Rosemary Raughter

GREYSTONES – Rosemary Raughter

Greystones during the War of Independence: The railway stoppage of 26–28 June 1920

Shortly after ten o’clock on the morning of Saturday, 26 June 1920, the early train from Wexford steamed into Greystones station. As alighting passengers made their way Greystones Railway Station c. 1900. to the exit, those now boarding the Photo: By kind permission of the National Library train chose their seats and settled of Ireland, Lawrence Collection themselves comfortably for the onward journey to Bray, Kingstown (Dún Laoghaire) or Dublin. However, the tranquillity of a seaside summer morning was broken by the sound of a motor engine approaching at speed. As that evening’s paper recorded: ‘As the train entered the station a military motor lorry came racing along the road, and the soldiers quickly passed the barrier and entered a compartment just as the train was about to start.’ The men in question were a sergeant and six armed soldiers of the Cheshire Regiment, then stationed at nearby Kilpeddar Camp. Their arrival presented the workers on site with a dilemma and put Greystones for a short time at the forefront of a highly politicised dispute which threatened to bring the Irish railway system to a halt and seriously embarrassed a government already under siege.

Embargo on ‘warlike stores’

Although Greystones had largely been spared the worst effects of the unrest currently prevailing in the country at large, there was a constant threat of violence in the air. With the IRA effectively in control of many areas of the country, Sinn Féin making major gains in national and local elections, and the

Greystones, c. 1900. Photo: By kind permission of the National Library of Ireland

arrival earlier in 1920 of the Black and Tans, tensions were high, with daily newspaper reports of murder, ambush, reprisal, arson and industrial unrest. The most recent instance of the latter was the railwaymen’s embargo, begun in May 1920, on the carriage of ‘warlike stores’, defined as ‘materials designed for the destruction of life and property’, as well as armed troops or police. The Irish railway workers received no help from the British trade unions and only a tepid public response to an appeal for funds, so the British administration was content to accept the assurances of the railway companies that they would have little difficulty in breaking the strike, if necessary, ‘by complete replacement of the workforce’, meaning that railwaymen refusing to work trains faced immediate suspension or dismissal. British military authorities chose to respond to the embargo by adopting a dog-in-the-manger attitude—that is, military and police parties refused to move from trains when challenged, leading to disruption of the schedule and the eventual stoppage of all trains on the lines affected.

British Army forced to unload its own munitions, Dublin. The National Union of Railwaymen joined the dockers of Dublin in refusing to handle ‘warlike stores’ arriving in Ireland. Photo: Illustrated London News, 29 May 1920.

Stand-off

The late arrival of the military party at Greystones station on 26 June may have been an attempt to evade the notice of the railway workers on duty, but if so, it was unsuccessful. As soon as the soldiers boarded the train, the guard, James Whelan, and the driver, Laurence Finnegan, confronted them. Ascertaining that the men were indeed armed, Whelan asked them to leave and directed the driver and the fireman, Patrick Furlong, not to proceed until they did so. By now, the other passengers had become aware of the situation and ‘general perturbation’ reigned. Some expressed ‘warm approval of the railwaymen’s action’, while others were heard protesting about the delay and inconvenience

involved. With the driver back in his cab, a rumour spread that the coach occupied by the soldiers was to be unhooked and left behind, while the engine and the other coaches proceeded on their way. At this, those in the coaches at the back flocked to the forward part of the train. On their heels came the soldiers, determined not to be left behind, but the checker, a Mr R. Hammond, blocked them from entering the first- and second-class compartments. The driver now put an end to all speculation by detaching his engine and proceeding with it to Bray, leaving all carriages standing at Greystones station. The civilian passengers—about one hundred of them—were left with no option but to return home or to find alternative transport to their various destinations; some made their way by various means to Bray, from where the line to Dublin remained open.

While the day may have been a profitable one for the drivers of taxis and horse vehicles, for which there was now an unprecedented demand, the blocking of the railway left most inhabitants of Greystones very severely incommoded. Guests at the Grand Hotel were among the fortunate few unaffected by the lack of a rail service, since they were able to call upon one of the several ‘cars’ maintained for their convenience. The soldiers, for their part, sat tight. During the day, food was sent over to them from Kilpeddar Camp, and at night they settled down to sleep in the compartment, asserting their intent to remain there until ordered to leave by their commanding officer.

Dismissals and disruption

The guard, driver and fireman of the train were summoned to an interview in Bray with officials of the Dublin and South-Eastern railway line. Having refused to sign a guarantee that they would work all traffic, they were summarily dismissed. They refused to accept payment of the wages which they were due on the grounds that, as the Irish Times reported (28 June), they ‘profess to regard the incident as constituting a test case, and anticipate further developments’.

By nightfall on Saturday, the effects of the stoppage on the railway line were escalating. The train that left Wexford at ten o’clock that morning was held at Newcastle until late in the evening; it then passed through Greystones without stopping, avoiding the blockage by being switched to the down (southbound) line. The afternoon train from Wexford remained overnight at Wicklow, and

Sinn Féin letter signed by Padraig Ó Caoimh, Secretary, 28 June 1920, praising the North Wall Railwaymen, Dublin, for their financial contributions and calling on other branches to follow their lead. Image by kind permission of the National Library of Ireland

it ran empty to Dublin on Sunday, the mail and milk which it carried having been transferred to a goods train for distribution to stations further along the line. For the passengers, however, there was no such facility. While some sought other forms of transport to reach their destinations, others looked for overnight accommodation in Wicklow, or spent the night on the train.

Nationwide stoppage

The stoppage in Greystones was only one among a large number of similar incidents during the second half of 1920. The railway companies’ initial optimism about an early end to the strike proved misplaced, and the workers held firm despite widespread dismissals. They were effectively supported by the IRA, which on the one hand provided relief transport by commandeering vehicles, and on the other operated a policy of intimidation against workers disinclined to observe the embargo. By August, over one thousand railwaymen were out of work, and large numbers of trains were immobilized. Some areas of the country were more severely affected than others: the level of action in the southwest, for example, was particularly high. The crisis dragged on into winter, with stoppages peaking in late November. By then, however, concern was rising, both inside and outside the labour movement, about the growing unemployment and the economic consequences of a total shutdown of the railways. One railwaymen’s leader warned of a potential 15,000 dismissals, and Tom Johnson, ILP/TUC secretary, while making a strong moral case for the strike, forecast that continuing the campaign risked ‘throwing back the social life of Ireland by a hundred years’.1 Finally, on 21 December, the railwaymen capitulated, voting unanimously for an unconditional return to work.

Sudden end

The fact that the Greystones blockage occurred over the weekend probably minimised the inconvenience caused to the general public, but with the working week beginning, and an influx of summer visitors to Greystones expected, pressure to find a solution mounted. The end of the impasse seems to have come quite suddenly on Monday afternoon when the soldiers, presumably in response to orders from their commanding officer, vacated the carriage and returned to camp. The train was immediately taken away and normal service resumed, with the afternoon train from Wexford arriving on time at Greystones and continuing on schedule to Bray, Kingstown and Dublin.

Plan backfires

No official statement was ever issued about the reasons for the precipitate ending of the standoff at Greystones, the Irish Times (29 June) simply reporting the rumour ‘that the authorities were approached by local residents in the interest of Greystones’. A major factor in the town’s development over the previous half century, of course, had been its excellent railway service. Any prolonged closure of the line would have had a serious impact on the businessmen, professionals, the civil servants and other workers who commuted daily to Dublin, on householders deprived of deliveries of mail, milk and other necessities, and on the hoteliers, lodging-house keepers and other traders whose livelihoods depended on the summer tourist season, now fast approaching. Over the two days of the stoppage, as the Wicklow People gleefully reported on 3 July, ‘some hundreds of wealthy Greystones residents, warm supporters of the Union, were put to considerable inconvenience and expense by having to hire motors.’ Influential figures in ‘this centre of loyalty’, the report continued, made use of existing social links with the British administration in order to produce a settlement:

Seeing that the military … were showing every sign of preparation for a prolonged siege and that there was a likelihood that the select, residential town would be isolated completely … hurried visits were paid to Dublin Castle by a few of the prominent residents with appeals urging the Castle authorities to withdraw the soldiers from the train, and allow the resumption of … service

‘If this is the way the Castle treats us’, one outraged loyalist was heard to declare, ‘then I’m with the Sinn Féiners.’ It is uncertain whether the British military made a deliberate, strategic decision to choose Greystones—a bastion of unionism where it might have expected more support than elsewhere in Wicklow—to make its stance against the railway embargo of 1920, but it is clear that the move backfired. In the end, it was an accidental alliance of unionist influence with labour and republican resistance that forced a hasty military retreat.

An earlier version of this article appeared in Greystones: its buildings and history, vol. 2 (2012), 47–49.

SOURCES

Dublin Evening Telegraph, 26 June 1920. Sunday Post, 27 June 1920. Irish Times, 28 and 29 June 1920. Wicklow People, 3 July 1920. Charles Townshend, ‘The Irish railway strike of 1920: industrial action and civil resistance in the struggle for independence’, Irish Historical Studies, vol. 22, 83 (March 1979), 265–82. Charles Townshend, The Republic: the fight for Irish independence (2013), 144–48.

Notes

1 Quoted in Townshend, The Republic, 148.