LOCKOUT MEMORIAL [LOCATED IN DUN LAOGHAIRE]-160174 by William Murphy Via Flickr: The Dublin lock-out was a major industrial dispute between about 20,000 workers and up to 300 employers which took place in Dublin. The dispute lasted from 26 August 1913 to 18 January 1914, and is often considered to be the most severe and significant industrial dispute in Irish history. Central to the dispute was the workers' right to unionise. To give some context - Irish workers lived in terrible conditions in tenements. For example, 835 people lived in 15 houses in Henrietta Street's Georgian tenements. At number 10, Henrietta Street, the Irish Sisters of Charity ran a laundry inhabited by more than 50 single women. The lock-out eventually concluded in early 1914, when the TUC in Britain rejected Larkin and Connolly's request for a sympathetic strike. Most workers, many of whom were on the brink of starvation, went back to work and signed pledges not to join the ITGWU. The ITGWU was badly damaged by its defeat in the Lockout, and was further hit by the departure of Larkin to the United States in 1914 and the execution of Connolly, one of the leaders of the Easter Rising in 1916. The union was rebuilt by William O'Brien and Thomas Johnson. By 1919, its membership surpassed that of 1913. Many of the blacklisted workers joined the British Army, having no other source of pay to support their families, and found themselves in the trenches of World War I within the year. Although the actions of the ITGWU and the smaller UBLU had been unsuccessful in achieving substantially better pay and conditions for workers, they marked a watershed in Irish labour history. The principle of union action and workers' solidarity had been firmly established. No future employer would ever try to "break" a union in the way that Murphy [Ireland's most prominent capitalist] attempted to with the ITGWU. The lock-out had damaged commercial businesses in Dublin, with many forced to declare bankruptcy.
