Padraig Yeates 16/9/24

The Munitions Strike of 1920

How Dockers and Rail Workers Defied an Empire

by Padraig Yeates

Padraig is a journalist and the author of a number of books including the Dublin quartet: Lockout: Dublin 1913, A City in Wartime: Dublin 1914–18, A City in Turmoil: Dublin 1919–21 and A City in Civil War: Dublin 1921–24 among others. He is also Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Contemporary Irish History in Trinity College Dublin,  

The Munitions Strike of May to December 1920 on the railways in Ireland started when railway workers placed an embargo on the transportation of British military forces and munitions. The strike initiative had initially arisen in England after London dockers refused to load a ship with munitions for the Poland’s war on Russia which had become a Soviet state.

In Dublin, ITGWU dockers followed their example. However, they refused to handle British munitions as the British Army were in the middle of a campaign against increased IRA activity. Members of the Irish branch of the NUR (National Union of Railwaymen) then adapted its union’s support of the British dockers to the Irish position, following the lead of the Dublin dockers.

 The NUR had told its members to refuse to handle ‘any material which is intended to assist Poland against the Russian people.’ The Irish members then claimed the principle applied here in Ireland as Irish lives were being similarly lost to British militarism, and thus they, as members, had the right to refuse to carry both munitions and armed troops on the railways in Ireland.

Padraig will show how this sudden display of passive resistance severely disrupted British attempts to put down the Irish revolt, badly set back British military actions here, and left the British administration in Ireland in a humiliating and discreditable position. He will further elaborate on how the strike which lasted seven months struck a major peaceful blow for Irish independence by helping the British begin to come to the realisation that Ireland might be a more ungovernable proposition than they could afford to persist with.