Insult to working-class families

This year marks the 100th anniversary of perhaps the most significant event in Irish Labour Relations history.

I am referring of course to the 1913 lockout. In many respects, 1913 was our miners’ strike. The difference of course, being that unlike the latter, no significant players from that period in our history survive today. Perhaps it is in this context that there seems to be a bizarre attempt to sanitise the reputation of one of the central villains of that piece. I refer of course, to William Martin Murphy.

William Martin Murphy was the owner of a newspaper and a major tram company and was a central figure in the Dublin lockout, where thousands of Irish workers were “locked out”, sacked effectively, for trade union membership. His abhorrent actions in seeking to blatantly deny rights we take as granted today, caused untold hardship in the Ireland of his time. Furthermore, we should ask ourselves, how many ordinary working-class Irishmen lay today in unmarked graves after being used as cannon fodder in the First World War, out of sheer economic necessity?