“Make way for the Molly Maguires…”
This year marks the centenary of the 1913 Lockout, one of the most important events in the history of Irish Workers. The Lockout would have had a huge impact on our community, with most families in the North and South Docks impacted in some manner.
The Lockout began in August, and later this year the East Wall History Group will be amongst those marking the anniversary. In the lead up to the anniversary, we have been holding a series of talks entitled ‘On the Road to the Lockout’. So far this has featured a talk by Conor McCabe on the 1911 Railway strike (which helped inspire the local school boys actions) and Francis Devine on the Dublin Dockers trade unions. For this latest talk we are going a bit further back in time and across the Atlantic to look at the story of an earlier generation of radical Irish workers.
We are grateful to Bill Yund and to the Pennsylvania Labor History Society for permission to use these illustrations, (which originally appeared in a newsletter of the Insulators (Lagger’s) Union Local 2 based in Pittsburgh).
Heres a short student made documentary briefly outlining the history of the Molly Maguires, and the classic Dubliners song, featuring the great Like Kelly.