Author: Boyd, Andrew
Title: The Rise of the Irish Trade Unions, 1729-1970
Description: Tralee: Anvil Books, 1972. Mass market paperback, first edition, Pp155. Includes appendices and index. Tight and unmarked - a very good or better copy. 120 grams. << The struggle for recognition was long and tough....Parliament declared (1750) that anyone in the city of Cork who was found guilty of being a member of an unlawful trade union should be imprisoned not above six months, whipped in public, and released only on giving recognisance of good behaviour for seven years. . . . wherever there is discontent or a disposition to combine, or turnouts among workpeople, the Irish are leaders; they are the most difficult to reason with and convince on the subject of wages and regulations in factories. (Peter Ewart, textile manufacturer, 1836) . . . the Orangemen, including those who were special constables and government spies had saved their country by suppressing the treasonable bands calling themselves Luddites. Shat is trade unionism but the landlordism of labor? I would not tolerate, if I were at the head of a government, such bodies as trade unions. (Charles Stewart Parnell, 1891). One of Larkin's achievements was that in the brief summer of 1907 he united the people of Belfast into an effective labour movement. He had the Catholics and the Protestants, the Orangemen, Hibernians, Republicans and Socialists all marching through the city in defence of their trade union rights. When civil war raged in the Irish Free State and sectarian violence was widespread in the North, the employers took advantage of their favourable position to attack the unions and cut wages. . . . in 1925 when the unemployed men in Belfast organised a march to coincide with the opening of the Northern Ireland Parliament the Minister of Home Affairs banned the march and said it was an attempt to intimidate the government. >>

Keywords: Andrew Boyd Irish Trade Unions History Labour United Kingdom


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