File 2 - Trade and Workingmen’s Temperance Associations

25 items; Printed; Manuscript; Typescript; Newspaper clipping

File relating to temperance meetings and demonstrations organised by various trade and workingmen’s associations in Dublin. Includes handbills, fliers for meetings held in Father Mathew Hall, Church Street, Dublin, and letters to Fr. Aloysius Travers OSFC from the Operative Plasters’ Society, the Painters’ Trade Union and the Irish National Foresters’ Benefit Society. With a complete copy of 'The Drapers’ Assistant, the Official Journal of the Irish Drapers’ Assistants’ Benefit and Protective Association', IV, no. 2 (May 1906).

The digital image above shows a handbill in this file promoting temperance among Dublin’s working class in December 1905. The flyer is signed by Fr. Aloysius Travers OSFC, the President of Father Mathew Hall, and by P.T. Daly (1870-1943), a prominent Dublin trade unionist and politician. Daly was a long-time associate of James Connolly and he helped him found the ‘Workers’ Republic’ newspaper. In 1905, he became manager of the Gaelic printer, An Cló Cumann, which produced this handbill. Daly subsequently joined Connolly in founding the Irish Labour Party in 1912. During the 1913 Dublin Lockout, he was one of several leading figures in the trade union movement who were arrested. The following year, Daly was a founding vice-chairman of the Irish Citizen Army. In 1916, he was placed in Frongoch internment camp as the authorities judged him a threat in the aftermath of the Easter Rising. In 1919 Daly was elected Secretary of the Dublin Trades' Council and he remained in this post, and prominent in trade union politics, until his death.