GEORGE WILLIAM RUSSELL
The Lockout was a major industrial dispute between approximately 20,000 workers and 300 employers which took place in Ireland's capital city of Dublin. The dispute lasted from August 1913 to January 1914, and is often viewed as the most severe and significant industrial dispute in Irish history. The Employers Association, intent on breaking the Unions, told workers that if they did not resign from the Union, they would be fired. With the exception of the Guinness company, all the major employers fired most of their employees and brought in scab labor from England. The Union workers and their families were starving and only food from English labor unions kept them alive. The workers finally had to give in and for signing pledges to refrain from joining unions, they were allowed to have their jobs back. Although it seemed a victory for the employers, as this letter explained, the price was paid for years thereafter and soured Irish labor relations for most of the 20th century. While the locked out workers were both Protestants and Catholics, the Irish Catholic Church sided with the employers and even opposed a plan whereby children of Irish strikers would be temporarily looked after by British trade unionists in England, Scotland & Wales. The church protested that Catholic children would be subject to Protestant or atheist influences when in Britain.
George William Russell who wrote with the pseudonym Æ (sometimes written AE or A.E.), was an Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, painter and Irish nationalist. He was also a writer on mysticism, and a central figure in the group of devotees of theosophy which met in Dublin for many years.
