Come Here To Me!

At night we lie in filthy beds
Scratching our aching lousy heads.
Broken by the thought of rent
For a room in a stinking tenement.

-excerpt from ‘The Workless’ in Republican Congress, 30 June 1934.

Iconic image of Republican Congress delegation partaking in commemoration. “Shankill Road Belfast Branch: Break The Connection With Capitalism.”

The Republican Congress occupies an important, though disputed, place in Irish left-wing memory. In existence from 1934 until 1936, the organisation emerged from a split within the ranks of the IRA, proclaiming boldly at its inception that “we believe that a Republic of a united Ireland will never be achieved except through a struggle which uproots capitalism on its way.”

Torn apart by internal ideological disagreement from the beginning, there is a certain romanticism attached to the Congress owing to its ability to organise some Belfast Protestant workers into its ranks and the fact some of its leading lights were killed on the battlefields of Spain (the Spanish Civil War remaining one of the few occasions in human history where history has very much been written by the defeated protagonists). Yet while much has been written on the anti-fascist activities of the Congress and its contribution to the ranks of the International Brigades, other aspects of its political activities are often overlooked. If Congress enjoyed success on any frontier, it was certainly in its abilities to organise in both Dublin slumdom and emerging suburbia with the emergence of Tenants Leagues, winning a number of victories over landlords and an embarrassed Dublin Corporation. Many of its tactics, from rent boycotts to the occupation of houses, would be adopted by later generations of housing activists.

A changing tenement landscape

The tenement landscape of 1930s Dublin is something we have previously examined on the website. In an irony of history, many of the tenements occupied what was once the splendor of a Georgian city. As Jim Larkin Jr. would recount, Dublin stood upon the Liffey as “a city of fine Georgian houses which had been slowly rotting away for a hundred years and which had become an ever growing cancer of horrible, inhuman, dirty, vermin infest tenements, unequaled by any modern city in Europe.”

The period witnessed some significant advances in public housing in the capital, thanks in no small part to the approach taken by Housing Architect Herbert George Simms, responsible for the construction of some 17,000 new dwellings in his time in office. New flat dwellings were constructed in the city, while suburban development pushed ahead. Taking Cabra as an example of growth, the population there increased from 5,326 in 1926 to 19,119 in 1936. Cabra on the northside and Crumlin/Drimnagh on the southside represented the most ambitious suburban developments of the still relatively new Free State. Fianna Fáil had made housing an election issue in 1932, referring to the out-going first government of the state as a “rich mans government” who had failed to provide for the working classes of Ireland’s urban centres.

Still, images like this one recently posted on the blog show how there was still much work to do. Right alongside the new developments of Simms and Dublin Corporation, tenements like those shown there in Mary’s Lane remained a reality for many. Conditions were poor in early Dublin Corporation inner-city housing schemes like Corporation Buildings, but they were worse still for those at the mercy of private landlords.

‘We, The People Of York Street’

From the very beginning of the Congress, its newspaper, Republican Congress, focused its attention on conditions in tenement Dublin. An edition of the paper in June 1934 reported on the refusal of residents of York Street to pay rents until conditions improved:

The slum dwellers of York Street have been the first section of the working-class to petition the people of Ireland to right the insufferable, shocking,inhuman conditions under which they live. Here is an appeal to the conscience of the Irish working-class that should strike a deep, momentous note of response. Terrible indignation should burn up in the breast of every worker at a system that condemns our brothers and sister to crawl to an unholy death in such cesspools of misery and abomination. Dublin landlords stand forth in this area as the most soulless, greedy, despicable exploiters of their class.

The paper called for the refusal of rents to be extended into other areas where housing was inadequate, insisting that “York Street is the first; where is the next? Extend the area! Broaden the struggle! Compel the Corporation to house the workers, whether they are able to pay or not. Houses first; talk of rent afterwards….Already it is done in English cities controlled by Labour Corporations.”

The paper encouraged tenement dwellers to “appear in your hundreds at the next Corporation meeting! Demand immediate action to clear these areas and transfer the tenants to Corporation houses and flats.” At the time, Alfie Byrne was Dublin’s Lord Mayor. Byrne had long enjoyed a strained relationship with the labour movement, stretching back to the days of Larkinism. The tenants marched onto the Mansion House, making their demands for “the  stopping of eviction proceedings now pending, and immediate steps by the Corporation to house the workers of the areas in suitable surroundings.” Byrne was in unfamiliar territory, the ever-popular politician now in a hostile crowd. While he met with a delegation from the York Street tenements, he emerged to an unfamiliar audience:

When the deputation appeared with Byrne on the Mansion House steps, the crowd refused to hear Alfie Byrne and shouted for Congress speakers. In response, Charlie Donnelly said that when the Congress led the tenants of Magee’s Court, York Street and Gloucester Place to the Mansion House did not give them the undertaking that the Lord Mayor would have any solution to their problem. The Congress had told them that the Corporation was a landlord Corporation, that it served the interests, not of the tenants, but of the landlords (cheers)

The landlords’ Corporation could not solve the workers’ housing problem because under the present system, houses were not built for workers’ use but for landlords’ profit (cheers).

Charles Donnelly, a young Congress activist centrally involved in the Tenants Leagues.

(more…)

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Former motor tax office, Chancery Street (Aug 2018)

The removal of the motor tax office on Chancery Street has been a reminder of just how divisive the building is. River House has been empty for more than a decade, and in recent years there have been some anti-social problems around the complex. A Dublin City Councillor told the press that “from a local point of you, it has been a scourge, whether you’re talking about looking at it or otherwise. It has been a source of a lot of anti-social behaviour and criminality.” Its replacement, unsurprisingly at present, is to be a hotel. It seems everything is to be a hotel.

River House replaced the old motor tax office on Coleraine Street, which might better be described as a prefab. Few lamented its loss, and it was generally viewed as not fit for purpose. River House was completed in 1973, yet within a few short years there were demands for a second motor tax office on Dublin’s southside. Among various complaints were an absence of parking for members of the public around River House, it what was then still a thriving market district.

Sunday Independent image of River House, 1973.

In recent times, River House has been repeatedly described as ugly in the press, The Sunday Times labeling it a “brutalist eyesore.” Frank McDonald, a champion of good architecture of all  different schools and styles in Dublin, described it as an “incoherent building” in his classic study The Destruction of Dublin.

I feel it has some redeeming features, but is lacking by comparison to other brutalist structures of the period, certainly it has none of the robust glory of more celebrated buildings. The work of Patrick J. Sheahan & Partners, it never won the same praise as buildings such as the magnificent Berkeley Library of Trinity College Dublin or Fitzwilton House, described by @brutalistdublin as a “cathedral to concrete”. While a chorus of voices called for Fitzwilton House to be saved, the removal of River House occurs with no real voice of opposition. The controversies around its construction, and the fact it served as the much hated motor tax office, perhaps never really endeared the structure to Dubliners.

Writing for Architecture Ireland in 2016 on the subject of Fitzwilton House, architect Ciarán Ferrie noted that:

Those who remember the damage caused to the fabric of the city by the construction of these buildings may find it difficult to shed a tear when these too are threatened but it is unfair to judge the quality of a building by the circumstances of its inception. We are in danger of stripping the city of the remnants of modernism in favour of a built environment that has more to do with maximizing ‘return on investment’ than it does with architecture. And these buildings in turn will be replaced by newer shinier replacements in a wasteful cycle of destruction and reconstruction.

Regardless of what one thinks of River House, perhaps we can all agree on opposition to the city becoming one giant hotel.

Former motor tax office, Chancery Street (Aug 2018)

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What’s the news the newsboy yells?
What’s the news the paper tells?
A British retreat from the Dardanelles?
Says the Grand old Dame Britannia.

-From the contemporary song The Grand Old Dame Britannia.

In popular memory, the War of Independence is more synonymous with the hilly terrain of rural Ireland than Dublin’s urban landscape, despite a number of key events occurring in the capital, such as the burning of the Custom House and the drama of Bloody Sunday. In reality, ambushes were a feature of life in the capital too.

Nowhere was this truer than in the area of Aungier Street, Camden Street and Wexford Street. Essentially one long continuation linking the city centre at Dame Street to Portobello Barracks, it was a route frequently taken by British soldiers into the city.  Particularly dangerous was the area where Wexford Street once narrowed into Aungier Street, creating a bottleneck ideal for ambushing parties. It was British forces who christened the district ‘the Dardanelles’, drawing parallels to the First World War Gallipoli campaign.

The name remained in colloquial use in Dublin post-independence, and even survived road widening which transformed the appearance of Redmond’s Hill, removing the historic bottleneck. A writer in the Evening Herald in 1940 noted that some bus conductors did not believe in “scrapping the colloquial expression”, still intoning “we are at the Dardanelles.”

Bartholomew’s 1909 Plan of Dublin showing the area that became known as the Dardamelles.

In recounting the historic layout of the area, Volunteer Sean Prendergast recalled that:

Certain thoroughfares in Dublin had become prominent in the military sense due to the number and intensity of street bombings. One of these was Redmond’s Hill and Wexford Street in the 3rd Battalion Area….a short narrow street that divided Aungier Street and Camden Street. Those streets were habitually used by British forces flying from the city to Portobello Barracks and vice versa. Several streets jutted from the north entrance of Redmond’s Hill, Digges Street, Bishop’s Street and Peter’s Row….The strange feature about Redmond’s Hill was that it was a bottleneck. Ambushing at this point was carried out with such recurring frequency as to cause it to be regarded and called the Dardanelles.

There were many living in the district for whom the Dardanelles meant only one thing, the far off battlefields of World War One. The high loss of life among the Irish in the Dardanelles campaign would make its presence felt at home in the aftermath of the Rising, with the Freeman’s Journal proclaiming the Dardanelles to be “where Irish troops were sacrificed by blunders.”

A number of major employers in the area had proactively contributed to the British war effort, in particular Guinness and Jacob’s. At the time the First World War broke out, the workforce of Guinness stood at 3,650 people, of whom more than 800 would serve in the war effort. The brewery paid half wages to the dependents of these men, while also committing to reemployment upon return from the war. From Jacob’s, almost 400 employees had enlisted in the British Army. The presence of many so-called ‘Separation Women’ in the vicinity was a source of annoyance to the Irish Volunteers during Easter Week, and Bill Stapleton recounted of the first day of the Rising:

This was a very hostile area. We were booed and frequently pelted with various articles throughout the day. We were openly insulted, particularly by the wives of British soldiers who were drawing separation allowance and who referred to their sons and husbands fighting for freedom in France. As dusk as falling, about 8 or 8 o’clock, we retreated from the barricades to our headquarters at Jacob’s factory, at the Bishop Street entrance, and while waiting to be admitted we were submitted to all sorts of indignities by some of the local people. It was difficult to preserve control due to the treatment we suffered from these people.

As Prendergast rightly recounted, Dublin was an unfavourable field for military action; the “mobility, speed and characteristics of the armoured cars…afforded a certain amount of protection for the British forces… Add to that the feature that they generally operated in populous areas on the main thoroughfares and you get a fair picture of the difficulties facing the IRA in pursuing action against them.”

 

British forces leaving Portobello Barracks following its handing over in 1922 (Image Credit; Nationa lLibrary of Ireland)

As much as rifles and handguns, the IRA’s Third Battalion (for whom this area was pivotal) were dependent on a supply of grenades to lob into passing army vehicles. Throughout the guerilla war the IRA maintained a proactive GHQ, which included a Director of Chemicals, Director of Munitions and Director of Purchases, all tasked with different but important missions in arming the IRA. Clandestine grenade factories operated across the city, including one we previously looked at in Temple Bar. Michael Carroll, a Section Commander with the Third Battalion, recounted that the grenades were not always reliable, remembering an evening in Wexford Street when “an armoured turret car was passing along at medium speed, and James Harcourt lobbed a grenade into the open turret. A few seconds later the same grenade was thrown back on the roadway. It was a dud.”

In Carroll’s account of the district during the War of Independence, it was at a meeting on Stephen’s Day 1920 in a flat on Aungier Street that plans were discussed to carry out frequent ambushes in the locale, and “section leaders were told to inspect the area and to show the men quick exits after attack. All previous training in bomb throwing and rifle practice was of very little use at this period,as the whole method of street fighting now adopted changed completely.” The mission was simple: “It would not be possible for me to describe all the actions, as they were carried out in a hit and run manner. The main idea was to throw the grenade at the armed vehicle and get away as soon as possible.”

In a densely populated civilian area, there was always a risk to civilian life. Carroll recalled a gang of men outside a pub who were politely advised to move on before an attack near Wexford Street, but who refused to budge, only later to run away when the action began:

One Saturday evening we were tipped off that a lorry with British soldiers was moving along from Portobello Barracks direction, and some of the section were directed into Montague Street, also on the opposite side to Camden Row. Jimmy Keogh and I saw some young men loitering outside Sinnott’s public house and we quietly advised them to move away, explaining the reason.They refused to do so and gave out abuse, so we told them to stay where they were. Jim and I went across the street and stood at the corner of Montague Street. The vehicle was now approaching and Jim ordered me to cover him, while proceeding to throw the grenade….A couple of seconds later, a second grenade, thrown by Christy Murray, followed in, and both exploded inside, shaking the lorry from side to side as it sped down Wexford Street. Jim and I hurried to join the remainder o f the patrol in Montague Street. As we did so, the men who were loitering at the publichouse could be seen sprinting like hares along Camden Row. This was their last appearance at Sinnott’s exterior.

The British responded to the grenade attacks on armoured cars and other patrolling vehicles in a number of ways. Some British patrols began carrying republican prisoners, something that was done with notice in the hope of preventing attacks, though this was widely reported in the press and condemned across the political spectrum. Joseph McKenna notes in his history of guerilla warfare tactics in Ireland that when grenade attacks continued, “to prevent them from entering the vehicles, the British army trucks were covered in mesh. The IRA responded by attaching fishing hooks to the grenades, which would catch in the mesh and explode.”

Into the Civil War, both sides were conscious of the dangers posed by the district. Many in the Free State armed forces were former republicans, who had themselves partaken in ambushes on British forces in the War of Independence. In his history of the Civil War in Dublin, John Dorney notes that the new National Army found the Dardanelles a dilemma, one officer pondering: “Would it be worthwhile to put a small post on the Dardanelles. You remember how we often used it for ambushing cars in former times?” A republican ambush on Free State forces in January 1923 went disastrously wrong, wounding a number of innocent civilians. It was the sad end of ambushing days in the Dardanelles.

Newspaper report of 6 January 1923.

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