An Cosantóir

www.military.ie THE DEFENCE FORCES MAGAZINE | 35 delivered food to the edge of the city for distribution. The Coun- cil controlled prices, the opening hours of shops, carting and transport; they published their own newspaper and printed their own currency. The strike achieved worldwide newspaper and newsreel headlines. At the outset, the Council co-opted to membership Comman- dant Michael Brennan, Officer Commanding, the East Clare Brigade of the Irish Volunteers. Brennan put the Clare and Limerick network of the Volunteers, the IRB and Sinn Féin to work in maintaining clandestine food supplies to the city. He reported daily to the Chief of Staff, General Richard Mulcahy, in Volunteer Headquarters and Mulcahy himself made an undercover visit to the city to evaluate the situation at first hand. The Brennan / Mulcahy connection closely linked the events in Limerick into activity and thinking at national level. The Dáil Cabinet discussed support for Limerick three times and their representatives spent three days in discussions with the lead- ership of the Irish Labour Party and Trade Union Congress. Cabinet ministers, like Éamon de Valera, who favoured a gradual, peaceful approach to separatism were not prepared to support a militant struggle led by workers. The upshot of the contacts – with support from General Mulcahy and Michael Collins (the militant IRB Minis- ters) – was agreement on a plan to evacuate Limerick and leave it as an empty shell in the hands of the military. This was a version of a tactic that had been devised, but never implemented, to oppose Conscription in 1918. The workers rejected the joint Congress/IRB evacuation plan out of hand. Alarmed by the turn of events, the Catholic Bishop, Dr Denis Hallinan, and the Sinn Féin Mayor, Alphonsus O'Mara lobbied hard for the strike to end. There was a partial resumption of work after ten days and a full resumption after fourteen days. From 1917 onwards, the Volunteer Headquarters had organised a second IRB-led and dominated Battalion in Limerick. In the same year, the ITGWU arrived, radicalising workers and unleashing a wave of strikes unequalled anywhere else in the country. Robert Byrne, the dead Volunteer, was a prominent trade unionist as well as an IRB member. His death was the catalyst that fused militant separatism and militant trade unionism together, to create a Gen- eral Strike that quickly morphed into a Workers' Council, or Soviet, in April 1919. Emboldened by Limerick, the workers and their socialist organis- ers continued on a militant path, with women workers to the fore. It is estimated that, in the succeeding years, there were hundreds of soviets, seizures, occupations and strikes, mainly across Munster. In 1920, in the West of Ireland, there was a wave of agitation for breaking up estates and big farms. The Republican Depart- ment of Home Affairs, under Countess Markievicz, saw them as 'a grave danger threatening the foundations of the Republic'. The newly established Sinn Féin courts and IRA police were used to snuff out the agitation. The land seizures were paralleled by farm strikes and a Farmers' Freedom Force was formed 'to take such action as was required' and be 'a national bulwark against Labour, Socialism and Bolshevism'. April 1920 also saw a general two-day strike in support of Re- publican hunger strikers. The rank and file quickly took control of the strike and there were seizures, takeovers, soviets and red flags in scores of towns and villages throughout the country. The 'Irish Times' saw it as 'A wave of Bolshevism before which Sinn Féin itself stands appalled… a continuation might have witnessed the estab- lishment of soviets in all parts of Ireland.' In 1921, the year of the Truce and the Treaty, a major economic recession provoked another strike wave and outbreak of work- place soviets. Farm labourers went on strike – blocking roads, felling trees and creamery workers refused to process milk. Once again, the farmers were backed by the IRA in trying to break the strike. The last throes of this wave of militancy was the Water- ford farm labourers' strike from May 1923. In episodes reminis- cent of the Russian Civil War, the farmers formed units of 'White Guards' and the Government deployed a 'Special Infantry Corps' to support the farmers. From Limerick 1919 onwards, the geographical spread, duration and level of violence of these struggles raises a question. Were there two revolutions and two civil wars? We know about the conventional wars but were there two other wars where socialist- inspired workers first took on British power in Ireland, and then clashed repeatedly and violently with farmers as well as with Re- publican and Free State power, intent on suppressing class conflict in favour of unity in seeking separation from Britain but, inevitably, siding with the big farmers and business? The Decade of Centenaries is an opportunity to re-evaluate these events and to understand their significance better. It is time to move on from a patronising view of the Limerick Soviet as some kind of exotic, regional aberration in the 'Confraternity' city, and instead see it for what it was - a pivotal event in the evolution of the War of Independence. Members of Limerick Trades Council who led the 'General Strike Against British Militarism'. Currency note issued by Limerick Trades Council during the 'General Strike Against British Militarism'. Military Pass access and exit of the Limerick Special Military Area.

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