In Royal Colonial Dublin town in 19 and 13
Infants died, Disease was rife, the tenements they
heaved
And 20,000 workers paid for the right to link their arms
As The clergy from the pulpit preached “accept
it as it stands”
Undercutting day-to-day their fellow working man
In fear of being blacklisted should they organize
and stand
It was Every Fella for his own in the face of men of means
To keep their children fed and clothed, no shoes
upon their feet
They Shaped and forged Our Ireland, that today we see.
The workers
- courageous and principled of 19 and 13.
Jim Larkin came from Liverpool, a city
of the people
He Stood out there among them as he’d organize and lead them
Led Dockers, sailors, railwaymen -
bloodshed in Solidarity
Saw coalminers impassioned at the riots in Tonypandy.
When Big Jim came to Dublin town, his
voice did spirits rise
A glimmer of hope, A fire lit in the Dublin workers’eyes.
Uniting in great numbers,
they’d strike in sympathy
For their fellow men of principle, and their stricken families
They Shaped and forged Our Ireland, that today we see.
The Workers - courageous and principled of
19 and 13.
As the movement grew successes came, and
the bosses soon took note
And William Martin Murphy’s kind combined with all their might.
Union men would be dismissed,
and the rest required to sign
A statement to the dire effect that they would never unionize.
The final straw had been
laid on, and dissenting men locked out.
It was each for all and all for each in the face of all the odds.
They rallied
in the streets as one, strikebreakers they were scourged.
The Policemen charged with truncheons, to quell an unquiet herd.
They Shaped and forged Our Ireland, that today we see.
The workers - courageous and principled of
19 and 13.
The Families helped each other through the
desperate Autumn months
They scrounged and pawned and the union fund as it was would soon run out.
And mother’s
of hungry children tried, to ship them across the sea
To sympathetic families there, who to their needs would see
“Apostasy!”
the clergy cried, from the warmth of presbyteries
“There’ll be No child sent and no soul lost to heathen
protestant ways.”
And so the winter months would pass as the starving children cried
And worried wives and broken
men, to defeat they were resigned.
They Shaped and forged Our Ireland, that today we see.
The workers - courageous and principled of 19 and 13.
The battle was lost but a blow was struck for the rights of working men
They brought the bosses to their
knees, and never would they again
Attempt to go where they had gone, to preserve the status quo
The union men would
come again, and the movement grew and grew
Today the red hand badge is worn as in those desperate times
By those who
seek to join as one and fight for workers rights
Our needs and wants have been transformed, in the bygone century
Let’s
not forget the battle fought, in nineteen and thirteen
They Shaped and forged Our Ireland,
that today we see.
The workers - courageous and principled of 19 and 13.
