Edward Lee

Another meeting of the Dublin Industrial Peace Committee was held
in the Mansion House at the end of October. Edward Lee felt that there
were wrongs on both sides, but his anger was reserved for his fellow
employers. ‘Men of capital ought to be ashamed to have it go out to the
ends of the earth that so many families were living each in one room’. 30
With this emotional statement, Edward Lee, hoped to force the capitalist
and employer class to look closely at themselves, to examine their
consciences and the morality of what they were inflicting on workers and
their families. As President Michael D. Higgins recently stated, ‘There is
no limit to what courageous people can do if they have ‘moral courage’. 31
Edward Lee was courageous and he had ‘moral courage’. Unfortunately
many of the ‘men of capital’ didn’t and they seemed to be impervious to
Edward Lee’s plea and to the misery they were inflicting. The war would
continue, morality was just another casualty. Ultimately, however, the
Dublin Industrial Peace Committee failed in its endeavour to bring peace.
When the Dublin Chamber of Commerce met on the 29 th November,
Edward Lee proposed a motion to be put to the Monday meeting, ‘That
this meeting of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce whilst determinedly
opposed to the principle of sympathetic strikes, with their attendant
disastrous effects to employers and workers are of the opinion that the
employers, in the interests of peace and goodwill, ought to withdraw
the agreement they asked their workers to enter into in respect of the
Irish Transport and General Workers Union, which the workers consider
infringes their personal liberty’. 32
The motion was totally unacceptable to Murphy and an alternative and
opposite motion was drafted by Richard Jones, a supporter of Murphy. In
the event it was now decided that the issue would be fudged and neither
motion was put to Monday’s meeting, effectively silencing what was seen
as capitulation. Edward Lee was incensed and decided to go public with
his resolution anyway. Writing to the Irish Times, he published the text of
his motion, pointing out that, ‘One of the objects for which the Chamber
is constituted is to promote the commercial, manufactures, shipping
and carrying interests of the City of Dublin and to take cognisance of
and investigate such matters as affecting the commerce, manufactures,
shipping and carrying trade of Ireland generally, must necessarily
30 Irish Times. 1/11/1913
31 Michael Lyttleton Memorial Lecture. June 2013 Q&A Session
32 Weekly Irish Times. 6/12/1913
42 Edward Lee