Wednesday 18 November 2020

Unions, Pickets and High Court Judgements - Women behind the Bar

Women have a long traditional of working in, and indeed owning pubs in Ireland, going back to the on-site sales of the brews of alewives from homes across the country.

And there is plenty of scholarly writing on the role of women in brewing and retail of alcohol during this period, including a fine blog on the topic by a Trinity PhD. Specifically for Dublin, there is this piece for a historical journal covering 17th Century female brewers and alehouses.

Some of my own personal interest in pub history comes from a woman running a pub, via genealogy, with the mother of my great-grandfather's third wife ("great great grandmother", while inaccurate, is easier to write) having operated N0105 The Deers Head in the 1910s; claiming successfully for £5 11s7d damages caused to the premises during the Rising




However, it isn't even fifty years since women working behind the bar - or on the floor - of pubs became accepted in Dublin's unionised pubs. The term used during the period where this was debated was "barmaid", which is what I will use in this post - although I don't think its particularly appropriate in the modern era.

Distilled down, there were two factors in the push against barmaids - misguided concern for their health from working in an 'unsuitable environment for women'; and pure sexism, attempting to protect jobs for men only. However, possibly due to how many women actually owned pubs in Ireland, only the latter ever really crops up here.

While Irish licencing laws were separate from those in Britain even prior to Independence, the situation in British law is worth looking at, and with a particularly Irish tinge to what happened 

There was a "Joint Committee on the Employment of Barmaids" which reported to the British Government in 1905, recommending that they be banned entirely. Interestingly, a review of this report in The Economic Review in 1906 claimed that "The custom of employing women as barmaids is practically unknown in Scotland and Ireland"

Various Bills attempting to bring in such a ban, either allowing existing barmaids to continue working, or throwing the claimed 100,000 of them in employment in England and Wales at the time out of their jobs, were floated after this report up until the 1908 Licensing Bill, but were dropped. A significant element in this was the formation of the Barmaids Political Defence League by Eva Gore-Booth - the sister of Constance Marcievicz - and their temporary disruption of the political rise of Winston Churchill in the process. 

This defeat didn't stop later suggestions to bring in such a ban, on ever more spurious grounds, though, this being from 1930



So, with no prohibition on women working in the trade in Ireland, a long tradition of them doing so and female owned pubs around the country, were there many barmaids in Dublin? Apparently not
Irish Press, December 17th, 1962

With newspaper journalists of that era often being heavy drinkers, it is likely that they would be quite able to answer that question themselves!


There was a reason for this however - Dublin's then strong barmans union (the Irish National Union of Vintners', Grocers' and Allied Trades Assistants - now part of MANDATE) prohibited the employment of women in unionised pubs, and the majority of Dublins pubs were unionised. Most non-union pubs were smaller, family operated premises with the larger and busier pubs that made up most of the volume of the trade, and of employment of external staff, being signed to union agreements. While the union organised across Ireland and indeed the UK; the majority of its membership was in Dublin.

Dublin's infamous longest strike - that at Downeys pub in Dun Laoghaire - actually related to the replacement of a unionised staff member with a barmaid

The first attempts to get this ban overturned came from a less than ideal source - the publicans union (Licenced Grocers and Vintners Association) seeking to be able to employ barmaids so that they could pay them less than men, this being explicitly legal until 1974. That barmaids were frequently employed beyond the reach of INUVGATA was also raised.

Irish Press, June 18th, 1964


The INUVGATA argument against women raised in their periodical, as quoted in the Herald on October 20th, 1966, was that allowing women in on lower wages would destroy the future careers of apprentice baman, who by this stage were actually doing some form of professional training - I presume via CERT which came in to being in 1963. Obviously the idea of just paying women the same escaped them!


While INUVGATA and the LGVA may have not allowed barmaids, we already know they did exist - and indeed some were also unionised - I would imagine mainly those in hotels, based on being in the ITGWU who, as their successor union SIPTU, are still a major union for hotel staff. The union successfully fought for a pay increase for their 35 members in the trade in 1967.

Irish Independent, 15th July, 1967

This was still significantly less than men were being paid, as was the standard at the time.


The LGVA next floated the idea of hiring women in late 1969 - identical stories appear in the Herald and the Independent within a few days of each other - but this time it is a shortage of apprentices being given as the reason rather specifically saying they wanted to pay them less.

The INUVGATA first acceded to women working in unionised pubs in 1972; but not at the bar. It was an agreement over the hiring of what would now generally be called 'lounge staff', but possibly more accurately called waiters in the agreement with the LGVA 

Irish Press, 29th May 1972

This agreement came some months after the High Court had ruled that a ban on women working in pubs was unconstitutional, judgement by Mr Justice Kenny in this case being reported in March 1972; arising from an injunction against picketers and INUVGATA over pickets that had begun in 1971.

These were far from the only pickets over the hiring of women, but detailing every picket by the union would be a pointless task (which is why I only bothered listing cases of the actual customers picketing in another article)

I have not, yet, been able to find at what point INUVGATA allowed women to become members and hence work in unionised pubs - it was not well reported as far as it seems - but it may have been part of the National Wage Agreement 1974. This was done in the run-up the aforementioned 1975 legislation requiring equal pay (in theory, this is) which would have removed their main concern.

Additionally, the legislation which prohibited gender bars like this was tabled in 1975, becoming law in 1977

I wouldn't be surprised if a trip to the Labour Court archives could help here; but that currently isn't possible.

The first reference I can find to INUVGATA barmaids is in the Irish Independent of October 6th, 1977, when a union rep claimed to have ten women as members, two of whom were chargehands (supervisors)

Monday 9 November 2020

RetroReviews: S0115 The Bankers

This pub is amongst my favourites - a small pub in the city centre where you've got a decent chance of getting a seat, and which has good food and something beyond the standard 8 taps that smaller premises sometimes have.

My first visit here was probably before an Olympia gig, due to Brogans being full, but I've been back many times since.

One notable occasion was when I was invited along to a stag party for someone I didn't know - I did know one of the other members of the group and they wanted a tour guide for the afternoon. Having rescued them from Buskers and relieved them of the orange wigs they'd bought in Carrolls; The Bankers provided a table for food as it always seems to be able to do - despite the city being very busy.

I eventually extracted them to move on to another pub when the best man appeared to be falling in love with the waitress - unrequitedly, I suspect - and they didn't really feel like leaving him there to make an idiot of himself when they could instead all make idiots of themselves collectively somewhere.

The Bankers made more use of its outdoor seating on to Dame Lane for outdoor dining (when that was allowed), and hopefully this continues when weather and regulations are suitable.

Wednesday 4 November 2020

RetroReviews: S0112 O'Neills (Suffolk Street)

A vast, labyrinthine pub, much of which faintly smells of roast meat at all times of day from the famed carvery.

O'Neills sits on the corner of Suffolk Street and Church Lane, a street I'd guess most people don't know the name of (although it is signed), in a definitely Edwardian building that is often mis-identified as Victorian by its design.

There's multiple sub-areas to the pub, including a whiskey bar and a substantial open roofed beer garden on the top floor.

I don't go here all that often, but not that irregularly either. As far as I remember, this is the first place I tasted the revised recipe Brewdog Punk on draught (which is not even the current recipe, I think; but which at that time I peferred greatly to the original - my views may have changed on that); and when some of my group of friends were still in college in Trinity, this was often the closest pub with a decent smoking area and seats.

Its one of the few pubs in Dublin which generally has all three of the major stouts on tap - and with the addition of O'Haras - provided the location for an interesting taste test in 2008.

Tuesday 3 November 2020

November 2020 Licence Update

Not a lot this month - file may be missing some content as some renewed licences seem to be missing so I can't do a deletions check

New:

1016704 Johns Bar, Thomas Street - Press Up venue opened in the brief period of open food pubs.

Renumbered:

1016355 Guinness Storehouse formerly S3723 - I presume the licence was redefined for the extension to the Gravity Bar

Sunday 1 November 2020

RetroReviews: S0107 Lundy Foots / Czech Inn

My motivation to keep writing these retrospective writeups has been repeatedly hit by further levels of restrictions - but there's going to be no pub specific content until December (if even) and I don't have much of a pipeline of unspecific, historical posts either so here we go again. Lets see if I can keep writing them for more than a few days this time...


This pub is in a modern building, but has a low licence number in the old geographic based sequence - because, as far as I can tell, it is the licence of the former Red Hackle on Parliament Street, the site of which was part of the overall development here.

This premises first opened as Isoldes Tower, for the remains of this part of the city walls was found during the excavations for the redevelopment of the site in the early 1990s, when there were grand and optimistic plans to make the overall Temple Bar area a critical cultural quarter - which rather fell apart; but having a niche bar in an apartment development very much matched the plans of the time. 

That incarnation had a reputation as an after work pints place; and also for being somewhere between a gay-friendly pub to being a 'soft' gay bar, like its near-ish neighbour at that time, S3178 The Front Lounge, which later tilted to branding itself as a gay bar.

However, its more recent and still somewhat extant incarnation as a Czech bar - not really a Czech themed bar, more a bar for the Czech diaspora in Dublin - is probably better known. The Czech Inn element of the pub - which was the main 'drinking' bar anyway - still exists upstairs, but the downstairs section has now been converted to what seems to be a faux-old bar in the style of a Press Up venue, albeit its actually not run by them.

The current name comes from a tobacconist who traded on Essex Street & Parliament Street in the 18th/19th century and follows a trend of naming a premises after a former business on-site or nearby, e.g. 1007830 JT Pims or S0005 JT Sweetmans

I've not actually been in since the premises was solely the Czech Inn, and its not like that can be corrected any time soon!