Review: Remembering the Lockout

THIS SUMMER the Workers Solidarity Movement was involved with other activists in organising events to commemorate the 1913 Dublin lockout. The lockout happened when the bosses got together to try and smash the ITGWU, workers who were members of this union were locked out. The workers held out for a year, fighting the combined forces of the bosses, the church and the cops. In the course of which they set up one of the first armed workers defense forces, the Citizen army.

One part of the commemoration was the production of a pamphlet called Lockout. This pamphlet ties together the events of then and now with articles by trade unionists on the Industrial Relations Act, poverty in Dublin to-day, the national plans between the bosses and the unions and of course a piece on to-days lockout at the Pat the Baker plant in Cherry Orchard. There are also two historical articles looking at nationalist politics at the time and the formation of the Irish Citizen Army.

Lockout available from the WSM Bookservice, P. O. Box 1528, Dublin 8 for £2.

From Workers Solidarity No40, 1993