First Up, This From The Press Release:
It is 100 years this year since the start of the great Dublin Lockout, when members of ‘Big’ Jim Larkin’s Transport Union walked off the trams of the Dublin United Tramway Company (DUTC) over the refusal of then DUTC chairman (and leading shareholder) William Martin ‘Tramway’ Murphy to allow some workers to join the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union.
Glasnevin Cemetery is the final resting place of many of the men and women who were to witness this great event in Irish Labour history. The Lockout saw 20,000 Irish workers being locked out of their workplaces, due to industrial conflict between them and their employers.
The bit that you might like - note the last day is tomorrow - yeah I know it’s late an’ all, I was in a garden:
Re-enactments will be daily 26th - 31st Aug at 2.30pm.
To mark 100 years since the 1913 Lockout. Glasnevin Museum and Cemetery will have daily Re-enactments of James Larkin’s famous speech to the Dublin workers “The great only appear great because we are on our knees”
Haven’t A clue About the Lockout:
These central characters of the Lockout, divided in life, are united in death by their final resting place in Glasnevin Cemetery where first Murphy (1919) and then Larkin (1947) were laid to rest. Murphy lies in an unmarked grave while in contrast, Larkin’s near the graves of Daniel O’Connell, Michael Collins, Maud Gonne and Eamon de Valera, is appointed by a stoic headstone.
According to Glasnevin Cemetery historian, Shane MacThomais: “What made the dispute much bigger than either that company or the Transport Union was Murphy’s response. He organized all but a handful of Dublin’s major employers not only to sack all ITGWU members, but also to force their employees to sign a pledge never to join the Union.
“Those who refused to sign were sacked or “locked out”. Eventually the numbers on strike reached 20,000 and affected over a hundred thousand people through the employee’s families. The battle to try to reverse these sackings took six long and bitter months and ultimately ended in failure. By early 1914, hunger and the withdrawal of funds by the British Trades Union Congress (TUC) meant that the workers were forced to give in and sign the employers’ pledge.”
One legacy of the Lockout was the Irish Citizen Army. Originally this was a street-fighting force intended to take on the police with fists and bats and to protect union demonstrations. But just three years later, mostly on the initiative of James Connolly, it participated, armed, in the nationalist insurrection, the Easter Rising.
Glasnevin Cemetery is the final resting place for almost all of the key figures that took part in the Lockout. The history of Labour movement in Ireland can be traced across the paths linking the graves of the main protagonists in the cemetery. A map of the graves of labour leaders such as Thomas Foran, Michael Mullen, Helena Moloney, Margret Skinnider, Charlotte Despard and William X O’Brien is available to visitors from the Cemetery’s Museum.
Of note, I’ve done the tour of this place twice. This my first time at Glasnevin Cemetery when I went with Blaithín back in 2010. More than well worth it and highly recommended.
