Brian
Riddick has sent us this reminder of James Byrne after reading our October
article on the ‘Lock Out’.Near the Republican plot in Deansgrange cemetery lie the remains of one of Dun Laoghaire’s forgotten sons. James Byrne was born and reared at 5 Clarence Street, Kingstown (now called Dun Laoghaire) and, inspired by the leadership of James Connolly and Jim Larkin, he became an active trade unionist in the ITGWU.
By the time of the Great Lock Out of 1913, Byrne, a thirty-eight year old father of six, was Secretary of Bray and Kingstown Trades Council and also the Kingstown ITGWU Branch Secretary.
The 1913 Lock Out was the most significant and tragic era of trade union history ever witnessed in Ireland. Trade Unionists from up to 45 different unions combined against the might of Dublin.
Employers, who were led by William Martin Murphy, owner of the ‘Irish Independent’ and director of the United Tramways Company, the principal source of public transport in the capital at the time. The reason for this confrontation was simple; the refusal of Murphy and others to employ trade union members.
James Byrne was arrested and falsely charged with ‘intimidation’ of a tram-worker on October 20th 1913 by the Dublin Metropolitan Police and remanded to Mountjoy prison. While there, he embarked on a hunger and thirst strike in protest at the refusal of bail.
After a number of days, the British government gave in and Byrne was released on bail awaiting trial. However, due to the conditions prevailing in the jail at the time and helped in no way by his hunger and thirst strike, he caught pneumonia from which he died in Monkstown Hospital two weeks after he was first arrested.
Up to 3,000 people, along with 25 mourning coaches and cabs accompanied
by two trade union bands, left Byrne’s home at 1pm for the funeral
walk. The procession took two hours to reach Deansgrange, due to its size.
The funeral oration by James Connolly was delivered from the roof of a cab. He is quoted as saying that “… their comrade had been murdered as surely as any of the martyrs in the long list of those who had suffered for the sacred cause of liberty.
“The police vultures and master vultures were not content until they had got Byrne into prison. He had been thrown into a cold, damp, mouldy cell, but while in prison, so contemptuous had he been of those who put him there that he had refused food and drink.
“If their murdered comrade could send them a message, it would be to go on with the fight for the sacred cause of liberty, even if it brought them hunger, misery, eviction and even death itself, as it had done Byrne.”
Above: Liberty Hall in this period and left, James Connolly.