Poverty and housing Many of Dublin's workers lived in terrible conditions in
tenements. For example, over 830 people lived in just 15 houses in
Henrietta Street's Georgian tenements. At 10 Henrietta Street, the
Irish Sisters of Charity ran a
Magdalene laundry that was inhabited by more than 50 single women. An estimated four million pledges were taken in pawnbrokers every year. The
infant mortality rate among the poor was 142 per 1,000 births, extraordinarily high for a European city. The situation was made considerably worse by the high rate of disease in the slums, which was worsened by the lack of health care and cramped living conditions. The most prevalent disease in the Dublin slums at the time was
tuberculosis (TB), which spread through tenements very quickly and caused many deaths among the poor. A report, published in 1912, found that TB-related deaths in Ireland were 50% higher than in
England or
Scotland. The vast majority of TB-related deaths in Ireland occurred among the poorer classes. The report updated a 1903 study by Dr
John Lumsden. Poverty was perpetuated in Dublin by the lack of work for unskilled workers, who did not have any form of representation before trade unions were founded. The unskilled workers often had to compete with one another for work every day, with the job generally going to whoever agreed to work for the lowest wages.
James Larkin and formation of ITGWU James Larkin, the main protagonist on the side of the workers in the dispute, was a
docker in
Liverpool and a union organiser. In 1907, he was sent to
Belfast as a local organiser of the British-based
National Union of Dock Labourers (NUDL). In Belfast, Larkin organised a
strike of dock and transport workers. It was also in Belfast that Larkin began to use the tactic of the
sympathetic strike in which workers who were not directly involved in an industrial dispute with employers would go on strike in support of other workers, who were striking. The Belfast strike was moderately successful and boosted Larkin's standing among Irish workers. However, his tactics were highly controversial and so Larkin was transferred to Dublin. Unskilled workers in Dublin were very much at the mercy of their employers. Employers who suspected workers of trying to organise themselves could
blacklist them to destroy, in practice, their ability to gain future employment. Larkin set about organising the unskilled workers of Dublin, which was a cause of concern for the NUDL, which was reluctant to engage in a full-scale industrial dispute with the powerful Dublin employers. It suspended Larkin from the NUDL in 1908. Larkin then left the NUDL and set up an Irish union, the
Irish Transport and General Workers' Union (ITGWU). The ITGWU was the first Irish trade union to cater for both skilled and unskilled workers. In its first few months, it quickly gained popularity and soon spread to other Irish cities. The ITGWU was used as a vehicle for Larkin's
syndicalist views. He believed in bringing about a
socialist revolution by the establishment of trade unions and calling
general strikes. The ITGWU initially lost several strikes between 1908 and 1910 but after 1913 won strikes involving carters and railway workers like the
1913 Sligo dock strike. Between 1911 and 1913, membership of the ITGWU rose from 4,000 to 10,000, to the alarm of employers. Larkin had learned from the methods of the 1910
Tonypandy riots and the
1911 Liverpool general transport strike.
Larkin, Connolly and Irish Labour Party Another important figure in the rise of an organised workers' movement in Ireland at the time was
James Connolly, an
Edinburgh-born
Marxist of Irish parentage. A talented orator and a fine writer, he became known for his speeches on the streets of Dublin in support of socialism and Irish nationalism. In 1896, Connolly established the
Irish Socialist Republican Party and the newspaper ''The Workers' Republic''. In 1911, Connolly was appointed the ITGWU's Belfast organiser. In 1912, Connolly and Larkin formed the
Irish Labour Party to represent workers in the imminent
Home Rule Bill debate in the
British Parliament. Home rule, although passed in the House of Commons, was postponed by the start of the
First World War. The plan was then suspended for one year, then indefinitely, after the rise of
militant nationalism after the
1916 Rising.
William Martin Murphy and employers preying over
James Larkin. Among the employers in Ireland opposed to trade unions such as Larkin's ITGWU was
William Martin Murphy, Ireland's most prominent capitalist, born in
Castletownbere,
County Cork. In 1913, Murphy was chairman of the
Dublin United Tramway Company and owned Clery's department store and the
Imperial Hotel. He controlled the
Irish Independent,
Evening Herald and
The Irish Catholic newspapers and was a major shareholder in the
B&I Line. Murphy was also a prominent
Irish nationalist and a former
Home Rule MP in Parliament. Even today, Murphy's defenders insist that he was a charitable man and a good employer and that his workers received fair wages. However, conditions in his many enterprises were often poor or worse, with employees given only one day off in 10 and being forced to labour up to 17 hours a day. Dublin tramway workers were paid substantially less than their counterparts in Belfast and Liverpool and were subjected to a regime of punitive fines, probationary periods extending for as long as six years and a culture of company surveillance involving the widespread use of informers. Murphy was not opposed in principle to trade unions, particularly craft unions, but he was vehemently opposed to the ITGWU and saw its leader, Larkin, as a dangerous revolutionary. In July 1913, Murphy presided over a meeting of 300 employers during which a collective response to the rise of trade unionism was agreed. Murphy and the employers were determined not to allow the ITGWU to unionise the Dublin workforce. On 15 August, Murphy dismissed 40 workers whom he suspected of ITGWU membership, followed by another 300 over the next week. ==Middle==