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The Dublin Lock-Out was a major industrial dispute between approximately 20,000 workers and 300 employers which lasted from 26 August 1913 to 18 January 1914. The main protagonists of this dispute were the Trade Unionist Jim Larkin, who was fighting for workers right to Unionise, and William Martin Murphy, the chairman of the Dublin United Tramway Company who was vehemently opposed to trade unions. The resulting industrial dispute was the most severe in Ireland's history. Employers in Dublin engaged in a lockout of their workers, employing blackleg labour from Britain and elsewhere in Ireland. Dublin's workers, amongst the poorest in the United Kingdom, were forced to survive on £150,000 from the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and other sources in Ireland. For seven months the lockout affected tens of thousands of Dublin's workers and their families, with Larkin portrayed as the villain by Murphy's three main newspapers, the Irish Independent, the Sunday Independent, and the Evening Herald. The lockout eventually concluded in early 1914 when the calls for a sympathetic strike in Britain from Larkin and Connolly were rejected by the TUC. Most workers, many of whom were on the brink of starvation, went back to work and signed pledges not to join a union.
