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John Redmond's Last Years by Stephen Lucius Gwynn
page 96 of 388 (24%)
A new phase in Irish history had begun, of which Sir Edward Carson was
the chief responsible author.



CHAPTER IV

THE RIVAL VOLUNTEER FORCES


The first stir of a new movement in Nationalist Ireland outside the old
political lines came from Labour--from Irish Labour, as yet unorganized
and terribly in need of organization. On August 26, 1913, a strike in
Dublin began under the leadership of Mr. Larkin. It had all the violence
and disorder which is characteristic of economic struggles where Labour
has not yet learned to develop its strength; it opened new cleavages at
this moment when national union was most necessary: it was fought with
the passion of despair by workers whose scale of pay and living was a
disgrace to civilization; and after five months it was not settled but
scotched, leaving dark embers of revolutionary hate scattered through
the capital of Ireland.

One incident showed some of the consequences ready to spring, even in
England itself, from the action taken in Ulster. Mr. Larkin at the end
of October 1913 was sentenced to six months' imprisonment for sedition
and inciting to disturbance. A fierce outcry ran through the Labour
world in Great Britain; by-elections were in progress, and Government
was angrily challenged with having one law for the rich and another for
the poor, one law for Labour and another for the Unionist party. To this
pressure Government yielded, and Mr. Larkin was liberated after a few
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