Top Issue 1-2024

8 November 2013

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1913 Lockout martyr James Byrne commemoration

The funeral of James Byrne in 1913 makes its way from his family home in Kingstown (now Dún Laoghaire) to Deansgrange Cemetery

James Connolly told a crowd of several thousand that James Byrne had been ‘murdered as surely as any one of the martyrs in the long list of those who had suffered for the sacred cause of liberty’

JAMES BYRNE – trade union activist and martyr of the 1913 Lockout – was remembered in a dignified ceremony in Deansgrange Cemetery in County Dublin last weekend.

Organised by the Loughlinstown, Ballybrack and Shankill Men’s Shed, the event was addressed by the president of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and General Secretary of Mandate, John Douglas. He spoke of the need – 100 years on – to continue the work of activists like James Byrne in fighting for workers’ rights and for a decent living wage.

A letter of support was sent by James Connolly Heron, whose great-grandfather and 1916 leader, James Connolly, gave the oration at Byrne’s funeral.

LBS Men’s Shed Chairperson and local Sinn Féin representative Shane O’Brien laid a wreath while fellow Men’s Shed member Jay McLean recited the Pádraig Pearse poem, The Rebel.

The Secretary of LBS Men’s Shed, Jamie Moran, gave a brief account of the life of James Byrne.

JAMES BYRNE worked as a ‘coal heave’. He was married and had six children. In 1913 he was an active member of Irish Transport & General Workers’ Union.

As union branch secretary, James took a leading position of agitation on the Lockout in the Kingstown and Bray areas. He was arrested and brought before the courts the day after the Lockout began, having been accused of jostling and intimidating two tramway inspectors in Kingstown. Byrne denied the charges but was remanded without bail to Mountjoy Prison for a week before being fined £1 and ordered not to interfere in the tramway dispute.

A few weeks after being released he was before the courts again. This time he was accused of assault and intimidation of ‘blackleg’ workers who were breaking a strike at Heiton’s Coalyard. He again denied the charges, saying he was in Dublin city centre when the assault was supposed to have taken place. The police demanded and secured increased bail conditions. Byrne was unable to meet the cost of these conditions and was again remanded in custody, where he immediately went on hunger and thirst strike.

Unfortunately, given the poor conditions in which he was detained, he contracted pneumonia and his health quickly deteriorated. The authorities, worried at their prisoners’ worsening health and the consequences it might ignite, released Byrne. He was immediately admitted to Monkstown Hospital, where he lost his fight for life on 1 November 1913, aged 36.

Speaking at his funeral three days later, James Connolly told a crowd of several thousand that James Byrne had been “murdered as surely as any one of the martyrs in the long list of those who had suffered for the sacred cause of liberty”.

(Pictured below) LBS Men’s Shed members and ICTU President John Douglas at the grave of James Byrne: Noel Blake, John Douglas, Jamie Moran, Shane O'Brien and Jay McLean

1913 James Byrne commemoration

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