The role of English trade unions in the 1913 Lockout, culminating in the attempt to bring starving Irish children to England, raised all sorts of sectarian and political passions already inflamed by the industrial dispute. In an editorial on the overall situation The Irish Timeshad this to say. – JOE JOYCE
THERE ARE two ways of looking at the interference of English trade unionists and English philanthropists in the Dublin labour troubles.
One is the sentimental way. We Irish love to regard ourselves as a proud people. We believe ourselves to have a monopoly of certain virtues and a more than average share of the rest. We flatter ourselves on a paramount sense of self-respect, as befits the descendants of Celtic kings and Norman nobles. To-day in Dublin these traditions and beliefs are being dragged in the mire. Half the population of the Irish capital is living on alien charity. Shiploads of English food are distributed by English labour leaders to the ragged urchins of our slums. English newspapers write with unctuous horror about the poverty of Dublin. Pictures of Irish ragamuffins are held up to the pity of children in comfortable English homes.
The latest wound to our Irish pride is the proposal to deport the children of the Dublin slums to the slums of London and Manchester. We can quite understand the shame and anger of Irishmen who have to stand helpless while their country is so dishonoured. But this shame and anger do not help us at all. We must look facts in the face.
The most significant fact of these labour troubles is the sudden and complete change in the attitude of the Irish working-classes towards the English democracy. They have forgotten age-long traditions of hatred and contempt. The “blood-stained Saxon shilling” has lost its sanguinary hue.
Coming to Dublin in the shape of potatoes and margarine, it is accepted with fraternal gratitude. It seems that many of the Dublin workers are willing to send their children to England. The fact is that the doctrine of the solidarity of labour has triumphed over racial instincts and party politics. This is the other way of regarding recent phenomena in Dublin. We may not like the fact, but we must accept it. At the moment when the [British] Government is preaching separation the working-classes of the two countries have established an identity of interest.
At the outbreak of the present troubles, two months ago, we foresaw this development pointing out that, on the one hand, Ireland would be dragged into every great labour crisis in England while, on the other hand, the machinery of the English labour movement would be at our service for the peaceful settlement of industrial disputes. The strike cannot be settled until Mr [Jim] Larkin is brought under a rule of discipline. The English union leaders are the only men who can exercise this power. So long as they refuse to exercise it the chief responsibility for all Dublins loss and suffering is on their heads.
http://url.ie/7uu4