Did you know that 99 years ago this week in 1921, a Soviet took control of the docks in Cork City Ireland for seven days?

In March 1920, at the height of the War of Independence in Cork, a Cork Corporation Cost of Living Commission was established by Lord Mayor Tomás Mac Curtáin to establish a proper level of living wage for Cork’s workers.

In late September 1920 the Commission reported that this wage should be 70 shillings a week, considerably more than most workers in the city received at this time. On 12 February 1921 the Commission reiterated this finding. Four days later, the Cork Harbour Board received a letter from the local ITGWU branch asking that the 70 shillings rate be put into effect by the Board. The Cork Harbour Board resisted implementing the wage for months and finally rejected the idea in June 1921. Two months later, in August 1921, in the face of a repeated claim, the Harbour Board rejected the claim again. The Harbour Board, traditionally a bastion of the city’s commercial elite, had a recent addition to its ranks – Bob Day, a trade union militant and the Secretary of Cork’s ITGWU branch and a member of the Cork Corporation. Day proposed that the dockers' claim be referred to arbitration but the proposal was rejected. A strike of the Board’s employees was declared on 26 August 1921. The Harbour Board, however, failed to realise that its refusal to grant this wage would lead to its workers seizing control of the Cork Custom House, a red flag being flown over the Custom House and a soviet declared.

The dockers went on strike on 26 August 1921 and the harbour pilots came out in sympathy with the result that the Port of Cork was brought to a standstill. Together with his close comrade William Kenneally, on 7 September 1921, Day led the harbour workers in an endeavour that was reported as far away as New York.

At noon on that day, the Union men, headed by Day, himself a member of the Harbour Board and of the Cork Corporation, entered the offices of the Secretary of the Board, Sir James Long. Mr Day informed the Secretary that he had come to take charge, and when Sir James refused to submit to the new regime he was "instantly dismissed." A similar fate was meted out to the other members of the staff. The strikers, having taken possession of the Harbour Board offices, hoisted a red flag as a token of Soviet control and the strikers' leaders announced their intention of collecting dues from shipping agents and using them to pay members of the Union. The movement of all shipping, without the consent of the Union was prohibited. The Unionist aligned paper the Irish Times decried the Cork Harbour Soviet as an outbreak of "Irish Bolshevism" and fearfully pondered of the possibility of a civil war between Nationalists and Socialists breaking out if Ireland achieved independence from Britain.

The “Cork Harbour Soviet” of 1921 lasted for only seven days and it ended 99 years ago today, on 14 September 1921, with control of the port being returned to the Harbour Board but not before the dockers’ action proved to be successful in that the rise in wages was conceded – at a time when pay in other ports was being reduced by a shilling a week.