Rescue of Byrne and the
Limerick Soviet
Introduction from Chronology
Irish Volunteers, while freeing a prisoner (Robert Byrne or Byrnes)
in the Limerick Union Hospital, cause the death of one RIC man (Constable
Martin O'Brien). Byrne is wounded and dies later.
On April 9th, Limerick
was declared a Special Military Area and this led directly to the Limerick
Trades Council calling a general strike on April 13th which lasted
almost two weeks. This became known as the Limerick
Soviet
More Detail
Byrne has been moved from
Limerick Goal as he had gone on hunger strike. The rescue attempt had
been led by Michael 'Batty' Stack.
Along with Constable O’Brien, another RIC man (Constable Spillane)
was seriously wounded. Byrne is wounded and dies later. More than 20,000 people attend his
funeral on April 10th.
Details of the rescue attempt are given in Corbett (2008), pgs 46-49. (O’Farrell gives a date of April 16th
for when Byrne died but this would seem to be incorrect.)
When the British declare Limerick
City a Special Military Area on April 9th, they introduced permits
to move into and out of the city which causes serious inconvenience for workers
going and coming from their places of work. This led to the Trades Council, under
the leadership of John Cronin, to call a general strike on the 13th,
in which 14,000 workers eventually participated.
It was explicitly a protest
against workers having to seek military permits “to earn our daily
bread” but it was also implicitly against British rule. During the strike, skeleton staff
maintained essential services and shops only opened with the permission of the
strike committee. With the aid of
the Volunteers, Na Fianna and farmers, the ‘soviet’ collected and
distributed food at fixed prices.
It also published a daily newssheet called the Worker’s Bulletin and printed its own money.
Eventually, Mayor Alphonsus
O’Mara and RC Bishop Denis Hallinan made a deal with the local British
Army commander, General C. J. Griffin, whereby employers would operate the
permit system rather than the military. The strike was called off on April 27th
and the status of Special Military area was lifted a week later. (Sheehan notes
that this was the last time that the imposition of a Special Military Area
– permitted under DORA - was applied in Ireland because “They were
too crude, and were almost sure to alienate moderates, especially members of
the agricultural and business communities.” (Sheehan (2017), pg 91))
Mitchell notes that this strike
did not have the backing of national Labour leadership. (“Thomas Johnson went to Limerick
and, rather than supporting the continuation of the strike, suggested that the
population should evacuate the city.
His advice was not followed.” (Mitchell
(1995), pg 179)).
There is a very good book by Liam
Cahill called Forgotten Revolution: The
Limerick Soviet 1919. The full text of this book is available at the
following URL: https://libcom.org/files/Forgotten%20revolution%20Limerick%20soviet.pdf