On this day, 20 April 1919, 1,000 youths confronted soldiers in one of the major flashpoints of the Limerick Soviet in Ireland. The Limerick Trades and Labour Council had become a strike committee, and it was effectively running the city during a general strike against the imposition of an onerous pass system by the British military.
In addition to printing their own currency (pictured), they established an amusement committee that reopened the cinema, diverting profits to the strike fund. They also printed posters advertising a hurling match at Caherdavin, a suburb that lay across the River Shannon and outside the restricted zone.
After the match, 1,000 youths approached the army check point on Sarsfield Bridge, without the permits that permitted their re-entry to Limerick. A sentry fired warning shots and his colleagues scrambled from inside the Shannon Rowing Club where they were billeted. An armoured car and whippet tank blocked the bridge and a machine gun was readied on the upper storey of the Rowing Club.
Bloodshed was avoided when the youths retreated from the restricted area and organised a concert and dance at St Munchin’s Temperance Hall. https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1968493440002463/?type=3
