This episode is about the farm labour strike in Meath and Kildare in July and August 1919. Farm workers were by far the largest single group in the transport union during the revolutionary years.
The episode will look at the forming of small local unions in 1917 and 1918 as well as the epic clash in 1919. The strike that year saw robust picketing by farm workers, sympathetic action by drovers and dockers, and even rail sabotage by the IRA.
The Transport Union’s expansion into rural Ireland laid the foundation for the largest single strike in Irish history – the general strike in support of hunger-striking political prisoners in Mountjoy Gaol in April 1920.
The podcast also deals with the socio-economic background to the dispute – especially the food supply measures of the 1914 to 1918 war.
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