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Great Southern and Western Railway strike 1911

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  • 12-12-2015 11:42am
    #1
    Qualitymark
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,824 ✭✭✭


    Has anyone here any family or other connection with this strike in 1911?


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    #2
    kildarejohn
    Registered Users Posts: 310 ✭✭kildarejohn


    I know that several ancestors worked for GSWR in 1911, but don't know about the strike; have you found any sources re strike?


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    #3
    Qualitymark
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,824 ✭✭✭Qualitymark


    Lots online about it - google and you'll find it.


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    #4
    kildarejohn
    Registered Users Posts: 310 ✭✭kildarejohn


    Did not find much about strike in google, best I found was this http://1913committee.ie/blog/?p=80
    To follow up the question of whether there was any family involvement I had a look at the Kildare Observer newspaper on irishnewsarchive.com. Some interesting articles there, and the "Observer" despite its generally pro-establishment stance seemed quite sympathetic to the strikers. However articles do not mention any strikers by name, except in the court "petty sessions" reports, where 4 strikers were charged with assault, and the GSWR took cases for repossession of company houses against some men they dismissed (part of the 10%)


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    #5
    Qualitymark
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,824 ✭✭✭Qualitymark


    Basically, the Great Southern and Western Railway Company's workers were called out on strike after two checkers were sacked for refusing to handle a load of timber delivered by a blackleg breaking another strike - which itself had been caused by people being sacked for union membership.
    After the strike caved, one in every ten workers was sacked, which is to say was not 're-hired' by the Great Southern and Western Railway Company. The company said that the 'loyal' workers who had broken the strike, and the scabs they'd hired in from the North and Scotland, had to be rewarded by keeping their jobs. Oh, and they cut the wages of those they 're-hired'.


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    #6
    kildarejohn
    Registered Users Posts: 310 ✭✭kildarejohn


    kildarejohn wrote: »
    Did not find much about strike in google, best I found was this http://1913committee.ie/blog/?p=80
    I had a look at the Kildare Observer newspaper on irishnewsarchive.com.

    I noticed something I found interesting comparing the story on 1913committee.ie versus the Kildare Observer stories. At the end of the strike the GSWR owner Sir William Goulding telegraphed his wife - ‘strike settled men accepted terms. Send trap to meet me Sallins at 5 o’clock.’ Goulding lived in Millicent, a couple of miles from Sallins train station.
    The Observer report mentions how GSWR dismissed 4 men in Sallins and evicted them from their company cottages. So as Goulding was driven home he must have passed by the cottages of the families he had made homeless.
    It says something for the depressed state of the Irish working classes at the time that nobody stoned Goulding's trap as he drove past and there were apparently no attacks on his fine home.


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    #7
    Qualitymark
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,824 ✭✭✭Qualitymark


    Ireland has always been a relatively docile place. Look at this statement by an official last week…

    371984.png


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