The Munitions Strike

Welcome to the History of Ireland. Over the last few episodes, we’ve mostly been ploughing ahead with how the military side of the War of Independence was heating up throughout 1920. In this episode, I want to go back a little bit though, and focus on trains. Or at least train drivers.

You see, throughout 1920, strikes and industrial action became a powerful tool against the British. In March, you had the National Union of Dock Labourers declaring an embargo on food exports, due to controversy over bacon and butter. And then in April, the Irish Trade Union Congress, or the ITUC, called a general strike in support of a hunger strike at Mount Joy. The strikes were successful in their aims. There was a limit set on the amount of bacon that could be shipped out of Ireland, and 36 prisoners were released from Mount Joy. However, it was the railway workers strike that began in May that really caused the British the most trouble. And that’s what we’re going to focus on.

The whole thing began with the Jolly George. The Jolly George was a fantastically named munitions ship that on the 10th of May 1920 was sitting in a dock in London. The plan was for the British to use the Jolly George to take arms to the White Army fighting in the Russian Civil War. Without getting too much into complicated Russian history, basically at this point there was a civil war being fought between the White Army, a group of monarchists and capitalists, and the Red Army, or the Bolsheviks, who were workers and communists.

The British upper classes were terrified of the Bolsheviks. It was said of Lloyd George that, quote, he could easily govern Ireland with the sword. He was far more concerned about the Bolsheviks at home. Who were these Bolsheviks at home that Lloyd George was worried about? Well, some of them were London dock workers. And they felt a lot more in common with the Russian Red Army of workers than they did with the upper classes of Britain. And so, to support their fellow comrades in Russia, they refused to load coal into the Jolly George. I swear to God I will never get tired of saying that name.

News of the strike, which ended up being successful, spread to Dublin. At a meeting on the 20th of May, Michael Donnelly, a friend of James Connolly, encouraged his fellow workers to refuse to unload two British ships, the Pohlberg and the Anna Dorette Bugue, on the assumption that they contained motor cars and other equipment for the military. Initially, the ITUC was on board and it was decided dockers would refuse to unload, quote, certain war materials.

The Pohlberg was then forced to sail to Kingstown, now known by the much prettier and harder spell name Dunleary, where the plan was to have railway workers just load the equipment straight onto the trains. However, this hit a bit of a snag when the railway men decided to get in on the action, declaring they would no longer ferry any military cargo or armed men. Now, funnily enough, the supplies coming off the Pohlberg were actually tins of beef for the army, not ammunition. But the workers had made their point and started something big.

A few days later, on May 27th, at the Harcourt Street station in Dublin, workers refused to load rifles that were headed to the RIC in Wexford, and the cargo had to be taken back. Soon, railway workers across the country were refusing to transport any and all British forces. Mirroring their military counterparts in the IRA, this piece of industrial action was very much a grassroots affair, and was not officially initiated by the Irish Labour leadership.

The Irish Labour Party and the ITUC had been okay with the dockers striking, but a railway worker strike was quite an escalation. The railway system was pretty much vital for 1920s Irish society to function, and was much better than its modern equivalent. There’s a photo that did the rounds a few years ago that highlights this, I’ll share it on Twitter. But basically, Ireland had a very, very effective cross-country rail network.

The Irish roads still were not that great, and the railway system was the very best the British had to offer. It was the way people and goods were transported around the country. So for this to be disrupted was a big deal. It kind of reminds me a little of the Monty Python Roman joke. What do the British ever do for us? Well, the trains? Of course, Reg, the trains go with that saying.

Anyway, with this in mind, the union leaders were a little worried about overstepping the mark, and getting too involved in the nationalist movement. Tom Johnson, the ITUC president and fairly senior Labour Party member, had helped with anti-conscription, and if you remember wrote the original draft of the Dawls democratic programme, the Labour groups didn’t actually support the Dawl. This is because they wanted to still be able to negotiate with the British, and to support the Dawl would have hurt their standing.

But clearly the union’s actual members were not nearly as careful or as neutral. Inspired by their London counterparts, who were in turn bolstered by the Bolsheviks, the Irish railway workers knew they could make a difference to the nationalist effort. And boy, did they. Technically it wasn’t a strike. You could still hop on a train from say Limerick to Dublin and the trains would run normally.

The only problem for commuters would be if there happened to be any British forces or goods also trying to use the train. Then it would sit in the station as the soldiers and train drivers argued. One union member described what happened at the station as follows. The owners of the railway company were furious and stated to the Irish times that they would break the action quote if necessary by complete replacement of the workforce.

They began firing anyone who refused to drive trains and collaborated with the military to seek out dissenters. On top of this the poor railwaymen failed to get any financial support from their London based national union of railwaymen and they lost over £5000 in wages in June alone. But they held firm and the army was forced to simply sit in the trains. The British thinking was that people would become so frustrated by the lack of any movement and therefore would turn against the railwaymen.

Sylvain Briolet, a Frenchman who was travelling through Ireland at the time writes that it became a question of who would hold out longest. Armed policemen board a train, the crew refuse to proceed whereupon the policemen make themselves at home, drink, sleep and make merry in the carriages for several days. Several days! Obviously this put a lot of strain on the British forces.

As one army commander put it there just weren’t enough men to quote bring things to a standstill and at the present rate he continued we shall be broken sooner than the railway companies. And the general population never really turned on the railwaymen, in fact it was quite the opposite. Sinn Féin held fundraisers across the country and raised around £120,000 to support the train drivers.

Besides for the obvious nationalism the other reason the British bid to annoy the Irish into forcing the trains to run again failed because well the IRA stepped in to provide alternative transport for civilians. Briolet again mentions taking a train at Dundrum station. It’s worth giving you the Frenchman’s full account. Here goes.

Extraordinary scenes occur in the stations. Dundrum, a small country station. Three RIC with a sergeant, 40 infantrymen and full war equipment under an officer. A train slips along the platform and stops. The four policemen get into a compartment. The driver gets out of the train so all the actors are in position.

A gentleman comes up. You’re not going on Jack? Not a foot sir. You’ll be dismissed Jack. I know that sir. Come and have a drink. Certainly sir. They proceed to the bar.

Meanwhile a young man with nothing about him to indicate his importance saves the instant obedience which he commands. He is the commander of the local volunteers. Exerts himself to make order out of chaos. Regulates the dispatches of the passengers, women first, to the nearby town of Tipperary. Sidecars and motors have been procured and each individual goes off in his turn as he is told.

Two commercial travellers pressed for time and unchivalrous try by heavy tipping to get away first. They are taken off their carriage. The first shall be last. The big train driver reappears flushed and happy. All the time, in the background, beside the fixed bayonets, the British officers stand against the wall. Inactive, ignored, inexistent and seemingly bored.

The boycott continued throughout the summer and was highly effective. General MacReady described it as quote, a serious setback for military activities during the best season of the year. While Hamer Greenwood said it put the administration in Ireland in a humiliating and discredited position.

The army wanted to strike back by imposing an embargo on motor fuel so that the IRA would have been left stranded. But the cabinet wouldn’t allow it and as one commander put it, although the IRA were commandeering cars and lorries freely from moving about the country, we were unable to stop them from getting petrol.

It should also be noted that not all railway workers were engaged in the boycott voluntarily. The IRA across the country threatened anyone willing to drive trains. In Cavan, Brigade gave out fines of £10 and even locked up a man for a few days. While in Cork, quote, in the few instances where some weakling refused to obey the call of the munition strike, they were severely dealt with. There are even stories of drivers who, simply trying to save their jobs and livelihood, ended up being tarred and feathered.

But generally the railwaymen were voluntary and were supported by the population and the boycott lasted all the way through 1920, though by the end of the year they began to falter. This was due to a new British tactic in which it was planned to, quote, throttle the railway system. The railwaymen had set up systems to maintain food supplies throughout the country despite the boycott, but the British began undermining these plans to create a total shutdown of the rail system.

The union leaders issued a statement on December 15th saying that the British had, quote, seized the papers and records of our food committee, have arrested and imprisoned without charge the members of these committees, and have placed a barrier against the organisation of the motor transport service for the distribution of fuel supplies.

By disrupting the food supplies the British made the boycott impossible to continue. This was compounded by the fact it was proving more and more difficult to support the now over 15,000 railwaymen who were out of work. So on December 21st 1920 the boycott was called off and arms began to be moved around Ireland once again by train.

But it can’t be understated how effective this boycott was while it lasted. As we’ll see the war was not going in the British’s favour over the summer of 1920 and this was in part down to the effectiveness of the train strikes. As one trade union leader, Carlo Shannon put it, quote, this was a new weapon against which all the tanks, the machine guns, the black and tans and all their bombs cannot in the end win out.

And he was kind of right. He just didn’t factor the boycott becoming too effective and hampering food supplies. If it had continued who knows what would have happened. But as we’ll see over the next few episodes the situation in Ireland changed dramatically between the beginning and the end of the boycott. The British took off their gloves and this harsher approach to curtailing food was just one of their many successful new tactics deployed in the second half of 1920. But that’s getting a little ahead of ourselves.

Before I go I want to give a quick plug to a great history podcast I’ve stumbled across recently. It’s called Shite Talk, a show where two Irish comedians look at some of the weirder moments of Irish history. Go have a listen, then return in two weeks and we’ll explore more of the Irish War of Independence.

Thanks for listening. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and if you’re enjoying it, give us a review on Apple Podcasts or tell your friends. It really helps. You can also get in touch and support the show through our website thehistoryofireland.com or follow us on Facebook or Twitter. It’s always great hearing from you guys. And if I’ve made a mistake, please do let me know.

The History of Ireland was written and produced by me, Kevin Dole. Additional research and fact-checking by Robert Babington, music by Liam Doyle and production help from Aoife Murphy. This podcast was recorded in the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. Sovereignty was never ceded.

The History of Ireland was written and produced by me, Kevin Dole. Additional research and fact-checking by Robert Babington, music by Liam Doyle and production help from Aoife Murphy. This podcast was recorded in the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. Sovereignty was never ceded. Sovereignty was never ceded.