Although no public appeal has as yet been made, I am already in receipt of a number of subscriptions, from £25 down to 2s. 6d., sent to me by generous sympathisers, rich and poor, in England and Scotland.
It would be strange, then, if an opportunity were not afforded to the people of our own diocese to give practical expression to the sympathy which they must feel with the children suffering from hunger and from cold.
I am, therefore, asking the Parish Priests and Parochial Administrators of the various parishes, and also the heads of religious communities in charge of public churches in the diocese, to arrange for a special collection to be held in their Churches on next Sunday in aid of the fund that is now being raised.
A small Committee, consisting of some of the city clergy and some members of the St. Vincent de Paul Association, will take charge of the collection of the fund, and the distribution of it in the parishes where it is needed will be in the hands of the local clergy and of the local Conferences of the Association of St. Vincent de Paul.
I know that I can count upon your cordial co-operation. I ought perhaps to add that if there is any local reason why next Sunday may not be a convenient day, the collection can be held on the following Sunday. But you will kindly bear in mind that the case is one of real urgency.
I remain,
Very Rev. and Dear Father,
Your faithful servant in Christ,
William
Archbishop of Dublin
Etc., etc.
P.S. The amounts received are to be sent to W. A. Ryan Esq., Treasurer, Special Committee, Council Rooms, Society of St. Vincent de Paul, 25 Upper O’Connell Street, Dublin.
Yearling read it in his bed in the Nursing Home where he was recovering from a dislocated shoulder. He was enjoying the rest. Mathews had escaped with bruises which still discoloured his face. Yearling read him the letter.
‘So that’s what we are,’ he said, ‘two proselytisers, energetically active.’
‘I forgot to tell you,’ Mathews said, ‘Mrs. Rand and Mrs. Montefiore have been released—on condition that they leave the country.’
‘They’ll miss the collection,’ Yearling said.
‘They can take the credit for it,’ Mathews pointed out, ‘and so can we. If we hadn’t moved, the Hierarchy wouldn’t have noticed any exceptional distress whatever. I wonder will the faithful stump up?’
When the bells of Sunday rang out above the city the collection boxes rattled in the streets and outside the church porches. The Faithful, instructed by their Archbishop, dipped into fob pocket and muff for loose change. There was exceptional distress, now officially recognised. The local clergy in consultation with the laymen who were Brothers of St. Vincent de Paul decided on the distribution. When their duty was done and Sunday was over they read of the arrival in the city of a large contingent of British Blacklegs. They saw nothing wrong in this, although it was designed to take the bread out of the mouths of the men and women and children they had just been collecting for. It was a crime to deport children in order to feed them, but no crime to bring in adults to see that they continued in starvation. When the workers organised a protest, the local clergy and the Brothers of St. Vincent deplored mutually the grip the Atheists held on the city.
CHAPTER TEN
The man who lit the gas-lamps told Pat where the scabs were quartered. It was near Mountjoy Gaol. He also told him where they drank. Pat knew the pub. It was an out-of-way place not far from Drumcondra Bridge. They were escorted there, those who wanted to go, by police. The snag about any attempt to attack them was, the lamplighter pointed out, that the bloody police stayed on all the time to guard them. And incidentally, needless to remark, said the lamplighter—remarking it just the same—to wet their own whistles with more than a law abiding modicum. He himself had seen four of the police having a murderous fight among themselves, with the scabs helping the rest of the police to separate them. A disgraceful scene.
‘There’s example for you,’ the lamplighter said. He was a small man with a pale face and bushy moustache who, it was said by those who should know, wore his bicycle clips in bed.
‘Thanks for the information,’ Pat said to him.
‘Up the Republic,’ the lamplighter answered.
Pat reported to Liberty Hall at a meeting of the Actionists, who had no official existence as such within the union, but who were regularly in session just the same. The problem was how to get rid of the police in order to attack the scabs. They spent some hours deliberating. A diversion was the obvious answer. There was another public house about a hundred yards from the one in which the scabs drank. A mêlée there and the use of a couple of stolen police whistles might do the trick. Joe and Pat, with two of the others, undertook to create the diversion. They would work out a line of retreat for themselves so that they could disappear before the police caught up with them.
After surveying the ground in the course of two morning rambles they were able to propose a plan which had prospects of success. Those who were to attack the scabs could assemble in the early afternoon in a friendly house from which the scabs’ pub could be kept under observation. With Pat and Joe were another carter called Mick and an enormous docker usually addressed as Harmless. Joe would arrive in the pub first. The others would come separately.
The night was suitable. Fog hung in laneways and made the streets damp and uninviting. Pat set off early so that he could check their escape route. He passed the pub where the scabs would assemble later for drink and recreation. The pub he himself would visit looked almost empty. He turned the corner and followed a laneway which led, after a number of intersections, to the banks of the Royal Canal. Some yards along the towpath a barge was tethered. He went aboard. The door of the cabin was open as had been arranged. It would hide them from the police. The next morning, if the search continued, they had only to stay put and the bargeman would take them downstream and let them off at one of the city bridges. It should work smoothly.
Satisfied, he followed the towpath towards the bridge. It was miserably cold and dark. The fog made his hair wet and found its way up his sleeves, chilling him. He was hungry. He lived a lot of the time on bread and tea. Hunger was a state that was constant, yet seldom critical. But it depressed him. The mud on the towpath squelched under his boots, the withered grass at its edge was still tall enough to wet his trouser legs as he brushed past, the waters of the canal were oily and shrouded in mist. At a distance, like something seen through a tunnel, was the main road bridge with its gas-lamps and traffic. He walked towards it; but without enthusiasm.
When he reached it there was still time to kill. He leaned on the parapet. The water cascading through the lock gates made a deafening sound, scattering spume that smelled of rotting vegetation. His thoughts, not for the first time, contemplated defeat. The lock-out was now in its fourth month. Winter would be an ally of the employers. Beating up scabs had become a mere gesture. It provided an outlet, but could no longer achieve anything. There were too many of them and the employers, helped by their cross-channel colleagues, still had plenty of money. There was no real hope. Expropriating the expropriators was a lifetime’s work. Or the work, maybe, of many lifetimes. The boss class stuck together.
‘Pat,’ the voice behind him said. He swung around.
‘Lily.’