Striking against war in the trenches
In 1915 James Connolly wrote that a general strike would have prevented the bloodbath that was then enveloping Europe:
“As workers, they were indeed in control of the forces of production and distribution, and by exercising that control over the transport service could have made the war impossible.”
This did not happen in Ireland or anywhere else in Connolly’s lifetime. More than 200,000 Irishmen served in British forces during the war. In part as protest, Connolly threw in his lot with the Republican insurgents of 1916 and was executed as a result.
But just two years later, Irish workers did with a general strike halt an attempt by the British government to extend conscription to Ireland in its tracks.
The general strike of 1918 became possible due to the rapid wartime growth of the ITGWU, from just 5,000 members after the Lockout of 1913 to more than 60,000 by 1918 as workers, both urban and rural, tried to bring wages up to the level of rising wartime food prices and inflation.
What was more, by this time Ireland was also in political turmoil. British rule had been fatally compromised by the repression unleashed by the rebellion, but even more so by the threat to impose conscription on to Ireland in the spring of 1918 following the German offensive of that year. By 1918, there was little appetite for more war in Ireland and virtually none for conscription.
All the nationalist parties campaigned against it, including Sinn Fein and the Irish Parliamentary Party, which withdrew from Westminster in protest. The Irish Volunteers, hugely increased in numbers but largely disarmed since the Rising, prepared to resist it.
But it was the action of the trade unions which did most to defeat conscription. The Irish Trade Union Congress called a one day general strike against the imposition of conscription and brought the country to a standstill on 23rd April, 1918 — the largest strike to date in Irish history.
Everywhere outside of unionist dominated Belfast, the country lurched to a halt; transport, even the munitions factories set up for the war ceased work for the day.
Cumann na mBan, the republican women’s movement also called a day of protest, lá na mban (‘the Striking against war in the trenches day of women’) in which they urged women not to take the jobs of men conscripted for the army.
Not long afterwards the British government let the Conscription Act lapse. The general strike had demonstrated that more troops would be needed to implement conscription in Ireland than would be gained from the draft.
Irish labour had struck a decisive blow against the war and for Irish independence
This article appeared in February/March issue of Liberty and was written by John Dorney from The Irish Story. Read more of John’s work here
