CoI look at Anglican roleduring Dublin lock out cancelled

James Larkin, an Irish trade union leader during the Dublin lock out 100 years ago. The Church of Ireland is examining the events of 1913 in Liberty Hall on November 16. The event is themed around a saying coined by John Hume's father - 'You can't eat a flag.'

Organised by the Church’s Historical Commemorations Working Group, the event will look at some of the Church of Ireland personalities who sympathised with the strikers who went head-to-head with William Martin Murphy’s employers’ cartel between August 1913 and January 1914.

The event is free and will take place in Liberty Hall from 10.30am on November 16.

The Church explains: “We think of the Decade of Centenaries as only being about the great constitutional issues and events that dominated public life in Ireland between 1912 and 1922.

“But these events took place within the circumstances of everyday life for ordinary people in Ireland: for many life was dominated by economic hardship and social deprivation; these were years of great Trade Union activity and turbulent relationships between labour and capital; the best known manifestation of this turbulence was the Dublin Lock Out of 1913, an event which continues to have relevance for today.”

Whilst the former SDLP leader John Hume’s father warned his son of the inedibility of tricolours and union flags in a different time, place and context the Working Group believe it would have rand true for the strikers from the Dublin slums 100 years ago.

“John Hume said ‘You can’t eat a flag,’” the group states. “This would have made sense amongst the poor of Dublin.

“Yet many of those affected by the Lock Out were also swept up in the revolutionary movement which came to sweep Ireland in those times.”