On This Day / September 18, 1921

Summary: On This Day – 18th September 1921, a British Trades Union Congress report examined the expulsion of thousands of workers from Belfast workplaces and the violence that followed. Edited by Éamon Phoenix.

TUC Report on ‘Pogrom’ | On This Day – 18th September 1921

THE report of the British Trades Union Congress delegation, appointed last year to visit Belfast and investigate the circumstances of the Pogrom, states:

‘There was found a general desire for a resumption of a normal relationship and conditions existing previous to July 1920.

At the same time, however, representative bodies of workmen were emphatic in their declaration against working with adherents of the Sinn Fein movement’.

The report deals with the circumstances which led up to the disturbances in July last year:

‘During the war, owing to 45,000 Belfast men joining the forces, there was a large influx of men from the South and West of Ireland to meet the shortage of labour in the shipyards and elsewhere…

Of these a number were active Sinn Feiners… it is alleged that many of these have openly avowed their intention of obtaining the domination of Sinn Fein this… created a strong feeling of resentment…

It is further alleged that a number of the Sinn Fein supporters carried arms. The culminating point… was reached by the murder at Cork on July 17th [1920] of Colonel Smyth, DSO, an Ulsterman who had served in the war…

This, and other reports of expulsions of Protestant workmen, together with outrages in the North of Ireland, created such a feeling that, following a protest meeting held in Queen’s Road, at which inflammatory speeches were delivered, disturbances arose at Messrs Workman and Clark’s which quickly spread to Messrs Harland and Wolff and other works with the result that thousands of workmen were either expelled or left their work as a measure of self-protection.

It was hoped that matters would settle down as on previous occasions [but] on 22nd August, District Inspector Swanzy was killed in Lisburn while walking home from church. Reprisals followed.

The report proceeds: ‘The view has been put to us by many of our Trade Union colleagues in Belfast that, if the employers had taken steps to maintain discipline, as was done in 1912, by giving notice to stop the works, this would have been effective.

[Harland and Wolff management considered this but]… were strongly advised by both the military and police that if any stoppage took place … the authorities could not accept responsibility for the maintenance of order…’

(Éamon Phoenix editor’s note: BOTH the British authorities and the TUC failed the 8,000-plus expelled Catholic workers, driven by mobs from their employment in 1920.

Unlike in 1912, Lord Pirrie – apparently on RIC advice – refused to take disciplinary action against the Loyalists while James Craig endorsed their sectarian actions in a public speech at the shipyard.)

On This Day – 18th September 1921

Further Reading on Irish History:

List of other On This Day columns

Other resources: National Library of Ireland Irish News CAIN Archive

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