Edward Lee

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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
influence those of the metropolis’. 33 It would seem that Edward Lee was becoming a lone voice within the chamber and increasingly isolated in his opinions. We don’t know what sort of relationship if any, there was between Lee and Murphy at this time. Dublin was a small city and the business community would have been close knit. Were they on cordial or even friendly terms before the Lockout? They would probably have met socially from time to time and they would have had dealings together regarding the 1907 Irish International Exhibition. As both men were members of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce, they would have met at meetings on various occasions. No record exists about their personal relationship, either during or after the strike. But it seems fair to surmise that relations between them remained frosty at the very least. Nonetheless, although Lee and Murphy were in total disagreement as to how to deal with the Lockout, Edward Lee respected Murphy’s business acumen and services to the industrial life of Ireland. When in February 1915, almost two years after the Lockout, the Chamber of Commerce honoured Murphy with a portrait of himself painted by Sir William Orpen and an illuminated address signed by over 410 business people, Edward Lee was one of the signatories. However, he did not attend the presentation to Murphy, nor did he send an apology for his absence. 34 No employee of Lee’s & Co. Ltd. was ever locked out. Interestingly, Maeve Cavanagh, who was employed in the millinery department of Lee’s, Rathmines, was also a member of the Irish Citizen Army. (Maeve changed the spelling of her surname so that it would appear more Irish.) Her brother, Ernest Kavanagh, was an employee of the ITGWU and political cartoonist and had supplied cartoons for the Irish Labour movement. His depiction of William Martin Murphy as the ‘Demon of Death’ had outraged Murphy and his supporters. Maeve was also writing articles and poems for the Workers Republic and helping to organise fundraising concerts for Larkin. She also raised funds for James Connolly’s rifle fund and remembered getting all her drapery friends from Lee’s and other drapery shops, to attend dances and concerts in aid of the fund. 35 It is not known what Edward Lee’s attitude would have been towards 33 Irish Times. 2/12/1913 34 Irish Independent. 5/2/1915 35 Witness statement by Mrs MacDowell (Maeve Cavanagh). Bureau of Military History 1913-21 Doc No. W.S. 258 (Military Archives) Model Employer and Man of Moral Courage 43
Page 1 and 2: Edward Lee Model Employer and Man o
Page 7 and 8: Contents Foreword by Pádraig Yeate
Page 9 and 10: accommodation for his own employees
Page 11 and 12: are gradually piecing the family st
Page 13 and 14: ook by far on the 1913 Dublin Locko
Page 15 and 16: Jane, who would become Countess of
Page 17 and 18: Tyrrellspass Green 1900s. Photo was
Page 19 and 20: Edward Lee and Co Ltd Dún Laoghair
Page 21 and 22: Social Conscience Edward Lee was an
Page 23 and 24: at Dargan Street in Little Bray and
Page 25 and 26: The Grange By the early 1900s, the
Page 27 and 28: Silver Wedding Illuminated scroll 1
Page 29 and 30: America and Canada 17 which he publ
Page 31 and 32: paragraph in the next day’s issue
Page 33 and 34: his nephew Robert H. Gilbert 19 to
Page 35 and 36: Cluster of skyscrapers, New York. C
Page 37 and 38: certainly, as such, has no rival in
Page 39 and 40: dismissed. The employers held out,
Page 41: under the chairmanship of Tom Kettl
Page 45 and 46: the controversy. Ironically perhaps
Page 47 and 48: ‘Bellevue’, Cross Avenue, Black
Page 49 and 50: laid his broken body in its last re
Page 51 and 52: Unknown newspaper cutting from 1915
Page 53 and 54: kind to them, Edward and Annie must
Page 55 and 56: sister. It is possible that they me
Page 57 and 58: profit for the capitalists, as some
Page 59 and 60: that any firm advertising in certai
Page 61 and 62: Annie Lee and Tennyson Lee 1930s. E
Page 63 and 64: Deansgrange Cemetery, alongside his
Page 65 and 66: Model Employer and Man of Moral Cou
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Model Employer and Man of Moral Cou
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Edward Lee

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