1907 Belfast Dock strike

Belfast in the early 20th-century was a flourishing centre of industry with shipbuilding, engineering and linen-manufacturing the main sources of the city's economic lifeblood. Its skilled workforce of shipyard workers and engineers earned wages and enjoyed working conditions comparable with the rest of the United Kingdom. Additionally, they enjoyed the security of trade union membership. For the unskilled workers, such as dock labourers and carters, it was a completely different story. They worked up to 75 hours a week in conditions which were dangerous and unsanitary, without holidays. The pay was low and employment was erratic and uncertain. Unlike the skilled workers, these labourers had no trade union to look after their interests. The men who worked in the docks lived in Sailortown, a community adjacent to the Docks which had a population of 5,000, excluding the transient sailors who swelled the numbers. This mixed Protestant and Catholic populace was packed into tiny streets of red-bricked terraced houses that were built between the docks and York Street. They were damp, airless, overcrowded and poorly lit. Poverty, hunger and disease was rife. Women and children were compelled to work long, arduous hours in the linen mills and cigarette factories. Most families in Sailortown had men who were merchant seamen; with boys as young as 14 going off to sea. The other men obtained unskilled work on the waterfront as dockers, carters and coal heavers. organiser of the Dock strike By this time there were 3,100 dock labourers, 2,000 of whom were casual workers or "spellsmen" hired on a daily basis at low pay. Whilst Protestants and Catholics held the same jobs, the sectarian attitudes which dominated every aspect of life in Belfast ensured that Protestant dockers worked in the cross-channel docks where employment was more regular whilst Catholic dockers were made to work in the more dangerous deep sea docks, where the casualty rate was the highest. They were also the first to be laid off when labour cutbacks were required. Author John Gray in his book, City in Revolt: James Larkin and the Belfast Dock Strike of 1907 described the differences in wages earnings and the standard of living between the skilled and unskilled workers as "a yawning abyss, unequalled anywhere else in the United Kingdom". It was into this environment and social milieu that trade union leader James Larkin (a Liverpool-born Irish Catholic) arrived in January 1907. He was sent to Belfast by James Sexton, head of the National Union of Dock Labourers (NUDL), with the aim of bringing the dock workers and carters into the union. Addressing crowds of people on the steps of Belfast's Custom House, he vociferously articulated the grievances of the working classes. Due to his charismatic personality and considerable oratorial skill, Larkin succeeded in unionising the unskilled Protestant and Catholic workers. ==The lockout==

By April 1907, Larkin had recruited 2,000 workers into the NUDL union; in May the number had reached 4,500. The women, however, were compelled to return to work the following day. Although Larkin had called on them to join a trade union, neither the NUDL nor any other trade union could admit such a high number of new members at one time. Additionally, no financial assistance was available to the women, many of whom had families to support. Thomas Gallaher refused to recognise the NUDL and had hundreds of blackleg dockers working on Donegall Quay under the protection of the RIC and troops deployed by Belfast's Lord Mayor Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 9th Earl of Shaftesbury. Larkin denounced Gallaher in speeches as an "obscene scoundrel". The politicians inside City Hall had to perforce admit a delegation of dockers to their meeting, but they would not make any concessions. Gallaher and the other employers had no means of getting their merchandise out of the port. The Belfast Newsletter commented on the situation with the following words: "It was remarkable to see the stagnation which existed from the Custom House to the Clarendon Dock. With the exception of an isolated van or lorry driven by the obvious amateur, there was scarcely a sign of life or movement". That July Belfast experienced the most unusual Twelfth ever witnessed before or since. Instead of the traditional rioting and sectarian clashes which typically accompanied the Orange Order parades, the strike leaders gave public speeches defending the workers' interests against all forms of sectarianism. On the Shankill Road, a Protestant area of the city and a regular scene of sectarian clashes, on 26 July 100,000 workers marched in support of the strike in a parade that featured flute bands from both Unionist and Nationalist traditions, a very rare occurrence. The parade ended at a mass rally held outside City Hall, where 200,000 demonstrators had gathered. Although it involved members of both the Protestant and Catholic communities, the Irish Unionist Alliance establishment opposed the strike and subjected Larkin to a sectarian campaign of condemnation, aimed largely at coaxing Protestant workers away from the strike. Crawford encouraged workers to stand firm for the sake not only of organised labour, but also of "the unity of all Irishmen". Police mutiny escorting a convoy of traction engines driven by blackleg carters along Royal Avenue in central Belfast The police mutiny broke out when the RIC were ordered to play a more participative role during their routine escort of traction engines driven by blackleg carters through the city. Blackleg carters had been recruited to drive the traction engines that had been sent to Belfast to deliver the goods which had been unable to leave the port due to the striking carters. The traction engines, equipped with makeshift armour, were almost always blocked en route by flying pickets. The RIC were enlisted to provide an escort for the blackleg carters, who constantly came under attack. In one incident in East Belfast, a crowd of shipyard workers threw a telegraph pole at a blackleg carter and his traction engine. The merchandise he had been transporting ended up in the nearby Connswater River. The policemen, however, received no extra pay for the hazardous duty which left them vulnerable to attack nor for the regular breaking up of strikers' pickets; both of which threatened to alienate them from their own communities, and in some cases their own families. On 19 July, RIC Constable William Barrett refused to sit beside the blackleg driver of a traction engine who had been promised personal police protection by his employer. After flatly refusing to obey District Inspector Thomas Keaveney when the latter ordered him to accompany the driver, he was promptly suspended. At the request of the Lord Mayor, extra British Army troops and cavalry were immediately deployed to Belfast to restore order, taking command of strategic areas such as the Docks and city centre; The Dock strike was ultimately ended on 28 August not by Larkin but by James Sexton, the overall head of the NUDL in Britain and Ireland. Sexton found the 10 shillings a week strike payments that had to be made to the dockers crippling high and, fearing that the union might be bankrupted, negotiated with the employers before agreeing to terms that amounted to capitulation by the NUDL. These separate negotiations with the other employers left the dock labourers isolated. In the weeks leading up to the strike's termination, the Unionist press had begun to employ scare-mongering and other divisive methods to alienate the Protestant strikers from their Catholic counterparts by alluding to Irish nationalism and socialism. It also published allegations that although the Protestant strikers had largely borne the brunt of the hardships that ensued during the strike, the Catholic strikers had received larger cash payouts by the Dockers' and Carters' Strike Fund. The Irish Home Rule Movement, which had been put aside during the lockout, once again emerged as a potential threat to Irish Unionists. In mid-August during the course of a riot in the lower Falls Road, two Catholics were killed by soldiers. This struck a serious blow to working-class unity. Despite the removal of the Army from the Falls Road area the following day, working-class solidarity was damaged beyond repair. Future Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) gunrunner Frederick Crawford expressed the following sentiments in a letter he wrote to a friend regarding the Falls Road riot: "what a blessing all the rioting took place in the Catholic quarter of the city. This branded the whole thing a nationalist movement". The Belfast Telegraph, as well as Unionist and Nationalist politicians, quickly took the opportunity to exploit the centuries-old sectarian divisions and the two striking groups inevitably drifted back into their former sectarian camps. ==Legacy==

The defeat of the strike saw a move towards a more Irish-based trade unionism, with the Irish Transport & General Workers Union (ITGWU) established the following year in response to the events of Belfast. This also helped to ensure a significant increase in trade union membership amongst northern Catholics, who before the strike had tended to be less unionised than their Protestant counterparts. For Larkin the strike was seen as something of a triumph despite its unsatisfactory ending and it had served to establish his reputation. He would move south the following year and found that the authorities were frequently loath to confront him, given his tough reputation and the spectre of the police mutiny that had accompanied the Belfast strike. As a result, Larkin enjoyed a high success rate in labour disputes until the Dublin Lock-out of 1913. The Sligo Dock strike of 1913 was one example of these successes. The industrial action attracted much attention, including that of John Maclean, a Scottish Marxist who came to prominence as a leader of the Red Clydeside group. Maclean was in Belfast from 1 to 3 August along with Victor Grayson and he spoke before large crowds of striking workers. Maclean was impressed by what he saw in Belfast, feeling that the strike would represent the moment in which sectarian divisions were put aside in favour of working class unity in Ireland. Furthermore, his brief time in Belfast reinvigorated his enthusiasm for the trade union movement. From his base in Glasgow Maclean had become disillusioned with trade unionism as the Glasgow dockers' unions were small and made up only of highly skilled workers who adopted the superior attitude of a "labour aristocracy". However the Belfast unions had a mass membership and for Maclean this pointed the way forward for unions as instruments of real social change and as such he took up his pen in support of the Belfast strike. Maclean would later become an enthusiastic supporter of Irish nationalism, and in declaring his support for the First Dáil he suggested that it was the culmination of a new struggle that had begun with the 1907 Dock strike. Former Irish Labour Party leader Ruairi Quinn described the Belfast Dock strike as having been a "major event in the early years of the trade union movement". In Belfast and Dublin, statues of James Larkin were erected in his honour. To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the event, a stained glass window depicting the dock strike was unveiled at Belfast City Hall by the Lord Mayor, Pat McCarthy. ==In film==

The Belfast Dock strike featured in the 2012 television series Titanic: Blood and Steel; however, it contained many glaring historical inaccuracies. ==References==