Murphy, John (‘Jack’)

Murphy, John (‘Jack’) (1919/20–c.1990), trade unionist and unemployed agitator, was born in Dublin, where he lived for many years in Ballyfermot. Joining the IRA at an early age, he was interned at the Curragh during the emergency of the early 1940s, but left the organisation by the mid 1950s. A carpenter by trade, he served for a time as a trade-union shop steward noted for militancy. In January 1957, amid burgeoning unemployment and a building-industry crisis, he was one of a number of unemployed men, mostly builders, who, after a spontaneous protest meeting outside Werburgh St. labour exchange, organised the Unemployed Protest Committee (UPC) to agitate for emergency government action. Five of the twelve key committee members belonged to the communist Irish Workers’ League (IWL), which strongly backed the agitation. Chosen UPC chairman, Murphy, sporting a trademark black beret, was conspicuous in the movement's frequent street marches and public meetings. When the second inter-party government collapsed (Febuary), the UPC decided to run a candidate in the March general election. Advised by veteran socialist republican agitator Peadar O'Donnell (qv), who raised the election deposit, the UPC chose Murphy as its candidate over Sam Nolan; against the background of the 1956 USSR invasion of Hungary and the ongoing IRA border campaign, it was concluded that Nolan's IWL membership might hinder his candidacy, while Murphy's republican background might enhance his. Polling over 3,000 first-preference votes, Murphy won a Dáil Éireann seat in Dublin South Central (1957–8) standing as Independent Unemployed Worker. Refusing to support the new Fianna Fáil government, he utilised dáil question time to press for solutions to the unemployment crisis. In response to the so-called ‘famine budget’ of finance minister James Ryan (qv), which removed food subsidies, Murphy and two other UPC activists staged a four-day hunger strike in May, supported by massive nightly demonstrations. The UPC appealed for support to Dublin's catholic archbishop, John Charles McQuaid (qv), who, in a private meeting with Murphy, warned against association with communists. Thereafter, Murphy distanced himself from the IWL camp within the UPC, opposed further street demonstrations, and pleaded for time to adjust to his dáil responsibilities. In August he broke with the UPC and formed his own non-militant committee. The movement thus enervated, Murphy, probably at McQuaid's behest, resigned his dáil seat (10 May 1958), claiming ‘a protest against the appalling indifference of the main political parties to the plight of the unemployed’ (Ir. Independent, 12 May 1958). In the ensuing by-election (25 June) the seat was taken by Fianna Fáil. Although McQuaid wrote that he obtained him a job on a church building site, Murphy was out of work for most of the next ten months, receiving only basic unemployment assistance of £2. 1s. a week, as his cards had not been stamped during his dáil tenure. In March 1959 he emigrated in search of work to Saskatchewan, Canada, having to leave behind his wife Maureen, their one son, and one daughter. He eventually returned to Dublin, where he died c.1990. The history of Jack Murphy's brief period of celebrity is a poignant testament to the pressures, both political and personal, endured by those who challenged the mainstream civic and religious institutional consensus of mid-twentieth-century Ireland.