Strumpet City by James Plunkett

A great Irish novel set in strife-torn Dublin between 1907 and 1914

Strumpet City  by James Plunkett was published in 1969. It told the story of events sixty years earlier, a time of bitter industrial strife fought, literally, on the streets of Dublin in the years before the First World War. On the one side are the poor starving wretches of St. Brigid’s Parish behind heroic leader Jim Larkin of the National Union of Dockers. Against them, the Dublin Employer’s, organised behind Tramway Company owner William Martin Murphy. In between are the clergy battling for the hearts and minds of the people.

These include alcoholic Father Giffley, parish priest, whose uselessness hides an acerbic awareness of where the workers interests lie. Father O’Connor feels different. New to the parish he had felt a calling to serve the poor, he has left the comforts of Kingstown ( now Dun Laoghaire) but retains a suspicion of a ‘godless socialism’. He can barely hide his disgust at the condition of the people all around him. Plunkett excels in detailing the priestly nuances.

The territory may owe something to Ulysses. There is a Royal procession to the Viceregal Lodge; a funeral at Glasnevin; encounters in dark candle-lit pubs – never named; and all the clerical absurdities. As the great Dublin lockout of 1913 takes place starvation returns to Ireland, good families like the Fitzpatricks face ruin, Liberty Hall – Larkin’s powerbase – winds down the collecting to fight another day.

Larkin, Liverpool-born of Irish parents, stands tall across the pages of this book, an extraordinary workers leader. Which brings me back again to statues, so recently newsworthy. In O’Connell Street, between those of Parnell and O’Connell ‘The Liberator’ is the statue of Jim Larkin himself, arms aloft, addressing another mass meeting. James Plunkett wrote few novels but this 578 page epic is one of the best of the last century?

Img. Larkin statue, 1986/ author