Come Here To Me!

May Day 1919 poster. From John Cunningham’s Mayday! Galway and the origins of International Labour Day.

“Dublin, like three-fourths of Ireland, has spent an absolutely idle day” was one account of May Day here a century ago.

While 1919 has entered our collective memory as the beginning of the War of Independence, with the first shots of the conflict fired at Tipperary’s Soloheadbeg in January, on the ground the early months of the year were defined more by industrial unrest. A ‘general strike’ against British militiarism in Limerick, which the press would label a Soviet, coupled with the remarkable engineering strike in Belfast demanding a 44 hour working week, gave the authorities plenty to worry about.

There was no unanimity on the question of Ireland’s future with the tens of thousands of workers who engaged in such acts of industrial unrest across the island. In Limerick, the death of a local Irish Volunteer, Robert Byrne, was the catalyst for the unrest there. In Belfast, by comparison, many of the workers at the centre of the agitation regarded themselves as Unionists. When asked by a Belfast striker if he was loyal to the King and the Union, the Scottish communist leader Willie Gallacher replied, “That’s a stupid question. I am a revolutionary and my only loyalty is to the working class”.

Things were happening on the Clydeside too, were tanks were deployed on the streets against Scottish workers seeking a 40 hour working week. May Day 1919 witnessed in excess of 100,000 people take to the streets of Glasgow, addressed by a variety of speakers that included Countess Markievicz, now an elected M.P. Along with ‘The Red Flag’, ‘The Soldier’s Song’ was sung with gusto, and tricolours were carried amidst the red flags.

Across the island of Ireland, the day was marked by significant labour processions. The leading industrial union of Ireland, the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union, called on workers to down tools, to show that “Irish workers join with the international labour movement in demanding a democratic league of free nations.” A combination of factors, including wartime inflation, had swelled the ranks of the union in the immediate years around 1919. A union that had some 15,000 members in 1914 could boast in excess of 102,000 by 1919. The growth, in the words of one leading historian, was simply “Lazarus like.”

ITGWU branches nationwide marched behind red flags, while in some quarters local units of the Irish Republican Army joined them. This said more about local interrelationships that any official statement of political sympathy. In Dublin, many things ground to a halt, leading the Irish Independent to describe the day as “idle, dull and dismal.” The paper reported that:

In Dublin there were no trams, no North Wall sailings, no theatres, no cinemas, no electric power, no taxis, no restaurants or licensed houses open, and no trains, except the Great Northern Railway.

The regional demonstrations were significant in scale. The Irish Independent reported over three thousand parading in Bray,  more than that in Wexford, and noted that “in Killarney, colonial soldiers joined in a procession of about 1,000 headed by banners and Father Matthew’s band.” In Clonmel, they noted “several red flags were carried in the procession…notwithstanding police intimidation on the matter.” These regional demonstrations gave cause for concern to the paper, who noted that through “the displays of the Red Flag by the demonstrators…and the singing of the song associated with that flag there is evidence, unfortunately, that the ideas of the continental Socialists are beginning to penetrate into Ireland….that these doctrines should gain a footing in Catholic Ireland is much to be deplored.”

The song ‘The Red Flag’, which would ring out in so many cities on May Day 1919, had an Irish author, Jim Connell.  He himself proclaimed that the song  “gave expression to not only my own best thoughts and feelings, but the best thoughts and feelings of every genuine socialist I knew.” Its impact was truly global; as Ronan Burtenshaw notes in a recent piece for Tribune magazine:

It was sung when the National Guard was sent in to repress striking West Virginia coal miners in 1912, and when Australian workers organised a mass strike in 1917. It closed out a 1918 meeting of radical republicans welcoming a delegation of Bolsheviks to Dublin, and was sung by mutinous British soldiers during World War One. Randian miners in South Africa sang it on their way to their death at the gallows. As Tom Mann would say at Connell’s graveside, “The Red Flag inspired thousands, possibly millions.”

Liberty Hall, 1919. William O’Brien, Cathal O’Shannon and Nora Connolly are among the gathered leaders of Irish labour. (Image Credit: Century Ireland)

In Dublin, there were no radical demonstrations. Here, military proclamations outlawed any such gatherings, though as the Trade Union Congress Annual Report for the year would note, “In Dublin, where the military proclamation prohibiting public meetings and processions held sway, the workers had to be content with their silent, workless demonstration.” The Evening Herald carried disgruntled letters from members of the public (all anonymous, and thus potentially fake) pouring scorn on the workers for not going to work.

For some Dublin workers, there was punishment for their involvement in the day. Shackleton’s Mill, Lucan, “locked out” some fifty men who had participated in the May Day strike. Shackleton’s had been proactive supporters of William Martin Murphy’s policy during the 1913 Lockout, and the premises would later be attacked by the Irish Citizen Army for breaking the ‘Belfast Boycott’ which was in place.

Ulster too remained largely quiet. While tens of thousands would parade in Belfast, they waited until the following Saturday to gather in Ormeau Park. There was a real fear among some northern workers of being seen to be used by what they perceived to be a nationalist-inclined labour movement.  The Ulster Unionist Labour Association in Derry encouraged their members to boycott May Day, erroneously stating that the day was “of a revolutionary and Bolshevik nature and supported by Sinn Féin propagandists, as already stated at the opening of Dáil Éireann and that honest labour should repudiate such actions.”

Irish Labour in 1919 was nothing if not optimistic. For Republicans, militant Labour could present both opportunities and potential challenges, as the years ahead would show in the interactions between Dáil Éireann, the Labour Party and militant workers. Still, three months on from May Day 1919, the delegates of the Irish Trade Union Congress would be told Labour’s forecast had come true, and the future lay in their hands:

We cannot afford to make many mistakes. The workers of Ireland have shown they are responsive to the call, and this responsiveness on the part of the rank and file makes the responsibility of the leaders the greater. On all sides at the moment we see industrial unrest. And can we wonder at this. We have for the past four years been warning our people that as sure as morning the industrial war would follow the cessation of hostilities on the Continent. Our forecast has proved but too true.