Part 023 - PAMPHLET 039 023

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The Irish Transport and General Worker's Union ... found the labourers of Ireland on their knees, and has striven to raise them to the erect position of manhood; it found them with all the vices of slavery in their souls, and it strove to eradicate these vices and replace them with some of the virtues of free men; it found them with no other weapons of defence than the arts of the liar, the lickspittle, and the toady, and it combined them and taught them to abhor those arts and rely proudly on the defensive power of combination; it, in short, found a class in whom seven centuries of social outlawry had added fresh degradations upon the burden it bore as the members of a nation suff- ering from the cumulative effects of seven centuries of national bondage, and out of this class ... has created an army of intelligent self-reliant men, abhoring the old arts of the toady, the lickspittle, and the crawler and trusting alone to the disci- plined use of their power to labour or to withdraw their labour to assert and maintain their right as men. The Irish Transport and General Workers' Union found that before its advent the working class of Dublin had been taught by all the educational agencies of the country, by all the social influ- ences of their masters, that this world was created for the special benefit of the various sections of the master class, that kings and lords and capital- ists were of value; that even flunkeys, toadies, lickspittles and poodle dogs had an honoured place in the sheme of the universe, but that there was neither honour, credit, nor consideration to the man or woman who toils to maintain them all. (Aug 30 1913) These labourers dared to straighten their bent backs, and looking in the faces of their rulers 17