THE
TOWN about which I am about to write is Carlow and such a title
would infuriate all true Carlovians. If there is one thing about
which all Carlow Townsmen would be agreed, it would be that they are
in no way "Country". Indeed the animosity between town and country
has been a feature of Carlow life until very recently. Although the
Urban area of Carlow now includes a part on the west side of the
river, in my own time senseless fights between the true Carlow men
and their Graiguecullen neighbours were common, and right up to
today, footballers of the G.A.A. code who, though living in the
Urban area of Carlow, dwell west of the Barrow, do not play with
Carlow county but with the county of Leix.
There is an historic reason for this of course. Carlow has been from
the time of the Norman invasion a garrison town, garrisoned to
protect the Pale and to keep open for the invaders the roads and
passes of the Barrow valley, leading to the south eastern ports.
Those who came across the river were the enemies of Carlow, bringing
death and destruction. This was the situation for centuries and I
suppose old memories linger on.
The
first castle was built in Carlow right on the Barrow's banks in 1180
by Hugh De Lacy. In the fourteenth century it was strengthened, as
were the general defences of the town, against the attacks of the
Mac Murraghs of Borris, the O'Moores of Leix and the O'Byrnes and
O'Tooles of Wicklow. In 1361 the main organs of Government were moved
from Dublin to Carlow. The idea was to strengthen this vital
strategic position. The departments moved included, the King's Bench
and the Courts of Chancery. Surely the first example of Government
decentralization in this country. The experiment was not a success
however. The raids continued and intensified and Carlow became quite
a dangerous place in which to live. So bad did things become that
the officials and their civil servants and soldiers demanded
excessive pay to stay in the place, and were soon removed back to
Dublin. Is this the first case of a demand for danger money in
Ireland?
During this period Carlow is mentioned as a place where guns were
fabricated, a tradition which was carried on right up to the last
European war. Dr. Conor Cruise O'Brien in his book "To Katanga and
Back" describes Carlow as the Ruhr of Ireland. In 1668 an English
school teacher Thomas Dinley found Carlow to be a fair thriving and
flourishing town, having an air of neatness and respectability and
comfort, famous for the manufacture of sheeps grey frieze. About a
century later another tourist named Dowden described Carlow as a
"Considerable manufacturing centre noted for the most famous spurs
in Europe". Carlow continued to be a turbulent place for most of its
history. Cromwell eventually destroyed the castle, attacking in the
traditional way from across the river. The actual site of his guns
is still known as Cromwell's field. The most recent battle of any
significance was of course in 1798, when six hundred Croppies were
killed by Yeomen in the streets of Carlow. Their bodies lie buried
in a common grave, in Ninety Eight Street in Graiguecullen. Even the
dead Rebels, though Carlow men, were carried across the river.
I
suppose it is not surprising that, in the next period of national
insurgency, the most prominent man in Carlow came, not from the town
but again from across the river, from the site of one of the
earliest Christian settlements, Killeshin. His name was Mac Gamhna;
Padraig MacGamhna. He was serving his apprenticeship as a miller.
He was sacked from his job because of his activities in 1916. During
the Black and Tan war he was the leading man in Carlow and the
surrounding counties. He was captured at the Ballymurphy ambush and
condemned to death. This sentence was commuted to Penal Servitude
for life, but he was released at the General Amnesty. He stood as a
Labour candidate in the General Election of 1922, for the
Constituency of Carlow-Kilkenny. He was elected at the head of the
poll, beating Willie Cosgrave by thousands of votes. Indeed the vote
collected by Mac Gamhna in that election has never since been
equalled. He took his seat as a Labour Deputy but refused to take
the oath of allegiance and left the Dail. He went on the run during
the Civil War and again took a leading part in all operations.
He
remained an I.R.A. man until his death but because of his stature
and his record, he was permitted to take part in Local Government
politics and to sit on County and Urban Councils. Extraordinary as
it may seem, he was also a life long member of the Labour Party. He
was a founder member of the Carlow branch of the Irish Transport and
General Workers Union and was chairman of that branch for most of
his life. There was no trade union or Labour organisation in which
Mac Gamhna did not play a leading part. He was the inspiration, the
guide, philosopher and friend of all us younger people who came
along later. He died in jail, because of his part in the Land
Agitation in July 1943.
Paddy Bergin,
born 1913 Staplestown Road, Carlow, later lived in Bluebell Cottage,
Dublin Road. Early education in St. Joseph's and C.B.S. Attended
Blackrock College 1926-1931. Following his first employment for
local money maker Frank Slater, he was an apprentice for 5 years as
Sugar Cook and fitter in Carlow Sugar Factory. He was a member of
the I.R.A. in the 30's. Following the 1949 strike Paddy lost his
job. From 1951 to 1957 Paddy was national organiser of the Labour
Party. In 1956 he was elected to the Senate and became the first
Carlow townsman to be elected to either house of the Oireachtas. He
was a member of the Carlow County Council for 14 years and Carlow
Urban for 10 years. He was the Administrator and Staff Officer of
the District Medical Office of the L.D.F. Chairman of the local
branch Irish Engineering Industrial and Electrical Trade Union.
Helped to revive the Carlow Trades Council. Was involved in the
formation of the Federation of Rural Workers.
In
later years Paddy worked until his retirement as a maintenance
fitter for the Iveagh Trust. He now lives in Drimnagh, Dublin. His
son Emmet is well known to television viewers as Dick Moran in
Glenroe. At the Biennial Conference of the Federated Workers Union
of Ireland Rural Group, in October 1988 Paddy Murphy paid the
following tribute to Paddy Bergin.
"A
craftsman at the Carlow Sugar Factory, Paddy Bergin helped to
establish the Carlow Branch of the Union and was a delegate at the
October Conference. He was to be the doyen of the Federations
helpers during the third Kildare Farm Strike — the South Kildare
dispute — which occurred in the Autumn of 1947. He laid his job on
the line, and prospects for work in his trade in this country in
peril, because of his efforts to establish and consolidate the
membership of the infant Federation in Carlow and South Kildare —
where Union members were obliged to hold their meetings in the open
air at the "Round Bush" hope that at some future time a full paper
on this great, though little known, Labour man may be delivered.
The
idea for an Irish Sugar Manufacturing Industry was Mac Gamhna's. He
preached its feasibility and desirability for many years. At a later
date he pioneered the Irish Tobacco growing industry, which failed
because the Irish Government insisted on collecting the same customs
revenue from the Irish grown tobacco as from the imported leaf,
right from the beginning of the venture. Mac Gamhna also pioneered
the bog development scheme, and it was his fertile brain which first
foresaw the energy producing potential of Irish turf. At the time of
his death he was promoting a "Grow Soya Beans" campaign, and those
of you who understand agriculture will realise how important that
could have been.
The
idea of a Sugar Industry was taken up by the County Council and
other bodies and after a great campaign, there was a Government
decision to set up such an industry and to site it in Carlow. It is
hard to realise how important this decision was for the creation of
a real Trade Union and Labour movement in Carlow.
It
is almost impossible to realise today what the situation was in this
country at the time. The Great War was over as was the Civil War and
the demobbed soldiers were swelling the ranks of the unemployed. The
first gleam of hope for the country came in the same year of 1925
with the setting up of the Shannon Scheme at Ardnacrusha near
Limerick. The contract for the construction of the dam and power
houses was given to a German firm named Siemens. They advertised for
3,000 workers, to live in huts on the site and with canteen
facilities, at a wage of thirty two shillings per week of fifty four
hours. In one week 6,000 workers had applied for the 3,000 jobs. The
Irish Transport Union was still recovering from the effects of the
Agricultural strike in 1922. Membership was down and organisation,
particularly in rural Ireland, was weak. The fight for better wages
on the Shannon was carried on in the Dail by the Labour Party under
Tom Johnston, the case being made that a Government Contractor
should show a good example. The Party claimed that a wage of fifty
shillings would be much nearer to justice. On the 20th of November
1925 the Labour Party got a reply to Parliamentary Questions, about
the information supplied by the Government to Siemens concerning
wages. That answer is illuminating and is as follows.
Wages for Road Workers: Carlow,
thirty five shillings (35/-); Galway twenty seven shillings (27/-);
Cavan, twenty eight shillings (28/-); Leix, twenty nine shillings
(29/-); Kildare, thirty eight shillings (38/-); Meath, forty
shillings (40/-); Cork, forty to forty-two shillings (40 to 42/-).
In all cases the week was one of fifty hours.
Wages for Farm Workers: Carlow,
23/9 (£1-19) for 53 hours; Dublin, 37/6 (£1-87½) for 53 hours; Cavan
21/9 £1-09) for 54 hours; Galway,25/3 (£1.27) for 52 hours; Leix,
27/- (£1-35) for 52 hours and so on.
To
balance the picture we should remember that a Frieze overcoat could
be bought for 47/6 (£2-39); a ready made suit for 21/- (£1-05) and
one made to measure for 45/- (£2-25). Shirts cost from 2/3 (12p) to
2/6 (12p) and boots or shoes could be bought for 3/11 (20p) for
gents and 3/6 (17½p) for ladies. Fowl were from 7/- (35p) to 8/-
(40p) per pair; eggs were 2/- (10p) per dozen; turnips 1/- (5p) per
cwt, and potatoes I/- per stone. In passing, I suppose it is no harm
to mention that the members of Dail Eireann were paid an allowance
of just seven pounds per week and there was a ballad called "My Good
Old 360 pound A Year Sir".
Jim Larkin
All
of this relates back to my own town of Carlow and its sugar factory,
because the Shannon scheme wages controversy had not passed
unnoticed there and the Irish Transport Union members there were
agitating to have a demand made to Messrs Lippens, the firm setting
up the Company, and to Thompsons, the local firm responsible for the
actual construction work, for a wage claim for ten pence per hour.
Mac Gamhna advised that if such demands were made the factory might
be transferred to either Athy or Thurles where workers would be more
amenable. He suggested that no action be taken until the building of
the factory was well advanced when the workers could be organised in
a large group and an effective fight made for an improvement in
wages and conditions. His advice was taken and work on the factory
got under way.
I
think I may have travelled a little too fast towards the building of
the Sugar Factory and may have given the impression that Mac Gamhna
was the only Labour man. This of course was not the case at all. On
the 14th of February 1925, more than half a century ago, a meeting
was held to set up a Carlow Workers Council. The meeting was
attended by delegates from the National Union of Woodworkers, the
Irish Union of Distributive Workers and Clerks, the Bakers' Union,
the National Union of Railway Men, the Secondary Teachers
Organisation, the Irish National Teachers Organisation, the Post
Office Workers Union, the Carlow Mental Hospital Workers Union and
of course the Irish Transport and General Workers Union. In the same
year Local Government Elections were held on the 23rd of June. The
successful candidates were Mac Gamhna, W. Fleming a railway man,
Patrick Comerford a carpenter, Patrick Connolly a farm labourer, and
Danny Fenlon a school teacher. They were all big men in the Labour
movement in Carlow, and some of them have passed into folklore like
Danny Fenlon and his Adult Education Classes. The stories about him
and his adult students should of course be written down — but
perhaps at some future date.
The
other incident I would like to relate because it will soon pass away
as the older Labour men die. It concerns the public meeting held to
launch the Irish Transport Union in the town. It was addressed by
Jim Larkin. Jim was thundering forth his message on the need for
Unionism when he was interrupted by a well known "character", I will
call, "Nixie", who called out "Who are you to come here, to advise
decent Carlow men what to do?" Larkin halted his speech for half a
second, glared down from his great height on the platform at poor
Nixie and roared "My name is Larkin, Jim Larkin. I came here from
the city of Dublin; I mined for gold in California; I mined for coal
in Colorado; I hoisted a sail in the Pacific, and I fired a boiler
on the Atlantic. I unloaded boats at the docks of Liverpool and more
recently at the docks of Dublin. I have worked wherever there was
work for decent men to do, but what back lane scum are you?" Nixie
was just struck dumb by this torrent of words while Larkin waited
for his reply for almost a full second. Then breaking the silence
Big Jim looked at Nixie and gently said, "I hope I did not insult my
friend". "Not at all Mr. Larkin" said Nixie, at which Larkin
thundered out "No indeed because your hide is too thick for any
insult to penetrate it". He collapsed did poor Nixie and, of course,
he never lived it down.
However, to get back to the building of the Sugar Factory and the
creation of a new Sugar Industry. As I think I have already
mentioned, the contract for the actual erection of the factory was
won by the local firm of Thos. Thompson and Son, to the design of
the Belgian firm of Lippens. It was first of the now normal type of
building in which the main loads are carried, not by walls of bricks
or stone or concrete, but by steel girders. The main structure is
erected as a giant skeleton of criss-crossed steel beams which are
later filled in as floors. By this method, all the heavy plant may
be fitted in before the walls are built or the roof fitted, and it
makes a very speedy method of construction. Thompson set something
of a record in 1925/26 because nine months after the site at
Bestfield was cleared, sugar was being manufactured from the first
Irish sugar beet ever grown.
It
is very difficult to get exact figures for the number of men
employed during the construction of the factory, because, apart from
all the strangers of every trade who came to Carlow for work,
strangers being all those who came from more than three miles
distant, there were workers from Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Austria
and Germany. It was not possible to organise those into a tight
Union group and the Company would not negotiate with the Transport
Union on behalf of all the men. A system developed where as special
skills were learned or acquired wages were increased above the
basic. No one really knew what wage any one else earned, and of
course the need for overtime working, to have the place ready for
the crop already growing on the farms, made a reckoning of real
wages difficult. One thing happened however, all the building Craft
Unions had an increase in their local branch membership, and a new
Union, the Irish Engineering Industrial and Electrical Trade Union,
came to Carlow. Strangely, although the town had such a long
tradition of metal working and engineering, there had never been an
Engineering Union in the town before.
This union was a break away from the A.E.W.U. and was allegedly
founded by the
Countess Markieviez
during her term as Minister for Labour, not because of bad service
by the A.E.W.U. to the members, but rather, because of the feeling
that Irish workers should govern their own affairs. In most things
the union would be right-wing Republican. It certainly never had any
regard for the Labour Party after it, the Labour Party, became a
separate body from the T.U.C. The Carlow Branch was founded by a
Cork man named Henry Mahony, who was more famous for leading an
escape of Republican prisoners from Spike Island during the Black
and Tan War than for any trade union activity. He was however, a
sound trade unionist and a man of sterling character. If the branch
he established became by far the most left-wing and radical in the
whole union the fault most certainly was not his. This union had a
two tier system of organization. In other words there was a No. 1
section which catered for craftsmen, fitters, electricians,
blacksmiths, tinsmiths, coppersmiths etc. The No. 2 section catered
for what were called semi-skilled workers, such as stationary engine
drivers, crane drivers, tradesmen helpers etc. This was vital in
later years when the Carlow Branch started to expand, as it enabled
that branch to take into membership those workers, who for one
reason or another, became dissatisfied with the local branch of the
Irish Transport Union.
All
of this was in the future and in 1926 the first Irish Sugar was
manufactured. During that first "campaign" even semiskilled jobs
were done by Belgians, Czechs etc., as the whole process was new to
Irishmen. They learned quickly, however, and the numbers of such
people rapidly decreased. The unemployment situation in the country
being so bad it was but natural that having learned the necessary
skills the Irish workers, both skilled and unskilled, began
agitating to have all the Continentals sent home. This fight was
carried on jointly by both unions. There was constant agitation also
for wage increases, for the listing of a permanent staff, for shift
allowances etc. Sometimes the unions worked together and sometimes
separately but progress was slow, mainly because of the economic
situation in the country.
The
sugar factory took on about eight hundred men during the
manufacturing season or "campaign" as it was called; something over
two hundred men per shift as sugar manufacture needs continuous
process shift work. The night shift began at one o'clock in the
morning and it was not unusual to have up to fifty men outside the
gate at that hour to see if any man might fail to report for duty
and so one of them might get his job for the night, at least, and
for keeps if the luck held out. It was difficult to talk unionism to
men as desperate as that. The position is starkly summed up in the
story about the man with more hard neck than good sense, who
approached the General Manager of the Company and asked
"Any chance
of a job, I don't suppose?” To which the manager replied
"Oh,
certainly, come up in the morning with your tools, I don't think".
A
strategy was evolved, whereby union disputes were dragged out until
shortly before the beginning of the Campaign; the Company being then
most vulnerable, because of the perishable nature of the crop they
had contracted to buy from the farmers, who then, as now, carried
great political influence. If it seemed that there was a danger
their crop would not be harvested they kicked up such a row that
something had to be done quickly. For this reason sugar strikes
tended to be short and bitter. I well remember my own introduction
to sugar strikes. It was at the beginning of the nineteen
thirty-four campaign. I had started to serve my time as a sugar cook
and fitter in 1933 and had joined the I.E.I.E.U. as an apprentice
member. On the night of the strike I was leaving home at midnight
and told my mother about the strike, explaining carefully that it
was the Irish Transport that was striking and that I would not be
involved. She handed me my lunch and said "When you get to the
factory gate, if there is trouble Mac Gamhna will be there, ask him
what you are to do, and do what he says or don't come home here in
the morning". I met Mac Gamhna and he told me not to go to work. I
passed this advice on to my fellow apprentices and we all stayed out
of work except for one boy and he of course came from across the
river. We were all back at work the next day and came out again in
the afternoon, having refused to do what we claimed was Transport
Union Members work, but we were back again on the following morning.
We were being used by the striking union to try to extend the strike
to involve the I.E.I.E.U. and the Company was doing all in its power
to prevent this. The strike was over a few days later, a compromise
settlement giving some concessions to the men. The Transport Union
official handling that strike was Paddy Kane, a native of Carlow who
later became manager of a shoe factory in Kilkenny.
Some of those strikes were bitterly fought. The available labour
pool was so vast; there were 200,000 even in 1932 and the Sugar
Company were not above trying their hand at using this situation to
break strikes. They used their beet Loading agents in the early
days, to recruit men to come to work in spite of the strike. To
discourage this, some of the toughest union men were recruited and
formed into "Flying Columns" and they intercepted lorry loads of
scabs and not so gently dissuaded them.
There is one aspect of this trade union activity I would like to
comment upon, to me, the amazing unity of workers who only three or
four years earlier had been shooting at each other in the Civil War.
Mac Gamhna, the I.R.A. leader, led the workers to the sugar factory
gates on the first strike in the industry but the members of his
strike committee were largely ex-Free State Army men who had hunted
him such a short time before. Breezer Hogan, still alive by the way,
was always a Labour man, but he joined the National Army, as he so
often told me, so that "the will of the people might prevail".
Breezer was a militant Transport Union man, but one of his close
colleagues in that union was Jimmy Rice who had been in charge of
the Flying Column in Carlow during the Civil War. Captain Matty
Nolan (Baghdad) an ex-British Army Sergeant Major, had been promoted
to Captain by General Prout for his gallantry in taking the town of
Clonmel for the Government forces from the Republican Army, but he
would never dream of being disloyal to his comrades on the picket
line, be they Free State or Republican.
In
my opinion this situation was brought about by the trade unions
being strictly non-political. The Unions could take no side in the
Civil War without rending themselves assunder and destroying the
hard-won solidarity of their members. The Labour Party was of course
a political party. It had, in the eyes of the Republicans, betrayed
the Republic by taking the Oath in Dail Eireann, while according to
the Pro-Treaty side, Labour was but a lukewarm party which opposed
the measures they, the Pro-Treatyites, deemed necessary to make the
Treaty stick. Consequently, it seems to me, that, if a union branch
wanted to keep its members together it had to ban talks in support
of Labour as rigorously as that in support of any of the other
parties. Perhaps, this is the reason why it has taken so long for
the industrial strength of the Unions to be reflected in the
political strength of their Party.
While all this trade union activity was going on what was the
political situation like for Labour? Following Mac Gamhna's
withdrawal from Dail Eireann, a Labour man named Ned Doyle was
elected for Carlow-Kilkenny. He was a farm labourer by occupation,
though he was nominated by the Irish National Teachers'
Organization. He was an excellent public speaker and had many
excellent qualities. He had severe domestic difficulties, which
affected his parliamentary performance and after two, parliamentary
performance and after two terms he failed to get further nomination
from the I.N.T.O., or from the Party. James Pattison of Kilkenny, a
Transport Union Official, succeeded him, and he in turn was
succeeded by his son Seamus Pattison, the present Labour T.D. for
Carlow-Kilkenny. Unfortunately for Carlow, it is such a small county
that it has never been a constituency on its own but has always been
attached to some other County, sometimes to Kilkenny and at other
times to Kildare, with a southern part of the County being attached
to Wexford. This sort of situation is unsettling for organization,
as party loyalties and personal loyalties are connected, and when
the personalities change the organization it takes time before it
rallies to the new person.
Under the Revision of the Constituencies Act of 1935, Carlow was
separated from Kilkenny and attached to Kildare. William Norton then
became the Labour T.D. for Carlow. Being anxious to reactivate the
Labour branch there, he sent invitations to the various unions, to
known Labour Party supporters and to the Carlow Trades Council, to
attend a meeting at the Foresters' Hall, Carlow. I was at that time
Secretary to the Trades Council so I summoned a meeting of that body
to consider the invitation. There was an almost unanimous decision
that the Council had no interest in any political party, Labour
included, and the Secretary was instructed to attend the meeting and
so inform Deputy Norton. This was done and Norton took the whole
thing in good part, claiming that he came to Carlow to confer a
benefit on the workers there and not seeking anything for himself or
his Party. So effectively did he speak on the futility of Trade
union activity without Labour Party political activity that I was
completely converted and assured Deputy Norton that I would, in my
personal capacity, re-form the Labour Branch in the Town. I did this
with a great deal of success and thus began an association and a
friendship with Billy Norton that lasted until he died.
