By the time of the association’s next annual conference in February 1917 it was ready to condemn attempts at subjecting the governance of Irish nurses to any British institution. Instead it claimed the same professional independence for nurses that the medical profession enjoyed, and it strongly resisted proposals that the Voluntary Aid Detachment nurses who had played such a vital role in military hospitals should be allowed to qualify on the grounds of wartime experience. ‘Three years in the wards of a recognised training school or schools is essential to entitle the VAD to the certificate of a trained nurse,’ the matrons ruled. When the war ended, the Matrons’ Association secured its objectives with the Nurses Registration (Ireland) Act (1919).31
Members of the Dublin Metropolitan Police were another group that fared poorly in the fast-changing political environment. After the rising they were issued with arms, only to have them withdrawn the next day. The DMP attracted considerable obloquy, from loyalist and republican alike: many of the former saw them as epitomising the ineffectiveness of the Castle in dealing with sedition, while the latter had not forgotten their role in the lock-out three years before.
Now the DMP had its own industrial troubles. Following the rising, members contrasted the relatively generous compensation paid to members of the military who died or were incapacitated fighting against the rebels with their own frugal payments. This provided a catalyst for a campaign to achieve a long-denied pay increase. Members held a series of meetings in the Irish National Foresters’ Hall at 41 Rutland Square. The venue was significant, in that it was a regular meeting place for radical nationalists, including members of the Irish Volunteers and Fianna Éireann.
In an effort to defuse the situation the Commissioner granted them the use of the band room in Kevin Street station. The men availed of the offer, but many also continued to attend meetings outside the stations, using the simple expedient of joining the Ancient Order of Hibernians so as to meet in its hall at 31 Rutland Square. The secretary of the AOH, John Dillon Nugent, raised their case in the House of Commons, along with Alfie Byrne. Representatives of the DMP rank and file and station sergeants also sought help from the Lord Mayor.
They had genuine enough grievances. At the outbreak of war DMP members had received a pay increase of 1s a week—their first since 1884. They received another 3s 6d weekly ‘war bonus’ on 1 July 1916. They now demanded another 12s a week—a 50 per cent increase in basic pay—with full retrospection from 1 September 1914. Like that of white-collar corporation employees, their demand was driven as much by comparative deprivation as by wartime inflation. DMP men were angered by the spectacle of manual workers in unions passing them out in the pay stakes.
Although Dublin Corporation paid a large contribution towards the cost of the DMP, it had no say in how the force was managed or deployed. The demands of the policemen gave nationalists an opportunity to raise this long-standing grievance and to emphasise how little autonomy the Irish local authorities had when it came to such areas as policing compared with Britain.
Given the disturbed state of Ireland, the government had little choice but to give ground. It provided a pay increase of 2s a week to men with less than three years’ service and 3s a week for longer-serving members. However, it gave the same increases to the RIC, and ordered DMP men who had joined the AOH to leave it. Nugent and other champions of Catholic nationalism were outraged, as it was well known that many Protestant members of the force were Freemasons, and the masons were credited with the much higher promotion rate of Protestants.
The government did not seriously dispute the claim, and, rather than argue the point with the Irish Party in the House of Commons, the new Chief Secretary for Ireland, Sir Henry Duke, decided to rule that membership of the Freemasons would be forbidden for future recruits to both the DMP and the RIC. The decision was understandable, given that most Protestant policemen who were Freemasons had been in the organisation for many years, while the influx of six hundred Catholic DMP men—about half the force—into the AOH had occurred over the previous few months and that the AOH had strong links to the Irish Party.
However, this did nothing to assuage the wrath of either side. There was ‘a great deal of surprise and indignation amongst the Brethren’ over the withdrawal of their right to recruit from within the ranks of the RIC and DMP. Lord Donoughmore, grand master of the Freemasons in Ireland, wrote to Duke protesting at the decision and pointing out that several members of the Cabinet were Freemasons, including Sir Auckland Geddes, who was a member of a Dublin lodge.32
Even charitable efforts to help the families of RIC and DMP men killed or injured in the rising indicated the deepening divisions in Dublin. Although William Martin Murphy sent a message of support to the launch of a committee to set up a compensation fund, stating ‘it would be a public scandal if the government did not fully compensate the widows and dependants,’ it consisted almost exclusively of members of the unionist community in the city, including several prominent Freemasons, thus further fuelling rumours about the influence of the lodges in the police and elsewhere. The president of the committee was the Earl of Meath, the vice-president was Sir John Arnott, the chairman was Sir Maurice Dockrell, and the treasurer was R. W. Booth, a director of the Bank of Ireland. It also included such luminaries as Lord Powerscourt, Sir William Goulding and the Earl of Donoughmore. Donations were largely from the aristocracy, the business community and employees in the enterprises they controlled.33
The AOH and nationalists generally felt it was another example of the government and the Castle aligning themselves with the hereditary enemy. This view was reinforced when an example was made of the perceived ringleaders of the DMP rank and file. Constable William Hetherton, who had thirteen years’ service, was dismissed, while four other constables were fined or stopped a week’s pay and transferred to outlying stations. All four were subsequently dismissed for gross insubordination when they organised a mock funeral, complete with hearse, and marched behind it to Dalkey via the city centre, Blackrock and Kingstown as they accompanied the first of their number to be transferred to his new posting.34
By then industrial unrest, spurred by the high prices, had become widespread in the city. Coalmen, Glasnevin cemetery workers, gas workers, dockers and others struck for higher wages; but by far the most serious disputes that autumn involved the bakeries and the railways.
The battle in the bakeries was as much about union recognition and a campaign to end night work as about pay. A baker asked in the Irish Independent:
What does ‘recognition’ mean? It simply means the elimination of non-union labour and that the master bakers [employers] of Dublin are required to sit down and arrange working agreements with representatives of their employees—a condition which obtains in every other trade in the United Kingdom. [There is] nothing revolutionary about these demands. Anyone who knows the lot of the operative baker will sympathise with our efforts.
The writer added that the average baker
commences the week’s work, in most cases on Sunday morning when he should be attending to his religious duties, and having left everything ready for the night’s work, he adjourns at 10 or 11 o’clock to return again at 7 or 8 p.m., working at high crisis until 6 a.m. When other workers are going to their places of employment, after a refreshing night’s sleep, they meet the baker wending his weary way home to snatch a few hours rest.
A baker’s working life meant he was ‘completely cut off from all the activities of society.’
Because of the central role bread played in the city’s diet, any strike would cause as great a crisis as the earlier disputes involving coalmen and gravediggers. Once the strike began the Board of Trade quickly intervened and secured agreement within the week. The employers agreed to recognise the Irish Bakers’ National Amalgamated Union and to fill positions through the union’s hall in Abbey Street. The possibility of eliminating night work would be examined, but not until three months after the declaration of peace.35
Ev
en more serious was the railway dispute. The ‘war allowance’ conceded to Irish railway workers in early 1915 failed to defuse discontent, as it amounted to only half the increase conceded in England at the time. The disparity in pay continued to grow and was aggravated by the fact that English workers employed by British companies, such as the London and North-Western Railway in its Dublin port facility, were earning 10s a week more than Irish dockers for identical work. John Redmond urged the British government to provide funds for removing the anomaly, as most of the Irish railway companies could not afford to pay the increases needed to bridge the gap. The president of the Board of Trade, Lord Runciman, responded sharply that ‘as the Irish railways are run for the benefit of the shareholders, the shareholders ought to pay. Any profit made by English railways at present goes to the State.’
In November Irish railway workers gave notice of a strike, although they lacked the backing of their British union, which was bound by the wartime legislation banning strikes. An offer of 2s a week from Sir William Goulding, on behalf of all the railway companies, was rejected: the men were looking for an increase of 6s a week in basic pay or a war bonus of 10s a week. The prospect of a national railway strike in the week before Christmas caused alarm throughout the country. Alfie Byrne joined Redmond in a last-minute appeal for government intervention.
Their wish was granted. The government announced on the eve of the strike that it was putting the Irish railways under the control of the military authorities. The men would receive the increases granted in England, while the companies were to be paid a dividend based on 1913 receipts for the duration of military control. It was probably the most popular decision the British government made in Ireland during the Great War, welcomed unanimously by the railway companies, the unions, the wider business community, consumers and the travelling public.36
Chapter 8
‘WOULD ANYONE SERIOUSLY SUGGEST FOR A MOMENT THAT WILLIE COSGRAVE WAS A CRIMINAL?’
By late 1916 Dublin Corporation had reverted to type, operating in an atmosphere in which members conducted business as they had always done, collegiality giving way to sudden storms over appointments to committees or the filling of vacant posts. The battles over who should be given a job as rate-collector or technical school instructor could often assume Homeric proportions. However, some new trends were proving irreversible, such as the dwindling support for the war and increasing antagonism towards the British authorities.
The fall-out from the death of Francis Sheehy Skeffington and other civilians, delays in the payment of compensation to owners of property destroyed in the rising and the treatment of rebel prisoners—there were city councillors in both categories—fuelled the realignment of loyalties. By contrast, there was little engagement with events on the western front, let alone in the Balkans and Middle East, except for those citizens with relations in the armed forces. As the great majority of the recruits now came from the poorest and least influential elements of the population, their opinions went largely unheeded.
Even the start of the Somme offensive on 1 July 1916 attracted relatively little attention. Never again would Dublin suffer the sort of communal shock inflicted by the news of the Dardanelles casualties a year earlier. Undeterred by recent events at home, the Irish Times hailed the gains claimed by the British high command in the opening days of the offensive as ‘a new and glorious chapter to Irish history,’ giving prominent coverage to the achievements of the 36th (Ulster) Division. ‘Her young soldiers have now earned their place beside the veteran Dublins and Munsters and Inniskillings [Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers] who went through the hottest furnace of war at Helles,’ the Times enthused. While it conceded that the ‘blood of Irishmen shed by Irishmen is hardly dry on the streets of Dublin … out there in the forefront of Ireland’s and the Empire’s battle the men of all our parties, all our creeds, all our social classes, are fighting side by side.’ It predicted that ‘no political hates or passions can survive that brotherhood of action.’
However, the activities of the 16th (Irish) Division, which also participated in the offensive, received little publicity, which further alienated nationalist opinion and diluted nationalist identification with the events in France. The offensive coincided with the publication of the report of the Royal Commission on the Rebellion in Ireland. This was highly critical of the Irish administration and in particular of the former Chief Secretary, Augustine Birrell. It also gave rise to renewed calls for a public inquiry into the murder of Francis Sheehy Skeffington and other civilians during the rising.
Most damaging of all were John Redmond’s concessions to Lloyd George on partition, which were to be debated in the House of Commons that week. While the Irish Times celebrated the ‘brotherhood of action’ on the Somme, the Irish Independent denounced Redmond and the United Irish League for ‘surrendering’ the fortress of home rule, contrasting their lack of parliamentary effectiveness with Carson’s resolve.
Meanwhile Dublin began to receive a new influx of wounded. These men were largely convalescent cases, shipped from hospitals in France to make way for fresh battlefield casualties. They would bring no new stories from the Somme front that might have provided some sense of immediacy and national involvement with the newspaper headlines. For most politically aware Dubliners still at liberty the continuing health and housing problems in the city, illustrated by the Baby Week conference in the Mansion House, were more pressing than the question of how many yards were won in Flanders. Otherwise any sign of returning normality was welcomed, and the news that most impressed itself at the end of the week in which the Battle of the Somme began was that Clery’s department store had reopened in temporary premises at the Metropolitan Hall in Lower Abbey Street.1
Military recruitment in Dublin virtually dried up in the aftermath of the rising. Although it revived somewhat in the summer, the total fell to 4,292 for the year, less than half the 9,612 who volunteered in 1915 and significantly less than the 7,283 who joined in the last five months of 1914. The latter figure, of course, was somewhat inflated by the recall of reservists.
Reports of hostility towards the military presence grew in the months after the rising. When the honorary colonel of the Irish Guards, Field-Marshal Kitchener, died en route to Russia, John Dillon noted in a letter to T. P. O’Connor that Dubliners ‘cheered for the Kaiser and for “the torpedo that sank Kitchener”.’2 By the autumn, people were appearing regularly in the Dublin police courts for assaults on soldiers, usually the result of casual altercations in the street. When a private from the 5th Lancers was knocked down in a fight with a civilian in Wexford Street in early October, onlookers kicked him on the ground; and a military policeman escorting a drunken soldier had to be rescued from a mob by the DMP.3
The subscription lists for food, clothing and other aid sent to the Royal Dublin Fusiliers who were prisoners of war in Germany were almost exclusively filled by leading figures of the unionist establishment in the city. Where there were donations from groups of workers they tended to be employees of such companies as Guinness, John Jameson and Son, the Great Southern and Western Railway and the Royal Bank, whose boards of directors were dominated by unionists.4
Members of Dublin Corporation showed more concern for the conditions in which men interned after the rising were being kept at Fron Goch prison camp in Wales than for members of the ‘Dublins’ in German prison camps. Alfie Byrne, who was proving a reliable weathervane of popular sentiment, was far more vocal in calling on an American delegation visiting prisoner-of-war camps for German soldiers in Britain to add Irish rebel prisoners to their itinerary than in expressing concern about the conditions in which Irish prisoners of war were being kept in Germany. However, Byrne, who believed all politics were local, also called for separation women in Dublin to be paid the same cost-of-living allowance as their London sisters. This was passed without a vote, no doubt because the cost would be borne by the British exchequer.
It was only in 1917 that the corporation decided to set u
p a committee to assist invalided veterans and dependants found to be ‘badly in need of assistance’ in the city. The committee’s main activity appeared to be lobbying the Local Government Board for funds rather than raising money itself.5
Unionist councillors were outraged by Byrne’s concern for rebel prisoners in Britain; but there was a growing sense of impotence in their ranks. ‘Volunteer’, an anonymous letter-writer to the Irish Times, articulated the loyalist response to the shifting political environment. After criticising Redmond for expressing himself satisfied with the rate of recruitment to the British army, he added: ‘Not only are the loyal Irish ashamed of Irish politicians but hundreds of thousands of Britishers and Colonials are beginning to look on Ireland and the Irish with contempt and disgust.’Young English men recruited to Irish regiments were arriving on Irish soil only to encounter hostility from civilians happy to have the ‘bloody and brutal Saxon’ fight Ireland’s battles abroad.
By contrast, Father Michael Curran, private secretary to Archbishop Walsh, told a sodality meeting in October 1916 that ‘those elected to represent them in Parliament have sold them.’ While he did not yet disown his own belief in constitutional politics, he had no faith in the way it had been conducted in recent years. ‘The great question at the present moment is not Home Rule, but the right to preserve our young men in this country, which has been so depopulated [by the war].’ It is unlikely that Curran would have made such a public statement without the sanction, if not the prompting, of Dr Walsh.
A City in Wartime Page 21
