THE GIFFORD FAMILY enjoyed a traditional Christmas at Temple Villas, with everyone delighted to have Muriel, MacDonagh and baby Donagh join them for lunch. Don had just started to take his first baby steps and tottered around the house, holding on to couches, chairs, table edges and any available hand that was offered. Muriel, wearing a pretty new lace blouse, clapped with joy as he reached for her. She was still perhaps a little too thin, but to everyone’s relief seemed to be almost herself again.
Nellie, unable to resist a wooden ark in the window of Lawrence’s Toy Shop, had bought it for Donagh and knelt on the floor showing him all the wooden animals. Claude, Ethel and their son Eric had also joined them and Father was delighted to watch his two grandsons playing together.
The fire blazed and the table was laden with baked ham, a goose and a turkey, plum pudding, brandy butter and custard. Everyone was dressed up in their Christmas finery. As they sat around playing charades and singing their favourite carols, Father and Gabriel, Claude and MacDonagh argued about the passing of the Home Rule Bill in the coming year.
‘The British House of Commons and House of Lords can no longer delay it, and we will see it implemented next year, mark my words,’ nodded Father.
‘Carson and his Ulster Volunteer Force will never accept it,’ insisted Claude. ‘They are pledged to stop Home Rule and are armed and ready to fight if it is introduced. They will never accept a Dublin parliament.’
‘Well, the thing is that we have our own Irish Volunteers now,’ MacDonagh reminded them, ‘and they are ready to defend Home Rule if necessary.’
Nellie knew that her brother-in-law was wisely keeping his deep involvement with the Irish Volunteers a secret from her parents and brothers.
‘Well, Home Rule or not, let us hope that 1914 will be a better year for everyone,’ declared Father as they all raised their glasses in a toast.
The New Year brought heavy snow, the avenue of plane trees along Temple Road white, the paths and roads icy as freezing weather gripped the countryside. Nellie’s thoughts turned to all the families that were locked out: how would they endure such terrible weather in the tenement buildings they lived in? She needed to get back to work.
Before leaving early in the morning, she grabbed a basket and began to fill it with jars, packets of tea, sugar and flour from their well-stocked pantry, praying that no one would notice what was missing.
‘Ahhemm …’ She looked around to discover Father watching her quietly from the door.
She froze – caught in the act … She wondered if she should return the items.
Suddenly Father stepped into the pantry beside her and began to take more jars and cans from the shelf: potted shrimp, Bovril, vegetable broth, corned beef, tinned sardines and herrings. He put them in another basket along with a fruit cake, a small plum pudding, oaten crackers and a freshly baked brown loaf.
‘Wait here a minute,’ he told her.
He returned with a large block of cheese and two pieces of smoked bacon. ‘Take these too.’
Nellie pulled on her boots and heavy, fur-trimmed wool coat and hat, then grasped the baskets tight as she gingerly walked through the snow to the tram stop. She would call at the Lynchs and the Murphys before she went to work at Liberty Hall for the day.
The children were playing on the step outside the run-down tenement building, making snowballs with their hands, chasing each other, their breath hanging in clouds in the cold air. Nellie trudged up flight after flight of the rickety stairs, her nose wrinkling at the awful smells of humanity. She knocked on one door and delivered half the food to Annie Lynch and her family. Behind another door, Lil Murphy lay in bed in the corner of the room with a bad chest infection; her husband thanked Nellie for thinking of them as she handed him a basket.
She shivered with the cold despite her warm coat as she walked back down through the building with its broken windows, peeling plaster and hole in the roof, and she wondered how much longer these people could hold out against the Federation of Employers.
Snow, cold and hunger made for bad bedfellows, and Larkin and Connolly also worried how much longer the strikers could possibly endure such misery. Even the union’s ability to continue strike pay was now in jeopardy. The food shipments from Britain’s unions were about to end and the British Trades Union Congress had refused to sanction and implement the sympathetic strike policy that the ITGWU had hoped for.
Everyone in Liberty Hall knew that Larkin and Connolly were desperately trying to negotiate better terms with Mr Murphy and the city’s other employers, but their efforts were to no avail. A special meeting was held in mid-January in Croydon Park and Nellie’s heart broke as Jim Larkin, trying to control his own emotions, addressed the huge crowd of workers and advised them that the time had come for them to accept that they must return to work. After that, he told them, they should try to negotiate a fairer deal with their employers. Shocked, they listened, aware that the fight was over – for they could continue it no longer. They had been beaten by poverty, hunger and cold.
In dribs and drabs they returned to work, many feeling defeated and let down, but with no other option. Nellie watched, relieved, as the numbers attending the soup kitchen in Liberty Hall finally fell and as February passed most had resumed their jobs in Dublin’s warehouses, factories, trams and docks. A few employers agreed to some improvements in conditions and pay, but many insisted that on their return the workers give up their union membership.
The union was nearly broken, but James Connolly believed that a new spirit had been born between the workers: they had shown a strength, courage and sense of unity never seen before, something they could build on for the future.
‘Hold your heads high,’ he told Rosie Hackett and the other girls from Jacob’s as they put away their aprons and went back to Dublin’s huge biscuit factory.
As the men returned to work, membership of the Citizen Army decreased and by spring it was decided to disband it as it was no longer necessary. But Larkin and Captain White decided that it might yet have a new role, so they reorganized it to become an army for the people of Ireland, open to all who believed in fighting for equal rights.
It seemed strange to see the kitchen nearly empty, the large dining halls no longer in use. Nellie was aware that she too must begin the search for a new job for herself. She was surprised when James Connolly asked her to consider working in Liberty Hall, giving cookery lessons to teach women and young wives how to feed their families with nutritious, low-cost meals. This time it would be a proper job with a rather modest salary, giving two or maybe three classes a week.
Nellie didn’t have to give the matter any consideration, for she knew that she would relish the chance to continue working in Liberty Hall. She had come to love the old building on Beresford Place overlooking the River Liffey. She was pleased to accept and thanked James Connolly for this unexpected opportunity.