Labour movement urgently needs to re-ignite its fighting spirit
Traditional histories of Kerry and indeed Ireland during the First World War have ignored the role of social movements including the growing militancy of trade unions. In Kerry the labour movement was to fight some very bitter disputes during the First World War.
Perhaps the best example of rank and file militancy during this period was the dispute at the Munster Warehouse in Tralee where 15 shop assistants went on strike for three years between 1915 and 1918, in protest at the company’s breaking of a local agreement concerning the ‘living-in system’.
The workers were all members of Irish Drapers Assistants Association (IDAA). They organised regular daily pickets outside the store and tried to win support for a boycott of the firm’s business.
Eventually the dispute became a national issue with trade unionists, and at the Irish Trade Union Congress and Labour Party’s conference in Sligo in August 1916, the following resolution was proposed by the IDAA and passed unanimously: “That this congress strongly condemns the action of the Munster Warehouse Company in Tralee ... in flagrantly violating the agreement entered into with other traders in that town, as well as with the employers in connection with the ‘living-in system’ and it desires to place on record its appreciation of the magnificent fight which the assistants have put up during the last 15 months.”
Speaking on the motion, MJ O’Lehane of the IDAA, declared that the Tralee workers were ‘... really our heroes in the trenches’.
Despite this support and the brave efforts of the workers, the dispute ended in defeat for the union in early 1918. Nevertheless the fighting spirit of the workers proved an inspiration to trade unionists at the time and I would argue it is that same fighting spirit that should be encouraged in the labour movement today, an era where low wages and of zero hour contracts are the norm.
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