LAUNDRY TODAY OR NAKED TOMORROW. So says the sign which graces the windows of the ‘Excel Dry Cleaners’, a dry-cleaning and laundry service just outside Temple Bar in Dublin. A stone’s throw away is the ‘Dolphin House’ on Crane Lane, formerly the Dolphin Hotel. Though the Temple Bar of today brings to mind severely overpriced pints, iPad trad and dubious ice cream shops, the Dolphin Hotel was once one of the many hotels impacted by the Laundry Strike of 1945.
The streets and hotels of Dublin offer little visual evidence of this strike of over 1500 women workers, but the fact Irish workers have a fortnight’s holiday is the enduring legacy of their struggle. Released to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the strike’s launch on July 21st 1945, the new Rank and File collaborative art book Ceachta Beaga Gaeilge, Vol.IV: The Laundry Strikes 1945, not only tells their story, but encourages readers to look for the potential for fightback in the most unexpected places.
Tensions in the commercial Irish laundry industry, compounded by the ‘Emergency’ (a euphemistic term for WWII) and the expansion of the barbaric Magdalene institutions, had been simmering for some time prior to the strike of 1945. The conditions of the Magdalene laundries, often akin to were frequently used to break the ability of commercial laundry workers to organise; in April 1941, Bloomfield Laundry had lost its military contract to the Donnybrook Magdalene laundry, which saw twenty-five women workers lose their jobs. The complicity of the Irish Free State, and numerous corporations, in these institutions only served to worsen conditions for ‘free’ women.
Laundrette workers in the south of Ireland were paid considerably less than their English counterparts, or women workers in other fields. They suffered from gruelling conditions caused by the heat of the laundry ovens, and the twelve to thirteen-hour long shifts they worked to meet demand. Most insultingly, laundrette workers were entitled to a mere week of paid holiday per year. These realities belied the fact that laundry work was a lynchpin of Dublin’s economy, allowing the service and hospitality industries to function. Without clean linens and clothing, these sectors could not operate. In this context, the potential for workers to take action was clear. They would strike for a fortnight’s holiday.
Ceachta Beaga Gaeilge, Vol.IV, compiled and edited by Mary Martin, narrates the story of the strike through a series of ten lino prints produced from a Rank and File collective workshop. These images, combined with text in Irish and English, bring the story of the strike to life with humour and energy.
For instance, accompanying an explanation of the role of the Irish Women’s Workers Union (IWWU) in organising the campaign to take strike action is the bold, red facade of the Royal Hibernian Hotel, bisected by a clothes line covered in socks, t-shirts, and cargo shorts. A scratchy, blue, Seán Lemass – the Taoiseach at the time, who dismissed the workers’ demands on the grounds they were ‘unproductive’- barks out ‘WORK HARDER’ from another frame.
As well as reimagining the events of the strike, the book gives readers an insight into the solidarity and spirit of resistance which ultimately saw the strike come to a successful conclusion. A red and blue frame vividly illustrates the solidarity expressed by workers in other industries, such as the United Stationary Engine Drivers, with the laundry workers of Dublin. This was against the grain of the mainstream press which was dismissive in their attitude towards the laundrette workers, in no small part due to them being women. The heroic spirit of the workers, which carried their action through to the end of October 1945, is captured by a depiction of the women together on the street, singing a Marlene Dietrich song they rewrote to generate much needed strike funds; ‘We are a fighting people who can’t be kept down’.
As James Renaghan, an activist with People Before Profit in Dundalk whose research on youth and trade unions informed the direction of the book, referred to during the launch, the consequences of the strike went far beyond the financial. Reportedly, Mr Brenner, the owner of a laundrette in Ballsbridge, met with workers not only due to economic pressures, but the hardship of washing his own underwear. Based on this anecdote, it was clear the workers had the upper hand.
Though the Federation Union of Employers (FUE) attempted to end the strike with a verbal ‘consideration’ of the fortnight-holiday issue, the IWWU and the striking workers held firm. After fourteen weeks on strike, the workers received a written agreement to their demands, as captured in a lino image of a defiant hand holding aloft the guarantee of two week’s paid holiday. Within the year, this victory was extended to all workers in every trade union across the island.
Martin’s decision to bring about this project through a collaborative lino workshop shows the potential for us to learn from and about our own history of struggle in a collective way. The invitation of the lino format to print and reprint these images, each with a unique texture and grain, is evocative of the mass character which made the strike possible. As well, printing is a medium which calls up a rich political history. The Camden Poster Workshop, active from 1968 to 1971, produced some of the most enduring images of the civil rights struggle in the North, as well as the Atelier Populaire, which made the image of May ’68. Print workshops have always been collective endeavours, the best of which transform complex social and political ideas into simple, striking images, ready to be shared into the world. Ceachta Beaga Gaeilge, Vol.IV makes a much-needed intervention into this legacy.
The greatest strength of the book, aside from reintroducing the story of the 1945 laundry strike to a new audience, is its invitation to read these events against our own time. The format of Ceachta Beaga Gaeilge, Vol.IV, is inspired by the 1911 Irish language series Ceachta Beaga Gaeilge, written by Norma Borthwick and illustrated by Jack B. Yeats, which depicted scenes of everyday life in Irish and English. The lesson book offers an interactive format, where readers are encouraged to draw parallels between the scenes of the book and instances from their own lives.
As Martin outlined at the launch of the book, the laundry workers were underestimated and belittled in the press precisely because it was seen as ‘unskilled women’s work’. Despite this, they went on to win a victory not just for themselves, but for all workers organised in unions. There are further historic parallels to be drawn from the 1945 laundry strike, as the October Revolution of 1917 was in no small part made possible by a strike of over forty thousand laundry workers earlier that year. In Russia, as in Ireland, the predominantly female laundry workers leveraged their essential role to push for an eight-hour workday, safe conditions, and sick pay. Leading Bolsheviks, such as Alexandra Kollontai and Sofia Goncharskaia, saw the potential of this traditionally ‘hard to organise’ sector of workers as agents for change, and pressured others on the left to support their strike. What happened afterwards changed the world.
Some of the most militant action of recent years has been carried out in traditionally gendered and precarious sectors of the workforce. The nurses’ strike of 2019, for instance, saw not only a majority female base of workers on strike, but one equally dominated by migrants. As well, the heroic Debenhams strike of 2021 saw predominantly women workers, many of whom had worked at the Debenhams stores for over a decade, stand night after night on the picket, against increasing Garda violence. More recently, the ongoing fight for access to education has brought questions of care back to the political spotlight. Parents, carers, and SNAs have been fighting nationally and locally, staging overnight camp-outs and protests, for their children to have the education the state claims is their right. What makes these campaigns so powerful is not only the determination of the workers that fight on them, but the deeper questions they raise of how care is commodified under capitalism, and what a better future could be.
Ceachta Beaga Gaeilge, Vol.IV, shows that history is never something that stays in the past. There is a legacy of radical struggle across this island that can provide a touchstone for our activity today, centred on solidarity. It is as true today as it was eighty years ago that we can achieve the impossible when we fight together. The Rank and File Collective should be commended for bringing this history to light again in such a creative way and hopefully Ceachta Beaga Gaeilge, Vol.IV will be able to be viewed more widely soon. The Collective can be found on Instagram, where they post updates on their projects, workshops, and film screenings.
