A book I’ve mentioned several times on this site recently is James Curry’s Artist of the Revolution, which examines the political cartoons of Ernest Kavanagh. Murdered on the steps of Liberty Hall during the 1916 Rising, Kavanagh was a prolific cartoonist who contributed work to a variety of suffragette, nationalist and labour publications. His work during the 1913 lockout is well documented in the book, and many of the cartoons he drew resonated strongly at the time with ordinary Dubliners.
Yet the employers also used cartoons during the dispute, most notably on the front page of the Sunday Independent, a publication owned by William Martin Murphy. Some of these cartoons have become familiar, but others have not been reproduced. Digging through the archives, here are a few I think are worth sharing. Some I had seen before, but others were new to me.
This cartoon below was printed on August 31st, the day after the horrific scenes of Bloody Sunday, when a baton charge by the DMP on Sackville Street filled the city hospitals. The Independent noted that “Larkin’s mobs attack police”, going on to state that “although his poor dupes were being batoned right and left Larkin kept carefully out of harms way.” Larkin was arrested on Sackville Street for attempting to address a banned demonstration.
The front page cartoon of August 31st shows ‘civic courage’ defeating ‘the strike monger’, as Eblana looks on.
One of the most interesting cartoons during the dispute was printed on November 9th, and took aim at those who sided with Larkin. High profile targets W.B Yeats, George Russell, George Bernard Shaw and Francis Sheehy Skeffington were attacked. ‘Skeffy’, a known feminist, is shown clutching a banner calling for voting rights for women, while Yeats mourns ‘the dead past’. Shaw is presented as a ‘Buffon’, while Russell is listed as a ‘pal of the fairies.’ Russell’s condemnation of the Dublin employers was particular strong, with him writing:
Your insolence and ignorance of the rights conceded to workers universally in the modern world were incredible, and as great as your inhumanity. If you had between you collectively a portion of human soul as large as a threepenny bit, you would have sat night and day with the representatives of labour, trying this or that solution of the trouble, mindful of the women and children, who at least were innocent of wrong against you.
The paper frequently took aim at syndicalism (“A radical political movement that advocates bringing industry and government under the control of federations of labor unions by the use of direct action…”), and the cartoons of the newspaper frequently featured the word. This cartoon from September 21st shows a worker ‘blinded’ by syndicalism, surrounded by his family who wish for him to return to work. Suffering families often appeared in the newspapers cartoons during the dispute.
Another example of the paper accusing syndicalism for the failure of a peaceful settlement was this cartoon from September 14th.
On November 2nd, the paper printed a cartoon showing ‘the awakening’ of a Dublin worker, who said he had enough of socialism and was ready to return to work!
Click on the book for more.
Click on the book for more.
Speaking as a cartoon historian, this is all very interesting. Have you a larger scan of the last one – the cartoonist has signed his full last name, rather than “FR” elsewhere, but I can’t quite read it. Could be “Rainey”?
Nice one Paddy, asked Luke to pass this onto you. I don’t sadly, these are lifted from the digital archive. Another post of the same amount again to come.
It’s Eblana looking on in the first picture!
Right you are, cheers!
The Oirish meejia (the great rally cheerers of The Celtic Kitten) as spokesmen for vested, monied interests…..no change so, sigh.
Not a bad definition of syndicalism: ‘a radical political movement that advocates bringing industry and government under the control of federations of labour unions by use of direct action’. Was that from the Sunday Independent?
Far from it John, it was the best dictionary definition I could find. I’ve always found it a difficult term to define, as it has meant so many different things in my mind to different parts of the labour movement, from Anarchists to more traditional socialists.
I think the Sunday Independents definition would be closer to ‘A foreign and alien idea this Scouse bollocks has brought to Ireland’ (!!)
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