(those pilots responsible for working sea traffic between Cork & Queenstown, now Cobh) and by a sympathetic strike of 4 Queenstown dock- Kenneally announced his readiness to assert the ers. On Friday, 2nd September, at 2.30 p.m. 150 strikers marched in a body behind the Red Flag to the office of the Harbour Board to be paid off. On receiving their money, they placed another Red Flag over the office, before continuing a march, behind the banner, through the city. Later, the I.T.G.W.U. announced that it would distribute permits to ships for their pilotage from its Cork H.O. The next day a meeting of strikers voted against granting any such documents. It seems to have been then that Day proposed and got carried his motion to take ove the harbour office.
On 5th September, both the Cork daily papers were encouraging panic against the strikers, who nonetheless refused once more to let two colliers at Cork Quay either leave or unload timber at the North Channel. Instead, they placed pickets on them. A special meeting of the Harbour Board was then called to discuss the strike, at which Standing Orders were suspended to discuss a motion of Alderman Liam de Roiste, T.D., that the strike be arbitrated, under the direction of the Dail Department of Labour, by a committee composed of representatives from the Board, the workers, and the Dail.
Day opposed both the motion and the suspension of Standing Orders. He declared that the workers were ready to take over the full running of the port, that they would be able to obtain their 70/- per week thereby, and that they would improve efficiency, weeding out the incompetent ruthlessly. He declared that the proposed, belated offer had come too late. He had put the motion for a takeover. The mechanics were willing to serve under the Soviet. Now he offered the clerks a similar share in it. The Red Flag would be taken down only at the cost of *10,20-aye, 100 lives. If the Irish Republican Government can put me out of office tomorrow, they can do it.
But they have to count the cost."
De Roiste was conciliatory. He pleaded the Tan suffer thereby. On the 14th September, the War and Martial Law as the excuse for the harbour's inefficiency. He declared himself ready to offer control of it to the I.T.G.W.U.-but only under the proper forms. He ended up by emphasising Dail Eireann's capitalism; it recognised the right to strike, but it was determined to protect property.
The board voted in favour of de Roiste's motion. It also appealed to the Cork Executive of the I.T.G.W.U. to accept it (and thus, to restrain Robert Day); but the Cork Executive announced its full support for its District Secretary.
The next day, September 6th, at 10.30 a.m., a crowd of workers proceeded to the Harbour's Offices to take charge. Day led in a group of three composed of himself, Thomas Coyle, ard William Kenneally, the Chairman of the Cork Branch of the I.T.G.W.U. They asked the Secretary to the Harbour Board to serve under workers' control. When he refused, they replaced him. Kenneally made a circuit of those of the harbour staff that had not yet been consulted as to the seizure. It was accepted by the Harbour Master Captain Blanchard, the Assistant Engineer, the caretaker and the telephonists. The office staff was less favourable.
In the department of the Accountant and the Dues Collector, a slight majority of the employees denied the liquidity of the Soviet and refused to work in it. They were allowed to leave peacefully.
Having won what support could be won in the Cork offices, Kenneally, Coyle and Thomas Murphy took a lauch (flying the Red Flag) to Queenstown to take over the harbour there.
But the office workers' lack of solidarity, added to the locking away of the Harbour Office books, were handicaps to the Soviet's power. Nevertheless, its Commissioners asserted their readiness to collect the harbour dues. Day announced that ships would move to and from the harbour only with his permission, and set about his business promptly, giving exit permits to several of the ships that had been waiting to leave. Then the Commissioners held a press conference. Here authority of the workers even against that of Dail Eireann. Day was more moderate. He declared that the Soviet had taken the greatest pains to avoid involving anyone other than the harbour workers, and pointed out that the crosschannel shipping and carrying companies were operating as usual.
But the Harbour Board was looking for a means to regain control, even by a tactical retreat, and appointed a deputation which met Kenneally and offered him new terms: that the strikers return to work on the old pay scale (receiving back pay for the strike period) until Saturday, 10th September. Then, at 11 a.m. a committee made up of Day, Daly and a Chairman, to be appointed wage claim.
At a specially arranged meeting of the strikers, Kenneally moved acceptance of the proposals; and Day, while addressing his hearers as "Bolsheviks', backed Kenneally. He insisted that the proposals did not provide for "arbitration", but for a conference, and that, if this failed to er d in the claim being granted, he would move to revive the Soviet. He denounced the lost trade unionism of the clerical staff. Like Kenneally at the press conference, he warned against too much trust in the Republicans; the I.R.A. could be used as a strike-breaking force, in which case, it would have to be opposed. When the proposals were put to the meeting they were carried unanimously. Day then directed the strikers to return to work.
The following Saturday, 10th September, at 11.30 a.m., the commission met. The settlement that was reached included the payment of the 7/6d per week demanded since 14th February in a lump sum for the increase claimed. For the future, the workers were to receive a rise of E1 per week until a new Commission on the cost of living in Cork reported. This body's decision would be binding retrospectively to the *10th of September, unless the workers would Cork Harbour Board ratified the agreement, and for the rest of the year the port of Cork remained generally quiet.
The Cork Harbour Soviet itself had not been the most developed form of workers control in its period. As with all the seizures, until then, it was conceived as a tactic to gain limited ends.
And even as a tactic, its leaders carried it through with excessively outspoken optimism combined with too little caution in securing what they were promised. But the seizure was important because its leaders' outspokenness gave a specific form to existing signs as to how the Irish struggle might had been merely signs of permanent revolution: that The above is taken from a longer article by go. Until September, 1921, the Soviet disturbances the Workers' Republic was a real potential in Sinn Fein's Republic. With the post-war economic crisis the actual capitalism in that Party's economic policy became explicit. With the truce, it was more eager than not to formalise its position and to face the British Government as an equal, bour geois power. Thus, Marcievicz could threaten the Bruree Soviet with the Volunteers. And, thus, in response to their situation, Day & Kenneally cou insist belatedly on their readiness to oppose the Dail in the workers' interests.
The most effective immediate result of the Cerk Harbour Soviet was that it ended the Sinn FeinI.T.G.W.U. alliance that had controlled the Cork Corporation since January, 1920. The Soviet was the most obvious division between the trade union and the party. On 7th September, the Sinn Fein dominated Cork County Council vetec out a motion binding it to employ only trade union labour. The Cork Trades Council's rejection of the new cost of living commission, on the grounds that its composition gave it a bias in favour of the capitalists, was the other side of the coin. What the Harbour Soviet did was to clarify the divisions between labour and Sinn Fei so that nobody could imagine, now, that there was much basis for unity.
The mistake of Day and Kenneally was that they did not try to force the pace any further. But it was understandable: they got no guidance from their National Executive. At least, they had brought matters to a confrontation. And as if to emphasise the importance of militant action, all Irish dockers, outside Cork, had their wages reduced by 1/- per week, with the backing of Foran (the President of the I.T.G.W.U.).
The Cork Harbour Soviet, and similar events elsewhere, coincided with a formal political awakening on the part of the leadership of organised labour. It began to hold meetings in its own name, posing as an opposition even to the Republican status quo. Whether this was sincere or wasaimedto distract the militancy of its tollowers is uncertain; but in practice, it helped towards the latter. Such agitation could not destroy the objective cause of working class militancy. All it could do was keep the workers loyal to leaders who were not really prepared to lead them anywhere. A few militants were so moved by Labour's failure to capitalise either on the national, or on the economic & social strug gles that they took over the small Socialist Party and turned it into the Communist Party of Ireland. But they were very much in the minority. Encouraged by its leaders, Irish Labour refused to face the question of state power. As a result, the vacuum was filled by the bourgeoisie. And thus, both the Republican & the Socialist struggles were betrayed.
D. R. O'Connor Lysaght Rayner Lysaght, "The Month of the Soviets', published in The Plough, paper of the Irish group of the Fourth International. WE MAKE BREAD MeT PRO
----- pull-quotes -----
ZUREE Wi WORKERS SOVIET