The failure of socialist republicanism in the Irish revolution and its aftermath - Part 5
Scab labour being escorted to work by RIC officers during the 1911 Wexford lockout. Picture from Independent.ie . Continued from previous post . The Evidence The Church and socialism The Dublin Lockout of 1913 is rightly remembered as a crucial struggle between various Dublin employers and their workers, essentially over the question of whether or not workers had the right to join the trade union of their choice (it was the unionisation of unskilled workers - alongside the skilled and semi-skilled - by the ITGWU to which employers like William Martin Murphy of the Dublin United Tram Company objected). But lockouts in general had become a not infrequent occurrence during the second decade of the twentieth century. One important example was a lockout which took place in Wexford in 1911 when various foundry and engineering companies decided to lock out all employees who had become members of the ITGWU. The union had only recently begun to recruit in the area, and its su