workingclasshistory:

On this day, 10 September 1922, the Irish Free State faced its first major industrial dispute and responded by declaring the strike illegal and using troops to attack peaceful pickets. The new Postmaster General, J.J. Walsh, was a former postal worker with a reputation as both an active trade unionist and a militant nationalist. But once in power, his first act was to cut wages for postal workers, while pre-emptively preparing to import scab labour from England. At 6pm on September 10th, workers went on strike at the telephone exchange, leaving only two supervisors inside the building. But soldiers forbade them from picketing in the streets. Captain McAllister fired shots towards strikers in Crown Alley and later shot at female operators who had assembled in Anglesea Street. The violence continued the next day, when the military raided the headquarters of the Telephone Strike Committee with armoured cars and machine gun equipment. On 17th September, a sergeant shot at workers as they were walking away through Merchant’s Arch. Olive Flood was shot in the back of the leg, but escaped serious injury because the bullet deflected off her suspender belt. The violent repression was not confined to Dublin; Dolly Ryder was beaten by soldiers in Limerick, and the same troops raided the Strike Committee Offices and destroyed Union property. Despite this repression, the strike held firm, and on 29 September the government agreed to reduce the pay cut. It was a meagre victory earned at great cost, and despite government assurances those who had gone on strike endured years of victimisation. In his memoirs, J.J. Walsh was unapologetic, arguing that “‘at this critical juncture to smash such a well organised strike was a salutary lesson to that general indiscipline.” This is a history of the dispute: https://libcom.org/history/postal-strike-1922 https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1207183449466803/?type=3