across the picket lines

And now for something completely different.
Yes, it's time for a long rambling self indulgent reminiscence about nothing in particular.
At last the complete story can be told.
The full heartrending account of the dreadful Newbridge Lockout of 1985.
The General Strike which all but paralysed the corner of County Kildare where I live for a full, oh, it seemed like ages.
It must have been half a day at least.
Did I say paralysed?
Okay, I meant mildly inconvenienced.
I well remember those tense dramatic hours and the tense dramatic role I played in them.
I was a young man then of course, with fire in my blood, joy in my heart, and a constant devil may care leer on my handsome face that used to drive women wild.
"Stop leering at us," they would say. "You are driving us wild."
But I digress.
1985.
Innocent days.
Days of wine and roses.
The days of Pearly Spencer.
No dammit, that's just some song.
Some song about a Liverpudlian halfwit who had more cloche hats than sense.
Where were we?
Ah yes. Still 1985. I was a clerical officer working for Kildare County Council and stationed at the Machinery Yard in the town of Newbridge.
A situation that reeked of cosmopolitan glamour.
The Machinery Yard was home to me and two other fellow clerks, as well as to a dozen workshop technicians, known as fitters, who maintained and repaired the council's industrial vehicles and machinery.
My job involved processing invoices for the various companies that did business with Kildare County Council.
Processing invoices was a tough job for a young man with a poet's soul, so I spent most of my time in various Newbridge cafes trying to come to terms with the hand life had dealt me.
"Why me oh Lord?" I would moan downing another coffee and munching a tuna sandwich.
Assistant County Fire Officer Joel Murphy who joined us everyday for tea break, always claimed a monkey would have done a better job than I did.
He had a point.
Although a monkey would have been less likely to write pejorative comments about his coworkers and the Assistant County Fire Officer on the margins of invoice files that to this day gather dust in the labyrinthine cellars of Kildare County Council.
Ha, ha. That one's true.
Somewhere during those burnished roseate hours of my youth, the National Clerical Officers Union in Dublin decided it was time we had a pay rise.
All over Ireland, heroic working class clerks met with the agitative firebrand Dublin union reps to consult and vote for strike action.
The clerks of Kildare also met with their union officers.
They told us we were more productive than similar workers in Germany, Japan and the United States.
They swore blind to us that this was a human rights issue.
They urged the brave indomitable heroic working class clerks of Kildare County Council to vote yes for strike action.
And we, the traitorous quisling back stabbing bougeois clerks of Kildare County Council promptly voted no.
Personally I doubted that Japanese, Yankee or even Kraut clerical officers were spending half the time in coffee shops that I was spending. I could hardly have voted otherwise.
To the dismay of our national union the Kildare branch was the only one nationwide to vote to dissociate itself from the strike action.
On a warm light filled day at the dawn of time, the clerks of Ireland downed pens and left their desks.
All except us.
For us the comic opera was just beginning.
Myself, Byrno and Brendan Duffy arrived for work at the Machinery Yard only to find a rather militant picket line had been thrown up around it.
The fitters from the Machinery Yard workshop were in a different union but they had voted to go out on strike in support of us.
They had voted to support us in the strike we had voted not to take part in.
Now they were blocking the entrance to the premises and looking daggers at the three turncoat scum (Byrno, Duffy and me) who were obviously toying with the notion of crossing the picket line.
The same three turncoat scum in whose support they had erected the picket line in the first place.
Oh sweet delicious irony of life.
Richard our boss arrived looking slightly worried and went to confer with the lead fitter.
While he did this Jimmy Cullen, a normally agreeable chap from the workshop, approached the three lowlife scabs (Byrno, Duffy and me) and addressed us in a low voice.
The same three lowlife scabs lest you forget, in whose honour and for whose pay claims, Jimmy and his comrades were currently on strike.
"Youse are all individuals and youse are all responsible for your actions," he told us in rich Dublinese, before quickly rejoining his comrades.
He got a great sense of threat into the few simple words.
Nobody had ever called any of us "youse" before in such a grimly wrought Dublin accent, so it was a threat we were inclined to take seriously.
Richard the boss rejoined us shaking his head, and we turned and walked away from the picket line towards the town centre.
As we went the fitters cried out in unison: "Awk puck puck puck puck awk."
It was a moment of great working class solidarity.
The true working class can get a strangely dignified passion into their awk puck pucks.
It was reminiscent of a choir of Welsh miners singing Cwymm Rhonnda.
Aunty Mary's hens would have been proud.
"What a shower of clucking fitters," I muttered.
But I didn't mutter it too loudly.
Never provoke men who cluck. That's always been my motto.
Because sometimes they'll cluck you up real bad.
Anyhoo.
From a payphone on Newbridge Main Street we called the County Manager who instructed us in no uncertain terms to cross the picket line.
The four of us strolled back to the Machinery Yard and faced the massed ranks of now eerily silent fitters.
Massed ranks? Okay, all twelve of them were there.
Not a word did they speak.
"We've no choice," said Richard. "Come on."
We walked through the picket line into our place of work.
The fitters let us pass in stony silence.
Young Monty Baines started to cluck but Jimmy Cullen shushed him.
As we entered the building it seemed existence itself held its breath.
The deed was done.
A day later our national union abandoned the strike and everyone was officially back to work. But all was not forgotten.
The bitterness engendered by the capitulation of the class traitors (Byrno, Duffy and me) would fester in the workplace for a long time.
"It's awful, isn't it?" sez Byrno to me a few months later in the canteen during the afternoon Bridge game.
I looked at him with genuine surprise.
"What's awful?" sez I innocently.
It was Byrno's turn to look surprised.
"Do you not know what's going on?" he asked. "Can you not feel the tension? The fitters haven't spoken to any of us since the strike."
My eyebrows rose most quizzically.
"I never noticed," I told him honestly. "Most of them stopped speaking to me long before that."
I was ever the popular one bold readers.
And there our story ends.