A brave stand of passive resistance
In May 1920, two veterans of the Easter Rising in 1916 initiated industrial action which led to the biggest campaign of passive resistance during the Irish War of Independence.
On 20th May, Michael Donnelly, an Irish Citizen Army man, a deep sea docker and a 1916 veteran walked into Liberty Hall, and told William O’Brien about a shipload of military lorries waiting to be unloaded at the North Wall.
The Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU) blacked the ship and the British Army had to unload it. The action spread to the railway on the following Sunday.
A ship had been unloaded into railway wagons by soldiers at the Admiralty wharf in Dún Laoghaire (then Kingstown). Christopher Moran, another 1916 veteran was instructed to act as a guard on the train of unloaded wagons which was scheduled to run to Fermoy, Co Cork. Moran refused, as did his colleagues. When interviewed by the traffic manager he said he was acting in accordance with his union’s policy.
Earlier in May, the National Union of Railwaymen directed members not to handle any material intended to assist the Polish campaign against the new Bolshevik state. Irish dockers and railwaymen applied this circular to the circumstances of Ireland and were supported by the Congress who organised a strike fund which raised the equivalent of five million pounds in today’s money.
It was a strange strike, as those who refused to work trains were dismissed.
Their colleagues accepted this, and remained on the payroll. The Irish railway system was run by about thirty private companies, but the four big companies which served Dublin were predominant. However, these companies were still under emergency wartime government control. Railway management were beholden to government.
In the months of June and July, proposals emerged for a mass dismissal of railwaymen, but managements enthusiasm for this policy diminished in late July. On 29 July, The Squad paid a visit to Westland Row (Pearse) station and shot the Chairman of the Dublin and South Eastern Railway.
The action spread rapidly to the provinces and by early July 1920 there was widespread dislocation of the rail system. As the summer progressed Limerick lost most of its rail services, as did Kerry.
There were no passenger trains on the Mayo line west of Athlone, and the lines in West Cork to Bantry and Skibbereen were similarly affected. By August, between 900 and 1,000 railwaymen had been dismissed. The military reacted by refusing to disembark from the stalled trains, thus paralysing much of the railway network.
The strike received the support of railway workers in the south and west. On the Great Northern Railway whose headquarters were in Amiens Street (Connolly) but which operated mainly in Ulster, the application of the strike was patchy. Incidents of intimidation of railway workers were most common in south and west Ulster. Train crews of loyalist political views were happy to work military traffic .
From early autumn, the British adopted a policy of shutting down the railway system and began to order the closure of certain lines. Given the state of Irish roads and the unreliable nature of lorries and cars, this would have shut down much of the country’s economy, together with food distribution.
Given the threat by the British to close the entire railway system a special conference was organised by the Irish Labour Party & Trade Union Congress in November 1920. This was followed by a delegate conference of railwaymen in December which decided to accept all traffic offering.
There was a no victimisation agreement, and all those dismissed men were reinstated. The Transport Act of 1944 which established Córas Iompair Éireann (CIE) provided that time spent dismissed during the munitions strike would be pensionable service.
At a tactical level, while the strike was defeated, according to General Macready, the boycott had proved ‘a serious set-back for military activities during the best season of the year’.
The strike was significant at a strategic level.
The struggle for independence contained a number of elements of which the IRA campaign was just one. Of equal importance were the Dáil Courts, and County Councils transferring allegiance to the Dáil.
This was about legitimacy and who was in control of Ireland.
The actions in 1920 of the Irish railwaymen and their unions give a vivid illustration of the erosion of British control in Ireland.
*This article was written by author and railway archivist Peter Rigney
