect of settlement. On the 26 November the Limerick Farmer’s Association held a meeting in the Glentworth Hotel in Limerick and called on ‘all co-operative creameries not to refuse milk from any farmer who is a member of this Union at the dictates of the ITGWU or any outside body’.
Violence and sabotage continued. Sometime during the second week of January a local farmer, Patrick O’Donnell, was kidnapped. On the night of Friday 13 January another kidnapping took place near Mallow, this time of Major Hallinan who was a prominent employer in the Bulgaden area. The following night two lorries carrying IRA troops arrived outside an ITGWU meeting in Kilmallock. Local union organiser Michael Lenihan was asked to step outside where he was bundled into the back of one of the lorries and driven off. Patrick O’Donnell was released about a week after his disappearance with the others being released shortly after.
At this time a deputation from the Irish Farmer’s Union met with Arthur Griffith in Dublin demanding action be taken against the strikers. On 21 January 1922 Donncha O’Hannigan O/C of the East Limerick Brigade I.R.A. had declared martial law. Two hundred I.R.A. men were drafted into the Bulgaden area. Small parties of I.R.A. men protected local farmers and armed IRA troops patrolled the streets of Kilmallock night and day. Talks were organised by Hannigan and held on 23 January. Both sides agreed to submit to arbitration. Towards the end of February twenty cases were heard at the Parish Court in Kilmallock for breach of curfew during martial law and the commandant prosecuted the individuals and imposed nominal fines. The defeat for the strikers was complete when the Arbitration Board, comprising of Dr. Murnane and Sean Moylan Sinn Fein TD (Member of Parliament) and presided over by Rev. Fr. Higgins, issued its findings. The board found that the strike was subversive, that the workers had inadequate grounds for claiming the harvest bonus, rejected the claim for payment for the period of the strike and condemned the ‘wanton and cowardly destruction of property’.
The second dispute, while not involving the same level of violence, was far more widespread and its defeat had a greater impact on the revolutionary consciousness of workers in Munster. During December 1921 the Cleeves owned Condensed Milk Company of Ireland sought lay-offs and wage cuts of one third among its workforce in Limerick, Cork and Tipperary. On 22 December 1921 the ITGWU held a conference in Limerick Junction comprising twenty-three delegates representing the workers in sixty eight creameries owned by Cleeves. Jack McGrath and John Dowling outlined the current level of attacks by employers on dockers, railwaymen and farm workers all over the country. He called on the workers to stand solid and win this dispute. The workers unanimously rejected the proposed cuts in jobs and wages and formed a Workers Committee of Action.
On 3 January 1922 a national conference was organised by the Department of Labour and held at 18 Parnell Square in Dublin. The workers and bosses were located in separate rooms and no progress was made during negotiations. Divisions did appear amongst the ranks of the workers. James Carr who was attending as a representative of the IEU (a right-wing union promoted by Sinn Fein to split the left-wing British based ASE) stated that they were willing to do a deal with the Limerick Federation of Employers. Other craft unions followed suit and it was left to the ITGWU, the Irish Automobile Drivers and Mechanics Union (IADMU) and the ICWU to oppose the employers. All three unions opposed arbitration and the meeting ended with Cunningham, the company secretary of the Condensed Milk Company of Ireland, questioning why the workers would not trust the Republican government.
A strike broke out at the Cleeves plant in Landsdowne on 13 April 1922 . After four weeks, members of the ICWU and the IADMU accepted a wage cut but the ITGWU continued to refuse. As the situation deteriorated, two hundred workers in Clonmel occupied the Cleeves plant on 12 May. Workers in Carrick-On-Suir occupied the Cleeves creamery and the Condensed Milk factory the following day and before the weekend was out, the Cleeves premises in Kilmallock and Knocklong were also under the workers control. Under direction and co-ordination by John Dowling, Jack McGrath and Jack Hedley, the Workers Committee of Action organised widespread occupations. The Munster Soviets comprised of over 120 creameries, bakeries and factories with workers controlling dozens of towns and villages across north and east Munster.
The reaction of the pro-treaty administration was swift. In order to prevent striking workers occupying the Landsdowne plant, troops were placed on guard at the factory. Farmers demanded immediate action. At a meeting in Geary’s Hotel in Limerick, Mr B. Laffan (Sinn Fein leader of Limerick County Council) said that ‘this struggle threatened the very lives and liberties of the farmers’. He claimed that all lawful government was being ignored and he proposed a resolution stating that ‘we forbid our members to supply the red flag, which is the flag of revolution and anarchy…we look for protection from our government to assert our right as free citizens’. A meeting of the Executive of the Irish Farmer’s Union on 18 May took up the demands. The meeting stated that they did not want ‘communism’ in Ireland and delegates claimed that acts of sabotage were being carried out and that farmers were being forced to supply the creameries at gunpoint. Mr. M. Doran stated that ‘if the government would not govern they should be told to get out’, while Rev. Fr. Maguire from Co. Monaghan made an appeal ‘to those responsible for social order to expel those who had invaded private property’.
It must be remembered that these events were occurring precisely at the time that the country was sliding into Civil War. In the initial stages farmers did supply the creameries with full production continuing. Butter was sent to workers co-operatives in Scotland and Wales. The expelled manager at Carrick-on-Suir, J.Nolan, claimed that the pro-treaty administration requested the British Authorities to send a gunboat to intercept the Welsh cargo. The workers expected that the farmers would continue to supply the occupied creameries as workers at unoccupied creameries were refusing to handle diverted milk. In the early hours of 19 May machinery worth £3,000 was destroyed at the Cleeves creamery in Grange, while the Oakleigh Creamery at Caherconlish was burnt down after receiving milk diverted from other plants. However the farmer’s boycott was beginning to bite. Diverted milk, guarded by pro-treaty troops, was delivered to Bridgetown.
At the end of May the workers offered to accept a pay cut of twelve percent, but the company rejected the offer. After repeatedly been forced to back down against the determination of the union Cleeves wanted a final victory. The determination of the company coupled with the unwillingness of the ITGWU national leadership to actively support the workers increased the likelihood that the strike would be defeated. The strike continued for a further month until the strike committee officially called it off at the end of June.
Soviets continued in numerous towns and villages. As the Civil War progressed and Free State troops advanced into Munster, the Government was anxious not only to suppress armed resistance to the Treaty but also to deal decisively with ‘bolshevik’ agitation. One of the first acts of the troops when they arrived in a village or town was to immediately suppress any soviet they found and arrest the strike leaders. No support was forthcoming from an anti-treaty forces who did not want the additional difficulties of having to deal with rebellious workers and were hampered by the fact that the sympathies of many anti-treaty republicans lay with the farmers.
In the aftermath of this period factory occupations ceased as a tactic and the ITGWU struggled to maintain its presence and impact on the local industrial scene. The membership of the ITGWU collapsed. The leadership of the union used the defeats to remove the Marxist organisers who were causing the leadership such problems. The revolutionary consciousness of workers subsided and an opportunity for the emancipation of the Irish working class was lost.