by Philip Ferguson; this is thesis chapter 8

In this chapter I will be examining the role played by the working class and labour movement between 1916-21, in the light of the radicalism of this period and the threat of Bolshevism perceived by the Irish establishment.  These labour struggles posed challenges both to the old order and to the new nationalist leadership. Whether of an economic character (eg, wage struggles) or a specific political character (as in the case of the general strikes against conscription and for the release of political prisoners), they challenged British rule since it was this rule which organised the relationship of the classes in Ireland.  Given that, as Milotte has noted, “In Ireland after the Easter Rising there was a political vacuum: no national movement and no national leadership had yet emerged to replace the declining and increasingly irrelevant Irish party”,[1] I will argue…