In 1913 Dublin Dockers were strongly unionised with the Port employers recognising the Irish Transport and General Workers Union. When the 1913 Lock Out began the dockers decided to increase their union dues in order to create a hardship fund for the workers involved. The head of the union Jim Larkin did threaten to pull out the dockers in an effort to apply pressure. However, it was James Connolly who organised the strike in solidarity with the locked out workers. The Port employer’s reaction was swift. Foreign ‘scab’ labour was imported and they were billeted inside the Port area so that they could not be got at. Except for a brief period there was little or no disruption to port traffic. When the lockout/strike was over the dockers and their families paid a heavy price with evidence to suggest that those involved in the strike were then not picked for employment in the docks.
Late 2011 a group came together to preserve the history of Dublin Docks-the Dublin Dock Workers Preservation Society. Since then the group has been donated 3,000+ photographs, 10,000+ original documents, union cards, dockers buttons and cargo hooks. Most of the photographs are from the post 1940 period with the earliest document dated 1926. We are making an appeal for anyone who may have dock related photographs or documents from the 1913 period. In this way we might be in a better position to tell the story of the 1913 Dublin Dockers strike.
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