The Union & Jim Downey

It was almost like Christmas, that night at Jim Downey's place. The old saloon was decked out in bunting and all the regulars were in, having a singsong. And there was Jim himself passing out creamy pints, on the house, for all the world as if beer was water from the town well. "By the holy," said the men of Dun Laoghaire (Kingstown that was), "if it isn't the birthday of a strike Jim's celebratin', and his place the one that's struck." Outside the pickets paused now & then to nod to Jim's customers.

Only the pickets themselves and the oldest regulars remembered the beginning of 73-year-old Jim's falling-out with the National Union of Vintners, Grocers and Allied Trades. That had been back in March 1939. There had been some unpleasantness over a foreman's pay, and the union lads in the bar (there were four of them at the time) had pulled out and set up a picket line. Two of them had quit since then (one to join the British Navy), but the other two, young Con Cusack and Paddo Young, had stuck it out. Every day now for eight years, with other pickets sent by the union, they had tramped up & down, from 10 a.m. to closing, carrying their battered placard: "Strike On at Downey's."

Union barmen all over Dublin have chipped in two shillings a week to keep up Paddo's and Con's wages, and the pickets have seemed happy enough in their new jobs. There is a hoary old sign in Downey's window: "Hello, Paddo," it says. "Standard Rate of Wages Paid Here to All Employees." And that's the truth. But with Jim it's a matter of principle. And so the pickets pace, while Jim worries about them. Last March, Jim was out there in the snow sweeping off the sidewalk "so the boys wouldn't get their feet wet." Some mornings when they don't show up on time, Jim will call union headquarters. "What's wrong?" he'll say. "Are the boys ill?" Jim can never forget how the tuberculosis took Jim Ryan, his favorite picket of them all, God rest his soul.

By last week, Jim's-strike was famous all over the world as the oldest strike in Eire's trade-union history. Sailors from ports Jim never heard of often write to ask him how it's coming on. Every year Britain's newspaper boys come over to get a birthday-celebration spread in the Sunday features. The publicity Jim got at the eighth birthday party gave his business such a spurt that Downey's is closed two days a week now for lack of stock. "Sure the extra rest will do the boys no harm," Jim said last week, but he won't settle the strike. "If I can," he insists, "I'll will it to my successors."

Jim Downey is no more likely to go out of business than he is to settle. Even staunch union men drop into his place, though they always try to keep the pickets, Paddo and Con, from seeing them. "Sure," they all say, "it would hurt the poor lads' feelings."

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