26/08/2026
🚩 113 years ago, a historic confrontation between the working class and the capitalists took place in Dublin. The bosses threw their workers to the street in an attempt to strangle the rising Irish working class movement, while the workers of Dublin stood side by side in defiance of their masters.
The years prior to the lockout had seen the Irish working class make rapid advances in organisation and militancy under the impetus of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union (ITGWU). Seeing their profits under threat, the employers responded by locking out over 20,000 members of the ITGWU.
Over the course of the lockout, the employers, with the aid of the state and the Catholic Church as anti-communist actors, used the most barbaric tactics to repress workers, including blacklisting, savage police violence and the wholesale starvation of Dublin's organised working class.
The working class did not take these attacks lying down, with the lockout leading to the historic formation of the Irish Citizen Army (ICA) in order to defend themselves from the savage repression. The ICA would go on to form some of the most heroic units during the 1916 Rising, who struggled for the emancipation of the working class from capitalist tyranny.
The 1913 Lockout is a historic achievement of the Irish working class. The victory of the employers in this struggle was only temporary, as the fight gave way to the formation of a militant Irish working class movement. The images of militancy and solidarity displayed during the lockout have become inseparable parts of our movement, continuing to inspire the struggles of the Irish working class to this day.
The task of the CYM, as the communist youth of Ireland, is to organise and complete the struggle of 1913, that is the overthrow of capitalist power and the building of a socialist Ireland.
