William Partridge (Irish revolutionary)

William Patrick Partridge (1874 – 26 July 1917) was an Irish trade unionist and revolutionary socialist. He was a prominent member of James Connolly's Irish Citizen Army, and fought in the Easter Rising in Dublin 1916. He also later served as a Dublin City Councillor.

Early life

Partridge was born in Sligo in 1874; his family lived at 6, Chapel Street after first living in West Gardens. His father was an English train driver and his mother was an Irish Roman Catholic. The family moved after a short time and he was brought up in Ballaghadereen, County Roscommon. He was apprenticed at 17 as a mechanical fitter with the Midland & Great Western Railway in Sligo. He was a keen writer from an early age and contributed stories and poems to a magazine called The Shamrock.

Trade union work

At age 22 he was transferred to the railways workshops at Broadstone in Dublin and here he became involved in the union movement, joining the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. He was involved in the ASE led strikes in 1887 and 1902, making him a pioneer in the developing trade union movement in Ireland.

Partridge became an organiser of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union which had been founded in 1909. He worked closely with Jim Larkin in setting up branches of the union outside Dublin. He was based at the union’s Emmet Hall in Inchicore. He was involved in Conradh na Gaeilge (the Gaelic League) and was treasurer of the Inchicore branch. He campaigned for improved housing, education and civic amenities for the working people of Inchicore and he was elected to Dublin City Council where he served as a Sinn Féin councillor. He formed a branch of the ITGWU in Tralee, Listowel and Fenit Harbour and Killarney.

During the Great Lockout of 1913, Partridge was one of the main leaders of the struggle. He attacked the hypocrisy of Catholic clergy in Dublin who sided with the bosses and condemned the ITGWU while doing nothing themselves to combat the causes of dire poverty in the city.^[1]

The Rising

Partridge was a member of the first Provisional Army Council of the Irish Citizen Army along with Larkin, P.T. Daly, Thomas Foran, Seán O'Casey and Francis Sheehy Skeffington. Connolly sent Partridge to Kerry to supervise the landing of the expected German arms shipment at Fenit. his objective was to use the Transport union members at Fenit Harbour to unload the arms ship Aud, in fact the German ship the SS Libau.

However the ship was scuttled by the captain Karl Spindler after the planned rendezvous with Roger Casement to unload the arms did not happen and they were then intercepted by the British Navy. After returning to Dublin, Partridge stood as officer of the guard at Liberty Hall as the proclamation of 1916 was being printed the night before the Rising. Partridge fought in the College of Surgeons with Countess Markievicz and Michael Mallin during Easter Week. During the fighting he carried the wounded female sniper Margaret Skinnider on his back from Harcourt Street corner to the college while under constant fire.

Death

He was sentenced to 15 years penal servitude, ironically, not for his part in the Rising, but for his actions in Kerry where he was charged with making anti-war speeches in 1915. These were deemed to be the more serious crime, presumably as they left him open to a charge of treason. He was released from prison in April 1917 as his health had seriously deteriorated. He apparently suffered from Bright's disease. On 26 July 1917, he died in Ballaghadereen, aged 43. He is buried in Kilcoman cemetery. Countess Markiewicz gave the oration at his graveside where she fired a salute over the grave with her own pistol.^[2] She described him as the ‘The purest-souled and noblest patriot Ireland ever had’.^[3]

References

Further reading

• Hugh Geraghty, William Patrick Partridge, Curlew Books (2003).