Railway strikes around the country for Christmas

Kilmainham, 16 December 1916 - Unrest over pay and the lack of war bonuses for Irish rail workers on the Great Southern and Western Railway has brought notice of strike action from the 18 December.

The notice extends across the week leading into Christmas and is also driven by the fact that Irish rail workers have been treated in a manner that is not in line with that of British workers.

A map of Ireland with all the Great Southern & Western lines marked on it. Taken from The Sunny Side of Ireland: How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway by John O'Mahony [Dublin, 1898] (Image: The British Library)

An all-round increase in pay of 2s per head has been offered by the chairman of the Great Southern and Western Railway, but a meeting of workers at Kilmainham Courthouse declined the offer. 

There are now suggestions that the British government is about to announce a takeover of Irish railways – as has happened in Britain – and if this were to happen it would most likely transform the situation.

[Editor's note: This is an article from Century Ireland, a fortnightly online newspaper, written from the perspective of a journalist 100 years ago, based on news reports of the time.]