Lockout : Dublin 1913

At 9.40 am on Tuesday, 26th August 1913 the trams stopped running in Dublin.

Striking conductors and drivers, members of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union, abandoned their vehicles.

They had refused a demand from their employer, William Martin Murphy of the Dublin United Transport Company, to forswear union membership or face dismissal.

The company then locked them out. Within a month, the charismatic union leader, James Larkin, had called out thousands of workers across the city in sympathetic action.

This titanic struggle was played out in the city with the worst slums and the greatest poverty of any capital in northern Europe.

By January 1914 the union had lost the battle, lacking the resources for a long campaign.

The labour movement lost influence in the revolutionary events of the following years.

But in the long run, it won the war; 1913 meant that there was no going back to the horrors of pre-Larkin Dublin.

This survey shows why.