The 1920 General Strike was the biggest in Irish history, taking place during the War for Independence and a period of radical political action across the island. The goal of the strike was to secure the release of hundreds of prisoners held without trial in Dublin's Mountjoy Prison under suspicion of taking part in the IRA guerrilla campaign.

Beginning on 5 April, imprisoned trade unionists, socialists and Irish republicans began to refuse food, and a hunger strike quickly spread throughout the prison. Detainees began a "smash-up" protest, destroying furniture and the walls between cells to ensure prison authorities could not employ a "divide-and-conquer" approach. To keep morale up, prisoners sang socialist and communist hymns.

The Irish people, many of whom had been radicalised by the ill-fated 1916 Easter Rising (Éirí Amach na Cásca) flocked to the prison on 10-11 April in support of their actions. While British soldiers fired their rifles over the crowd, the protestors attempted to break down the prison gates and to set a British tank alight. Socialists spread pamphlets throughout the crowd and attempted to convince the soldiers to stand down.

Dockworkers, already refusing to export food for fear of another famine in Ireland, joined the protests alongside many other workers. A full popular uprising against British rule was only averted when Seán O'Mahoney, a Sinn Féin organiser and businessman, convinced a group of priests to form a cordon around the gates, while he shouted to the gathered masses, "In the name of the Irish Republic, go away!"

Nevertheless, the protests continued, with 20,000 gathering outside Mountjoy Prison on Monday 12 April. Armed IRA guerrillas joined the fray to protect the crowd, with strict orders to fire only if the British fired first. Radical feminist republican organisation Cumman na mBan organised guard brigades on the front lines and visited striking prisoners. The British army deployed further tanks and armoured cars, while RAF planes, still fresh from the trenches of WWI, dove at the crowds in an attempt to intimidate the protestors. While they maintained control over the prison, they were completely surrounded.

Meanwhile, the Irish Labour Party and Trade Union Council called for a general strike across the country. The rail workers were the first to join, stopping all traffic at 4:30pm except for those trains carrying word of the uprising to cities and towns throughout the island. On Tuesday 13 April, workers across the country seized power, with many declaring workers' councils and soviets under direct inspiration of the October Revolution and the recent Limerick Soviet.

In telegrams shared between trade unions, workers describe their actions:

From Galway (Gaillimh): "God speed the day when such Councils shall be established all over Erin (sic.) and the world, control the natural resources of the country, the means of production and distribution, run them as the worker knows how to run them, for the good and welfare of the whole community and not for the profits of a few bloated parasites."

From Tralee (Trá Lí): "Your instructions re strike were carried out splendid. All organised labour responded. Meetings of protest were held. The Trades council was turned into a Workers Council who took full control of everything. We had our own police who kept order, saw that all business was suspended, issued permits for everything required. Pickets patrolled the streets. In fact the workers controlled all. Workers showed that they were highly organised and that they can carry out any orders at a moment’s notice."

Emboldened by the massive upwelling of support, the prisoners refused British attempts to compromise through offers of a prison transfer and the granting of political status. The British establishment was indifferent to the cause, with one MP jokingly asking, " Why don't they eat?", in a thinly-veiled reference to the artificial food scarcity in Ireland under British rule. General Nevil "Strike-Breaker" MacReady, the newly-arrived commander of the British Army in Ireland, was a fearsome opponent, having earned his nickname for threatening to massacre striking Welsh coal miners.

However, with virtually no area of the island under full British control, prison authorities offered a final compromise - release on parole for good behaviour, provided that prisoners signed their release forms. Unwilling to recognise their illegitimate authority, the prisoners said no. By this stage, they had gone over a week without food.

With no options left to them, the British reluctantly released the emaciated prisoners to jubilant crowds (pictured above), while workers' parades flew the red flag across Ireland in celebration.

The legacy of this massive strike has been sidelined in the annals of Irish history. With the murder of socialist James Connolly (Séamas Ó Conghaile) at the hands of the British occupiers in 1916 and trade unionist Jim Larkin's imprisonment in Sing Sing for "criminal anarchy", the Irish Labour movement was rudderless and open to co-option by revisionists and liberals. Rather than support the strike, Sinn Féin took a conciliatory approach, reeling in the popular demands of the masses.

Eventually, conservative elements would win out following the Irish Civil War (Cogadh Cathartha na hÉireann) and Irish radicalism was gradually squeezed out under the parochial and fiercely traditional government of Éamon de Valera, who maintained a stranglehold over Irish politics until the 1970s. Under this period, Irish reaction and deference to the Catholic Church was entrenched, with devastating effects that continue to this day.

The 1920 general strike is just one chapter in a long but hidden history of Irish radicalism, including the 1913-14 Dublin Lockout, munitions strikes against materiel for use in the Polish war campaign against the nascent Soviet Union, and the 1984 Dunnes Stores Strike against South African Apartheid produce.

If you've made it this far - thank you for reading and keeping Irish radical history alive! In the words of Ho Chi Minh, "A nation with such citizens shall never surrender!"

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