Fiach MacConghail (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Begg for his interesting and provocative address. I take this opportunity to acknowledge the work of the Seanad Committee on Procedure and Privileges, the Cathaoirleach, Leader and Senator Ivana Bacik in facilitating this debate. The opportunity to commemorate key historical events is always to be welcomed, provided it serves as a means to interrogate the present and perhaps offer some roadmap or vision for the future.

I do not agree that we must be sensitive in commemorating or acknowledging our forthcoming centenaries, but we do need to be truthful. We must get past the myths surrounding all these events and examine only the facts. It is a fact, for example, that the 1913 Lock-out ended in failure. It is a fact that capital won out over labour. It is a fact, above all, that the events of the harsh winter of 1913 led to huge hardship, deprivation, emigration, death, and a subsequent flight to the fields of Flanders. At the same time, however, the extraordinary men and women who supported the locked-out workers set us a moral challenge and standard that are still relevant 100 years later. They have become our virtual conscience.

Their vision of social justice, equality of pay and conditions, equal access to education and voting rights, the campaign against alcohol abuse and the right to paid holidays was born in the trauma and catharsis of 1913. President Michael D. Higgins referred to the events of that year in a recent speech at the launch the Lock-out tapestry. I am proud to observe that staff of the Abbey Theatre contributed to one of the panels of that tapestry, which is on display in the National Museum. President Higgins said:

National commemorations such as this one, honouring the 1913 Lock-out, are not mere protocol occasions and ceremonies; they are actions that invite us to reclaim our collective past, to appropriate and reinterpret it so as to broaden our understanding of our present condition and redefine our horizon of expectations.

That is a good summation of the role of national commemorations, and it is the context in which this debate is taking place today.

The emergence of new historians who have accessed primary sources in our archives and analysed personal testimonies is a remarkable development. Learning about people like Rosie Hackett, who lived on Abbey Street, and her colleague Helena Moloney, an actress at the Abbey Theatre, gives us a better and more complex view of history. If we are to make sense of the past we must examine the multiple narratives of history. Senator Ned O'Sullivan referred to the work of Seán O'Casey. It is useful to consider the latter's observation that the single most important event in 20th century Ireland was not the Rising of 1916 but the Lock-out of 1913. The events of that year set an agenda which has had an impact and consequence to this day.

As Senator Bacik mentioned, the Abbey Theatre has considered, and will continue to consider, the cultural interpretation of the events of 1913. This coming winter, for instance, we will present Jim Plunkett's "The Risen People" on the Abbey stage. It is important to remember that the Lock-out did not start and end on the day in August known as Bloody Sunday but continued for five months over the winter of 1913.

The Lock-out has become mythologised as an epic struggle between Jim Larkin on one side and William Martin Murphy on the other. The reality was rather different. It was an ugly dispute, with failings on both sides. It was often mundane. A prominent historian of the period in question, Padraig Yeates, has observed:

The myth has survived in large part because it has suited everyone. It gave the moral victory to the workers, while their material defeat underlined the comforting contention of the employers and other defenders of conservative ideologies that Larkinism, and by extension socialism, made for good rhetoric but was impractical. For the most part the Lockout was a far shabbier, bloodier and more mundane affair than the myth allows. Above all, it was an unnecessary dispute and probably would not have occurred but for the peculiarly perverse personalities of Larkin and the employers' leader William Martin Murphy. Few of the principals emerge well from this awful episode in Dublin's history. It was left to what Tom Kettle referred to as the 'second class people on both sides' to pick up the pieces. Of course, individual Dubliners of all classes and creeds, acting on the impulses of common humanity, did what they could to mitigate the worst aspects of the tragedy. So did thousands of workers in Britain [as Mr. Begg pointed out] who contributed almost £10,000 (the equivalent of £10 million today) to help their locked-out brethren. Nevertheless the Lockout raised passions that were by turn sectarian and nationalist. The help from Britain was often resented and, perversely, helped strengthen separatist tendencies within the Irish trade union movement.

The events of 1913 can help us today in deciding how we might reorganise Irish society. Whatever we think of Larkin and Connolly, they believed in an ideology of enhancing human dignity and examining what might be possible for us all as a community.

One of my questions to Mr. Begg relates to social partnership, which certainly had merit. The Programme for National Recovery in 1987 represented the strong beginnings of a type of re-articulation of the relationship between workers and employers.

It had merit but its merit was annulled and the vision and ideology fell apart. It became a process to deliver action rather than a shared set of common values and a vision for our public service. How will that appear again? We have the Haddington Road agreement, but perhaps Mr. Begg can tell us how he sees the reorganisation of the discourse between worker and employer occurring in the coming ten to 15 years. As a republic in name only, we need leaders of communities to adopt the spirit of Larkin and Connolly and use the opportunity of commemorations like the 1913 Lock-out to agree on a journey that will take us out of the current hardship with a more ethical base. Therefore, although the Lock-out was a defeat, it was, as President Higgins suggests, the "beginning of a journey towards human dignity and social justice, an unfinished journey for so many on our planet".