A soviet supported by the Catholic Church--that was the singular spectacle
I found when I broke through the military cordon about the proclaimed city
of Limerick.
The city had been proclaimed for this reason: Robert Byrne, son of a
Limerick business man, had been imprisoned for political reasons. He fell
ill from the effects of a hunger strike,[1] and was sent to the hospital in
the Limerick workhouse. A "rescue party" was formed. In the mêlée that
followed, Robert Byrne and a constable were killed. Then according to a
military order, Limerick was proclaimed because of "the attack by armed men
on police constables and the brutal murder of one of them."
At Limerick Junction we were locked in our compartments. There were few on
the train. Two or three school boys with their initialed school caps. Two
or three women drinking tea from the wicker train baskets supplied at the
junction. In the yards of the Limerick station, the train came to a dead
stop. Then the conductor unlocked compartments, while a kilted Scotch
officer, with three bayonet-carrying soldiers behind him, asked for
permits. At last we were pulled into the station filled with empty freight
trucks and its guard of soldiers. Through the dusk beyond the rain was
slithering.
"Sorry. No cab, miss," said a constable. "The whole city's on strike."
That explained my inability to get Limerick on the wire. From Kildare I had
been trying all morning to reach Limerick on the telephone. All the
Limerick shops I passed were blinded or shuttered. In the gray light, black
lines of people moved desolately up and down, not allowed to congregate and
apparently not wanting to remain in homes they were weary of. A few candles
flickered in windows. After leaving my suitcase at a hotel, I left for the
strike headquarters. On my way I neared Sarsfield bridge. Between it and
me, there loomed a great black mass. Close to it, I found it was a tank,
stenciled with the name of Scotch-and-Soda, and surrounded by massed barbed
wire inside a wooden fence. On the bridge, the guards paraded up and down
and called to the people:
"Step to the road!"
At the door of a river street house, I mounted gritty stone steps. A
red-badged man opened the door part way. As soon as I told him I was an
American journalist, the suspicious look on his face vanished. With much
cordiality he invited me to come upstairs. While he knocked on a
consultation door, he bade me wait. In the wavering hall light, the knots
in the worn wooden floor threw blots of shadow. On an invitation to come
in, I entered a badly lit room where workingmen sat at a long black
scratched table. In the empty chair at the end of the table opposite the
chairman, I was invited to sit down. As I asked my questions, every head
was turned down towards me as if the strike committee was having its
picture taken and everybody wanted to get in it.
"Yes, this is a soviet," said John Cronin, the carpenter who was father of
the baby soviet. "Why did we form it? Why do we pit people's rule against
military rule? Of course, as workers, we are against all military. But our
particular grievance against the British military is this: when the town
was unjustly proclaimed, the cordon was drawn to leave out a factory part
of town that lies beyond the bridges. We had to ask the soldiers for
permits to earn our daily bread.
"You have seen how we have thrown the crank into production. But some
activities are permitted to continue. Bakers are working under our orders.
The kept press is killed, but we have substituted our own paper." He held
up a small sheet which said in large letters: The Workers' Bulletin Issued
by the Limerick Proletariat.
"We've distributed food and slashed prices. The farmers send us their
produce. The food committee has been able to cut down prices: eggs, for
instance, are down from a dollar to sixty-six cents a dozen and milk from
fourteen to six cents a quart.
"In a few days we will engrave our own money. Beside there will be an
influx of money from England. About half the workers are affiliated to
English unions and entitled to strike pay. We have, by the way, felt the
sympathy of the union men in the army sent to guard us. A whole Scotch
regiment had to be sent home because it was letting workers go back and
forth without passes.
"And--we have told no one else--the national executive council of the Irish
Labor party and Trade Union congress will change its headquarters from
Dublin to Limerick. Then if military rule isn't abrogated, a general strike
of the entire country will be called."
Just here a boy with imaginative brown eyes, who was, I discovered later,
the editor of the _Workers' Bulletin_, said suddenly:
"There! Isn't that enough to tell the young lady? How do we know that she
is not from Scotland Yard?"
In order to send my wire on the all-Ireland strike, I stumbled along dark
streets till I came to the postoffice. Lantern light was streaming from a
hatchway open in the big iron door in the rear. "Who comes?" challenged the
guards. While I was giving a most conversational reply, a dashing officer
ran up and told me the password to the night telegraph room. Streets were
deserted when I attempted to find my way back to the hotel. At last I saw a
cloaked figure separate itself from the column post box against which it
was standing. I asked my way and discovered I was talking to a member of
the Black Watch. Limerick is the only town in the British Isles that
retains the ancient custom of a civilian night guard. While the strike was
on, there were, during the day, 600 special Royal Irish constables on duty
in Limerick. But, at night, in spite of unlit streets, the 600 constables
gave place to the sixty men of the Black Watch.
"Priests preached sermons Sunday urging the people to withstand the enemy
with the same spirit they did in the time of Sarsfield," said young
Alphonsus O'Mara, the mayor of Limerick, whom I met at breakfast. His Sinn
Fein beliefs had imprisoned him in his hotel, for his home was beyond the
town and he would not ask the British military for a pass. Opposite the
breakfast room we could see the drawn blue shades of Limerick's dry goods
store. A woman staggered by with a burlap bag of coal on her shoulders. A
donkey cart with a movie poster reading: "Working Under Order of the Strike
Committee: GOD AND MAN," rolled past. A child hugging a pot of Easter
lilies shuffled by. "There's no idea that the people want communism. There
can't be. The people here are Catholics."
But a little incident of the strike impressed me with the fact that there
were communists among these fervent Catholics. In order to pictorialize the
predicament of the Limerick workers to the world through the journalists
who were gathered in Limerick waiting the hoped-for arrival of the first
transatlantic plane, the national executive council devised this plan. One
bright spring afternoon, the amusement committee placed poster
announcements of a hurling match that was to be held just outside of
Limerick at Caherdavin. About one thousand people, mostly Irish boys and
girls, left town. At sunset, two by two, girls with yellow primroses at
their waists, and boys with their hurling sticks in their hands, marched
down the white-walled Caherdavin road towards the bridge. The bridge guard
hooped his arm towards the boat house occupied by the military. Soldiers,
strapping on cartridge belts, double-quicked to his aid. A machine gun
sniffed the air from the upper story of the boat house. Scotch-and-Soda
veered heavily bridgewards. A squad of fifty helmeted constables marched to
the bridge, and marked time. But the boys and girls merely asked if they
might go home, and when they were refused, turned about again and kept up a
circling tramp, requesting admission. Down near the Broken Treaty Stone, in
St. Munchin's Temperance hall, in a room half-filled with potatoes and eggs
and milk, women who were to care for the exiles during their temporary
banishment, were working. A few of the workers' red-badged guards came to
herald the approach of the workers, and then sat down on a settle outside
the hall.
St. Munchin's chapel bell struck the Angelus.
The red-badged guards rose and blessed themselves.